Don't worry, we're still here - watching, learning, taking stock. Things are a bit quiet at the moment due to external pressures, so until we get our teeth back into it, here's an interesting comment from Martin Kettle in today's Guardian, regarding the level of discussion surrounding the terrorism bill.
Also some interesting points currently being made on this issue on Any Questions - namely that the extension in detention to 3 months by the bill is being driven (supposedly) by the sheer amount of data the Police have to go through - CCTV footage, hard drives, links to chase up, et al. Let us ask ourselves if we are making ourselves safer through the increase of surveillance technology, or if we're further and further becoming trapped by our dependence on this culture of reliance on monitoring information. Who needs terrorism to disrupt lives when we've constructed the cage ourselves?
1 comment:
The most controversial bit of the Terrorism Bill 2005 is not necessarily the attempt to instigate a regime of 3 months detention without trial.
How about the potential life sentence for mere "prepartion of acts of terrorism" which, of themselves, if they are actually carried out, might only attact a 2 or 7 or 10 years prison sentence ? "Prepartion" is deliberately vague and undefined.
Martin Kettle's final comments in his article make me wonder if he has actually bothered to read the Bill in full, rather then the PR spin about it.
"the danger is increased every time a liberal lazily parrots the malevolent claim that the government's imperfect but serious bill is far more wide-ranging than it actually is."
I do not consider myself to be a "liberal" but it is utter rubbish to claim that this Bill does not attempt to grab even more infinite powers by not properly defining "anything" which might be "indirectly" supportive of terrorism, "anywhere" in the UK or overseas.
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