Those little perks of democracy

Anyone who visits here once in a while will know that I write a lot of posts about British liberty and our surveillance society. I write about the many different ways our government tracks and spies on us. I also complain a lot about the nearly limitless powers that the British police ask for, and most often get. The nastiest tools at their disposal come from the various incarnations of the Terrorism Act (2000, 2001, 2005, 2006). Under these acts, for example, they've done away with the idea of "unreasonable search". Here's a little lesson on why that's a bad idea:

Armed police will use anti-terrorism powers to "deal robustly" with climate change protesters at Heathrow next week, as confrontations threaten to bring major delays to the already overstretched airport. The police have been told to use stop and search powers against the protesters...

So here is an example of the police having a hammer called the Terrorism Act, but since a protest at Heathrow is inconvenient during "its busiest week of the year", the protesters look like a nail. The police are threatening, in advance, to use the Terrorism Act to intimidate lawful protesters. These laws give the police the right to stop-and-search people without justification (i.e. reasonable suspicion that the person is a terrorist), among other powers.

The police aren't making any serious effort to argue that the protesters are terrorists -- just that they're an annoyance, and so the police are going to use the tools at their disposal.

The Guardian has established that at least two climate change campaigners have been arrested recently at Heathrow by officers using terrorism powers. Cristina Fraser, a student, was stopped when cycling near the airport with a friend and then charged under section 58 of the Terrorism Act. This makes it an offence to make a record of something that could be used in an act of terrorism.

"I was arrested and held in a police cell for 30 hours. I was terrified. No one knew where I was. They knew I was not a terrorist," she said.

Ms Fraser, a first-year London university anthropology student, has been on aviation demonstrations with the Plane Stupid campaign group, but claims she was carrying nothing at all. The police later recharged her with conspiring to cause a public nuisance.

Ah, "public nuisance", the catch-all charge for any person who irritates a policeman. Does "conspiring to cause a public nuisance" mean it's also illegal to seem like you're thinking of being irritating?

Weren't we told that these powers were meant for stopping terrorists? As opposed to climate protesters? We bought it. In retrospect it seems like a bad idea to have given the police unlimited power to arbitrarily stop-and-search people on the streets, but there's nothing we can do about it now.

But for the police it's never enough. They want equivalent stop-and-fingerprint, and stop-and-DNA-test, and the power to hold 'terrorism' suspects indefinitely without charge. We're assured they would never think of abusing these powers. So are we going to grant them? Are we going to buy it yet again, in the face of evidence to the contrary?

I bet we will. Furthermore I bet it won't be long before they're using these new powers to deal with minor nuisances (that means you and me). Put down that placard and behave yourself, if you know what's good for you.