U.K. changes terrorist surveillance procedures

Home Secretary Theresa May today announced changes to the U.K.“control orders” which extend police powers in the cases of potential terrorist activity. May said the new regime - known as T-Pims (Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures) - would be more “focused and flexible”. Control orders place terrorism suspects under close surveillance similar to house arrest,and critics maintain there is effectively no change at all, other than a new label.

According to the BBC, among the changes the Home Office has adopted:

• The restrictions will be limited to two years, but may be extended if there is new information that the subject still poses a threat
• A requirement for overnight residence of eight to ten hours, verified by electronic tag, reduced from sixteen hours
• There will be limited restrictions on communications including the use of the Internet, but controlees will be able to use it at home as long as they provide authorities with their password.
• Additionally, the power of police to hold a suspect without charge for twenty-eight days has been reduced and the time limit will now be fourteen days.

The announced changes are the result of a review of procedures launched by the Home Office in July 2010, with the promise it would be rapid and would be aimed at reconciling counter-terrorism powers with civil liberties.

Lord MacDonald, a former director of public prosecutions, said that “traditional ideals” had been sacrificed in the push against terrorism, and a balance had to be drawn between security and freedom.

“It’s always been of critical importance that we don’t, in trying to respond to these threats, give up the things that the terrorists would like to take from us. “In other words we don’t want to give up the battle without a shot being fired. We want to protect our constitution, we need to protect our way of life, and we need to get this balance right, and I think that is what the review has been trying to achieve.”

Critics had maintained that the old regime, will remain in effect until December 2011, in reality ran counter to British ideals.

Responding to the home secretary’s statement in the Commons, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the review had been” chaotic”, maintaining that it had been “delayed, confused, riven by leaks and political horse-trading.”

“It is a review with some serious gaps, which raises serious questions about security and resources and the public and the people who work to keep us safe deserve better than this.”

Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty, said the government had “bottled it”.

“Spin and semantics aside, control orders are retained and rebranded, if in a slightly lower-fat form,” she said.

“As before, the innocent may be punished without a fair hearing and the guilty will escape the full force of criminal law.”

Since the 9/11 attacks on the United States, nations around the world have rushed to pass and enforce anti-terror laws. In many cases, terror attacks have proven to provide cover for oppressive regimes to pursue their own agenda in a more internationally acceptable environment.

Reporting in the Sofia Echo, David Dadge reports on the sentence imposed on Irfan Aktan, a Turkish journalist, for an article he wrote in October 2009. The journalist was sentenced on 4 June to a year and three months in prison, and a fine of 16,000 Turkish lira was imposed on Merve Erol, the editor of Express, the fortnightly magazine that published the article. The two journalists were found guilty of dispersing propaganda relating to a terrorist organization, under Article 7 of the Turkish anti-terror law.

As a result of the perceived abuses of these laws, most democracies are revisiting the legislation, and in many cases, are scaling back the reach of security and surveillance powers those laws provided, the main argument being that the impingement of individual liberty be reduced. The authoritarian governments, however, seem to find such laws largely adequate.