Talk about taking serious fucking liberties!

[michael]

As I have learnt from watching The Wire, the Baddies will avoid detection by the authorities by using "burner" email addresses, probably at internet cafes, which will make them almost impossible to monitor.

Perhaps I could act as a consultant on this particular project.

[Gazza's Fat Mate]

As I have learnt from watching The Wire, the Baddies will avoid detection by the authorities by using "burner" email addresses, probably at internet cafes, which will make them almost impossible to monitor.

it's not real it's called a tv program.

[Anteater]

Bit more of 'big bruv' bedding down.....not that 'we' will do anything about it !

[Barry Scott]

it's not real it's called a tv program.

[Lumps]

I don't think I've ever agreed with every word of a post by GFM before.

I'm slightly concerned.

[Phil_S]

The problem is not so much the passing of the laws, but the way they are then used for all sorts of other reasons. I have a fundamental believe that career politicians are bad for the country. They leve in their own little world, have no experience of life & ditch any principles they may have in order to stay in power.
It seems to me that they pass laws now for the sake of it, & don't spend the time making sure that the laws they pass are good laws, even then most are now super ceeded by Eupropen laws made up by Quangos & imposed by faceless buearocrats.

[Lumps]

As for BR's rant, it pushes all the buttons these fucking cunts that want to run every aspect of our lives always push.

"We've got to be able to read every e-mail that ever gets sent 'cause of paedo's and terrorists"
"We've got to have the freedom to jail people without charge for up to 3 months to protect our freedom from terrorists"

It's always the same fucking hate figures and scare stories.

And the objections to the frankly facile "if you've nothing to hide you've nothing to fear" argument are fucking obvious. As GFM and Ironside have both posted (fuck I never expected to be typing that) the intentions of this government may be perfectly benign, but once powers are on the statute books its really fucking hard to get them off again, and future governments might not be as "liberal". (God help us all if we end up with a more authoritarian bunch than this load of cunts mind).

Remember three things:

1) The prevention of terrorism act introduced first in 1973 had the words (temporary provisions) in parenthesis in the title and thirty five years later those powers have if anything been extended
2) The number of arrests under the prevention of terrorism act, in all it's incarnations since 1973 absolutely dwarfs the number of people that have actually gone on to be charged with any terrorist offences. It's at a ratio of 10:1 or greater. That's not because they've failed to charge a whole load of terrorists, but because the act has been used to arrest and hold a range of people that the state consider to be trouble that have no connection whatsoever with what you might consider terrorism.
3) What's the most high profile use of the financial powers in the 2001 Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act that you can remember? Don't know? Well it was used to freeze the estimated £4 billion of British financial assets in Landsbanki the parent bank of Icesave the Icelandic bank that went tit's up late last year taking whole load of Brit savings with it. Any hint of terrorism there? Any hint of judicial control of the use of an act specifically designed for anti-terror purposes for another purpose altogether? Was there fuck.

So what the hell makes anyone think that legislation introduced now which we're told is for a specific purpose and aimed at targeted individuals won't at some stage in the future get used against the rest of us?

As we discussed a week or so ago in another thread Hitler came to power in Germany on the basis of temporary emergency legislation brought in to counter "a terrorist threat". Within the year the powers he was granted to be used against pretty fictional "communist revolutionary terrorists" (in an era when Stalin had very little interest in exporting socialism overseas) had been turned on all of the communist party, then the socialist party, then trade union activists, before they went on to anyone that didn't conform to the party's ideal, the disabled, the jews, the homosexuals, the romanies.

So, having found myself on the same side as Ironside, GFM and David Davies in a political debate, I might as well go the whole hog and close with a quote from an 18th century Whig, Edmund Burke

"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts"

Fuck I'm agreeing with the founder of modern conservatism. What the hell's next.

[Ironside]

Very well said Lumpy.

[donkey]

A couple of quotes by Thomas Jefferson:

Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

A quote from a mates t-shirt: Guy Fawkes - the only man to enter parliament with honest intentions.

Finally, if I may, a long quote from Proudhoun:

To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.

To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.

When Saturday Comes has an interesting piece on the Police's use of Section 27 of the 2006 Violent Crime Reduction Act to detain football fans, and escort them half way across the country.

Be careful just what liberties you're prepared to give up, once gone, you don't get them back.