$illiberal_policy ‘could have stopped killers’

For all values of $illiberal_policy - in this case it was “Email spying”. Of course, there is no evidence yet that the bomber(s) used email to plot their crimes, and if they did, that the authorities could have found the relevant information in time, or that they would have used such tools as encryption, anonymisation etc. to render such expensive and time-consuming surveillance entirely useless. For all we know this plan was knocked up on the back of a couple of envelopes; the scary thing about the small-scale bombing of soft targets with home-made explosives is (just like the David Copeland bombings ten years ago) that the technology and organisation involved is not very taxing - the demand is will, rather than the means.

Now that this cat has jumped out of the bag, the same words will inevitably be spoken about internment without trial, ID cards, curbs on public protest, restriction of freedom of speech etc., etc in the coming weeks. To be fair, just after the bombing Charles Clarke, in a precious moment of tact and sanity which I doubt would have come from his predecessor, had said ID cards would not have prevented the attack, but this admission is only the tip of a much bigger iceberg: the powers-that-be have yet to realise that making more and more things either illegal or compulsory to register does very little good in actually protecting us.

The stupidest “security” law laid down recently has been the compulsory registration of protests within a kilometre of Parliament. Reversing this fallacious policy should be a priority, because if there’s any blatantly obvious conclusion that should be drawn from the attack, it is that the exclusion zone does nothing, absolutely nothing to enhance our security. Perhaps this wasn’t made clear enough at the time of the Bill was being debated, but by far the majority of terrorist attacks in recent history, from the World Trade Center (both in 1993 and 2001), to Bali, Madrid, buses and cafes in Israel, the theatre in Moscow, the many public areas and civil buildings in Iraq, are never on overtly political targets - they’re already well-protected and difficult to infiltrate. It is nearly always the ’soft’ targets that are attacked, nearly always the slaugher is of defenceless people. The buses and trains in London are another sorry addition to that list.

The protests restriction should be dropped as soon as possible. Rather than sign of weakness, it is a sign of strength, a sign that the liberties we’re so lucky to have will not be destroyed by them (for all values of ‘them’). Perhaps it can be done in time for the proposed solidarity march.

And maybe at the same time, they’ll be given a guard of honour by a squadron of airborne pigs…

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 10th, 2005 at 12:02:41 and is filed under General.