British Liberty Pt. II

There is no concept of "unreasonable search" in Britain. For the most part, if a police officer doesn't like the look of you -- regardless of where you are or what you're doing -- that officer can demand to search you. The police don't even have to be looking for any particular thing; they can search you and then prosecute you for whatever they find.

Of course, they can (like police in any authoritarian country) make your life miserable even if you weren't doing or carrying anything illegal. Take a couple of minutes and read David Mery's personal account of his Terrorism Act arrest in a Tube station (he is not a terrorist). They arrested him because:

• they found my behaviour suspicious from direct observation and then from watching me on the CCTV system;
• I went into the station without looking at the police officers at the entrance or by the gates;
• two other men entered the station at about the same time as me;
• I am wearing a jacket "too warm for the season";
• I am carrying a bulky rucksack, and kept my rucksack with me at all times;
• I looked at people coming on the platform;
• I played with my phone and then took a paper from inside my jacket.

However, despite the fact that the police were able to search him and swiftly determine that he was not a suicide bomber, they persisted:

"Arrested for suspicious behaviour and public nuisance, I am driven to Walworth police station. I am given a form about my rights. ...I empty my pockets of the few things they had given me back at the tube station, and am searched again. My possessions are put in evidence bags. They take Polaroid photographs of me. A police officer fingerprints me and takes DNA swabs from each side of my mouth."

They then searched his home, taking lots of "evidence" with them. Note that in Britain, DNA samples taken from suspects who are mistakenly arrested, innocent, never charged, etc., are nonetheless retained in the national DNA database. If you are unlucky enough to fall under suspicion, or just meet a policeman who's a power-tripping bully (surely such a thing doesn't exist!) you have just permanently lost another piece of your privacy.

The bar for this kind of police behaviour is very low in Britain. We are living in a strange kind of hybrid here: a democratic surveillance/police state. The British people I've talked to about it don't see anything wrong with it; in fact it makes them feel safer. They inherently trust their government and police to always do the right thing, as if overreaching, coercion, corruption, bullying, and the potential for abuse didn't exist.

Naturally as a North American I culturally, fundamentally, don't share this instinct. The police and government in this country possess extensive knowledge of our lives, and the power to use it for whatever means they determine. Every day we read news stories in which they demonstrate their inclination to exercise this knowledge and power, right or wrong -- whether for the sake of catching evildoers (great and small), or just finding innovative new ways to tax and regulate us. And virtually no one protests.

I fear and predict that one day Britain wake up with a government they weren't expecting, and find out too late that resistance is futile. Remember, a nation of reasonable, rational people once democratically elected a man named Adolf.