Goodbye to freedom in the UK (part 2)

Holy crap - I can't believe they're even considering this! A draft anti-terror bill for UK law. Key points, again from The Guardian.

"New offence of publishing, possessing or disseminating publications that indirectly incite terrorist acts or are likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing a terrorist act"

So if they don't like the look of you (see previous post) they could arrest you under this provision for selling a map to the wrong guy? Obviously you could argue that this is an absurd interpretation, but that's not the point. It makes this possible and spreads out the culpability to includes not just the guy who actually plans carries out the terrorist act but pretty much anyone associated with him. It's not my fucking fault if I give my college mate a photo of a tube station and he then marks potential bomb positions on it, but the quote above would make me culpable in his terrorist act.

Outrageous!

Of course, in any sane world, I wouldn't be prosecuted for this but we're not living in a sane world any more, are we? We're living in a world where you can be arrested for acting a bit funny.

It gets better though:

"New power to extend the maximum period of detention without trial from 14 days to three months. This must be approved by a judge on a weekly basis."

Oh, judge approval makes it all okay, does it? Considering the whole point of increasing the period of dentention without trial is "because the police and security services needed longer than the present 14 days because of the difficulty of obtaining forensic evidence" Is it just me or does that say that they want the power to detain people for longer when there's no evidence? If it's on the basis of a judge's opinion, surely they'd need to present compelling evidence to the judge. And if there's compelling evidence, they should charge them. You can't start on the presumption of guilt without justification, but that's exactly what they're trying to do.

Also see Polly Toynbee's comment, "Why was the IRA less of a threat than Islamist bombers?" Good question.