Help stop this insanity

[Garp]

http://www.protectthehuman.com/petit...no-to-42-days-

This autumn the Government wants to push through a Bill allowing police to lock people up for 42 days without charge if they are suspected of a terrorism-related offence. When the Counter-Terrorism Bill comes back to the House of Commons, your MP will have a chance to help defeat it: the Bill only passed by nine votes last time, so it will be close.

42 days. With. Out. Charge. No Judge, no jury, no right of appeal, just bang and you're locked up for over a month. All because someone utters the "terrorist" word. This kind of injustice is something that surely no one in their right mind can support? Government should be fighting for our civil liberties, not throwing them away with every season.

[loki]

The whole idea of internment makes me feel uneasy. As you say, someone mentions the word terrorist and it could lead you loosing your liberty for upto 42 days. It's an extremely slippery slope we are on at the moment. There is no real redress within the current political structure to reject such a motion. With voter apathy and one of the lowest majorities for a government in power, what option do we have other than to roll over and take it again and again. This administration has almost free reign on eroding our civil liberties as they see fit.

The Government uses the uncertainty of pre-meditated terrorist attacks to legitimise this legislation. Ultimately this perpetuates the climate of us against them, terrorists and insurgents etc etc etc

[Mark]

It should be pointed out that even at 42 days this is far better than the previous policy of Internment without trial, especially in respect of Northern Irelend, though it was briefly extended to all Terrorists.

Is it really true that this is not subject to any form of judicial review? I thought there were to be such controls.

[Blighter]

Originally Posted by loki

The Government uses the uncertainty of pre-meditated terrorist attacks to legitimise this legislation. Ultimately this perpetuates the climate of us against them, terrorists and insurgents etc etc etc

That is NOT a line you want to read as soon as you've woken up

[Mark]

Should wake up a little earlier then, shouldn't you.

[Garp]

One of the things that must bugs me is if you substitute "commie" or "pink" for "terrorist" in all this, you just get McCarthyism. How many times are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past? It's been barely 50 years since the last lot of it in the world, and yet we're rushing straight back towards it.

[PvtPyle]

Really? Do we though? McCarthyism was a witch hunt. Who are we hunting here?

[Garp]

Originally Posted by PvtPyle

Really? Do we though? McCarthyism was a witch hunt. Who are we hunting here?

Everyone and their mother, so it seems. The assumption is guilty, guilty, guilty, until proven innocent. The number of people that get picked up in a major muslim community not too far from where I live is obscene, especially given only a tiny, tiny fraction of those ever get charged.

It is a witch hunt, it's similar to McCarthyism because essentially everyone is a suspect and we're all being encouraged to report on 'suspicious behaviour'.

The main law under which McCarthyism arrests took place was called "The Alien Registration Act", under which it was a criminal offense for anyone to "knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the […] desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States or of any State by force or violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association"

How is that different from the anti-terrorism laws that have been put in place? From the Terrorism Act 2006:

1 Encouragement of terrorism

(1) This section applies to a statement that is likely to be understood by some or all of the members of the public to whom it is published as a direct or indirect encouragement or other inducement to them to the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism or Convention offences.

(2) A person commits an offence if—

(a) he publishes a statement to which this section applies or causes another to publish such a statement; and

(b) at the time he publishes it or causes it to be published, he—

(i) intends members of the public to be directly or indirectly encouraged or otherwise induced by the statement to commit, prepare or instigate acts of terrorism or Convention offences; or

(ii) is reckless as to whether members of the public will be directly or indirectly encouraged or otherwise induced by the statement to commit, prepare or instigate such acts or offences.

(3) For the purposes of this section, the statements that are likely to be understood by members of the public as indirectly encouraging the commission or preparation of acts of terrorism or Convention offences include every statement which—

(a) glorifies the commission or preparation (whether in the past, in the future or generally) of such acts or offences; and

(b) is a statement from which those members of the public could reasonably be expected to infer that what is being glorified is being glorified as conduct that should be emulated by them in existing circumstances.

(4) For the purposes of this section the questions how a statement is likely to be understood and what members of the public could reasonably be expected to infer from it must be determined having regard both—

(a) to the contents of the statement as a whole; and

(b) to the circumstances and manner of its publication.

(5) It is irrelevant for the purposes of subsections (1) to (3)—

(a) whether anything mentioned in those subsections relates to the commission, preparation or instigation of one or more particular acts of terrorism or Convention offences, of acts of terrorism or Convention offences of a particular description or of acts of terrorism or Convention offences generally; and,

(b) whether any person is in fact encouraged or induced by the statement to commit, prepare or instigate any such act or offence.

Mix legislation that covers someone being involved in known terrorist groups (Terrorism act 2000 in various places, like subsection 19); both of which operate on the assumption of guilty before proven innocent, i.e. A police officer can pick you up off the streets and say that they are accusing you of thinking of encouraging people to give money to a terrorist group, the onus is on you, not them, to prove that you never thought any such thing. If you cannot prove this beyond reasonable doubt you go to jail for a while.

Consider this section from the 2000 Act:

12 Support

(1) A person commits an offence if—

(a) he invites support for a proscribed organisation, and

(b) the support is not, or is not restricted to, the provision of money or other property (within the meaning of section 15).

(2) A person commits an offence if he arranges, manages or assists in arranging or managing a meeting which he knows is—

(a) to support a proscribed organisation,

(b) to further the activities of a proscribed organisation, or

(c) to be addressed by a person who belongs or professes to belong to a proscribed organisation.

Define meeting? The law is so loosely worded that if I phoned up some mates, completely oblivious to one of them being a member of a proscribed group, and invited them around to my house, or maybe to the pub, I could be charge and convicted as I would have no way of proving that I had no idea about their activities.

13 Uniform

(1) A person in a public place commits an offence if he—

(a) wears an item of clothing, or

(b) wears, carries or displays an article,

in such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation.

So wearing a badge or a t-shirt that merely arouses suspicion is dodgy. Since when do terrorists walk around with t-shirts with logos saying "I'm a terrorist"? Does a Burqa count as suspicious? A male hijab? Might as well, surely, given the current disliked terrorists are Muslims, and that's about the only type of clothing that they're likely to be wearing anyway.

Whilst the act requires the Secretary of State to 'proscribe' groups, the definition of Terrorist is so loose in the act that it could easily be applied to such groups as Greenpeace, or CND and so on, so wearing that Greenpeace t-shirt could very easily be defined as dodgy.
In fact there is no requirement for any addition to the list of proscribed groups to come under any kind of oversight by security services, government or so on, it's purely down to the Secretary of State, and based on what he 'believes' (nice ephemeral concept there)

(3) The Secretary of State may by order—

(a) add an organisation to Schedule 2;

(b) remove an organisation from that Schedule;

(c) amend that Schedule in some other way.

(4) The Secretary of State may exercise his power under subsection (3)(a) in respect of an organisation only if he believes that it is concerned in terrorism.

Once you're on the proscribed list, you have to go through an appeal process, first to the Secretary of State, then to the "Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission" should that be unsuccessful. The only requirement for the first appeal to the Secretary of State is that they must "determine an application within a specified period of time" (not stated in the act itself as far as I can see)
For the duration of this process, the organisation is on the list, their funding can be frozen and all members are able to be locked up.

I'm sorry, but in my eyes the anti-terrorism laws are the very definition of a witch hunt.

That's before we even seriously start looking at the potential for abuse of the legislation (and those cases shown so far already.)

[lostkat]

balls, wrong thread!