I'd rather know more context. Was he suddenly apprehended for no reason, was he arrested and explicitly told he was being held under the prevention of terrorism act and was suspected of being a terrorist?
or do you think people who are concerned about intrusion of privacy are scaremongering?
Well consider this: My colleague who is an average white 30-something man, was arrested on his way to work this morning under the prevention of terrorism act. He was stopped, arrested, handcuffed, searched, tested for drugs, fingerprinted, swabbed for DNA and held in cells while being processed. He had nothing to hide and was released without charge. Still think it couldn't happen to you?
On the flip side, if someone looks very similar to a known terrorist and is seen either by the police, or CCTV, or whatever, wouldn't you expect the authorities to check that person out?
or do you think people who are concerned about intrusion of privacy are scaremongering?
Well consider this: My colleague who is an average white 30-something man, was arrested on his way to work this morning under the prevention of terrorism act. He was stopped, arrested, handcuffed, searched, tested for drugs, fingerprinted, swabbed for DNA and held in cells while being processed. He had nothing to hide and was released without charge. Still think it couldn't happen to you?
or do you think people who are concerned about intrusion of privacy are scaremongering?
Well consider this: My colleague who is an average white 30-something man, was arrested on his way to work this morning under the prevention of terrorism act. He was stopped, arrested, handcuffed, searched, tested for drugs, fingerprinted, swabbed for DNA and held in cells while being processed. He had nothing to hide and was released without charge. Still think it couldn't happen to you?
If I were your colleague I would contact David Davies (the MP, not the former head of the F.A.)
aowen hasn't replied yet ... I find this hard to believe when reading the list of all the things the police did - swabbed for DNA even? And where did this happen, in the U.K.? Need more info.
I mean, if the happening is as fictional as your location "Betelguse" (even though I thought that's a star and not a planet) and took place there then I'll have a large pinch of salt to go with that.
Racial profiling might be not uncommon in some societies though, but this is not what your case seems to be about.
The Terrorism Act has been so widely and vaguely drafted that Cambridge City Council have been using it to move on vagrants. That goes to show it can be used for pretty much anything the authorities don't like. Personally I think it is being abused - such laws always are. Wait until an MP or his son get arrested then you might see some action to change or abolish it.
I'd advise your friend to write to his MP detailing as much as possible and contact a solicitor. Writing to the local Police Authority and contacting the local media is also a good idea. Overzealous policemen fear nothing more than the sunlight of exposure creeping over them. Your local paper and radio stations are a good bet.
aowen hasn't replied yet ... I find this hard to believe when reading the list of all the things the police did - swabbed for DNA even? And where did this happen, in the U.K.? Need more info.
don't the police swab for DNA on everyone they bring in these days, just to make sure they haven't commited a crime they aren't aware about. i could be wrong.
can't understand their reasons for bringing him in though. usually if a stop and search reveals nothing they let the guy go. they must have had suspisions, or the guy was trespassing or something similar. like karingal said they police don't just pull random people off the streets to take their DNA. even in the interview they have to ask him questions, they can't just ask 'have you ever commited a crime in your life?'.
we do need more info, of course aowens freind may not be telling him the whole story.
I am concerned about civil liberties; like everything - it's a fine balance, and we're tipping the balance the wrong way at present.
We are rather safer now than we were when the IRA bombing campaign was at its height, yet we suddenly need all this extra legislation. We are told that the new legislation will only be used for serious crime or terrorism. But we were told this for the RIP Act too, which is now being used to check parents are sending their children to the right school - hardly serious, hardened criminals!
I'm not in the slightest afraid of terrorists. I'm a lot more concerned about how our own goverment acts as an amplifier with a gain of around 10,000 - and the almost irrational unthinking panicked reactions of officialdom to even the merest hint of a threat.
You also have to think about the future - all these new (and unneeded) laws that are being passed would be great armament to a potential future government who feels the need (for whatever reason) to become highly authoritarian. It's happened throughout history enough times that it's extremely foolish to allow a benign government to pass sweeping legislation because 'they would never use the laws like that', because it's only a matter of time before that legislation is used in novel ways (and not in a good way, either). We have already seen terrorism legislation in a small way being used (abused) to stifle dissent (the elderly Labour member who was held on terrorism charges for the time honoured practise of heckling during a conference). It's only a matter of time before any sweeping legislation is abused in this way, and in much more significant ways.
We now have thoughtcrime laws (one person has already gone to jail for writing poetry). Certain books are now illegal to possess. My mind contains information which is now illegal for me to write down in the UK! We already have a law that can put you behind bars for posessing materials that could be helpful to terrorists - which, by the way, is an excellent law for an authoritarian government to use to suppress dissent; a bread roll is material that can be helpful to terrorists...I dread to think what terrorism investigators would think if they saw my electronics work bench, then saw the bucket of sodium chlorate in my shed (which makes a good nonspecific weed killer for the patio which is why I have a bucket of it in the shed - but also when mixed with the right stuff can make a pretty good bang, or mixed with other stuff, a most excellent smokescreen). Just because this government doesn't intend to use such flimsy reasons to arrest someone under the Terrorism Act, it doesn't mean one in the future may not and this is an important point everyone seems to be forgetting. We are already getting situations where people are being harrassed by overzealous officials merely for enjoying the hobby of photography in a public place.
And of course at the same time we're also running full speed towards the nanny state. Don't get me started on that.
Was he running round the train station with wires poking out of his pants screaming 'jihad'? :wink:
ha ha. funny you should say that though, i was watching a prog about tourettes sufferes, and they were saying how the reason they swear is because the affliction makes them should out inappropriate things. for instance, in worse cases of it, they might see a woman and shout that they'd like to rape her. and of course after 9/11 if is difficult for them to travel by plane in case they start shouting out that they are terrorists.
ha ha. funny you should say that though, i was watching a prog about tourettes sufferes, and they were saying how the reason they swear is because the affliction makes them should out inappropriate things. for instance, in worse cases of it, they might see a woman and shout that they'd like to rape her. and of course after 9/11 if is difficult for them to travel by plane in case they start shouting out that they are terrorists.
i think it was keith allen who took them all to paris and they all started shouting that they had bombs, and they were terroists, while the producer kept telling them to shut up.
apparently though you will get arrested at an airport if you tell the checkout clerk that you don't have a bomb in your bag. which goes against logic.
edit - and what with the question 'did you pack the bag yourself'. what if you say 'my mum packed it, cos im totally lazy' will they search it? who is more likely to put a gun in there. do terrorist groups plant their bombs in other people cases? if so they'd do it in secret and you wouldn't know about it. fecking daft.
'er i didn't pack it, some foreign guy did it for me, quite helpful of him really considering he was a stranger'
i think it was keith allen who took them all to paris and they all started shouting that they had bombs, and they were terroists, while the producer kept telling them to shut up.
apparently though you will get arrested at an airport if you tell the checkout clerk that you don't have a bomb in your bag. which goes against logic.
edit - and what with the question 'did you pack the bag yourself'. what if you say 'my mum packed it, cos im totally lazy' will they search it? who is more likely to put a gun in there. do terrorist groups plant their bombs in other people cases? if so they'd do it in secret and you wouldn't know about it. fecking daft.
'er i didn't pack it, some foreign guy did it for me, quite helpful of him really considering he was a stranger'
Maybe the 'logic' is that if you blurt out that you don't have a bomb, then obviously your guilty conscience is trying to draw attention to you and your jihadi ways and therefore you are a terrorist or other evildoer or freedom hater or something.
Saying nothing apparently is also suggestive of guilt of something these days.
A friend of mine is a pilot who works out of Manchester. He told me that the security there are quite inept and will ask the police to walk thru the metal detectors. Then they asked the officer to empty his magazine. He was non-plussed and asked what he could have in the clip that was more dangerous than bullets?
A friend of mine is a pilot who works out of Manchester. He told me that the security there are quite inept and will ask the police to walk thru the metal detectors. Then they asked the officer to empty his magazine. He was non-plussed and asked what he could have in the clip that was more dangerous than bullets?
ha ha, i've heard that before. it was an armed police officer going into court, he told the security guard he was carrying a conceled handgun, but the security guy made him go through the metal detector anyway.
A theory to which I subscribe, for why modern democratic societies are becoming increasingly restrictive and paranoid, is that we've got too smart for our own good. Compared with most other members of the animal kingdom we're pretty crap at everything except thinking, which has proved enough to get us to the top of the food chain, so we now have no effective predator. We essentially need a predator to keep us on our toes, and not having one we have to invent threats (the conspiracy theories lobby) or vastly inflate their seriousness (the repressive authoritarian nanny state lobby).
One aspect that particularly peeves me is the "we have to save the planet" brigade. Now I believe that the planet got on very well without us before we appeared and will do so again after we're gone, and will cope with anything we might do in the meantime as well - although nature isn't particularly known for its sensitivity, and probably isn't averse to exterminating a few billion of us in order to make a point. What they really mean is "we have to save our own necks".
What might help effect a more realistic attitude to life would be another alien invasion - maybe more on the lines of Independence Day than Fear Agent, though - evil aliens who run MacOS 10 on their computers is always an advantage - or Vista, in which case we wouldn't have to bother defeating them.
or do you think people who are concerned about intrusion of privacy are scaremongering?
Well consider this: My colleague who is an average white 30-something man, was arrested on his way to work this morning under the prevention of terrorism act. He was stopped, arrested, handcuffed, searched, tested for drugs, fingerprinted, swabbed for DNA and held in cells while being processed. He had nothing to hide and was released without charge. Still think it couldn't happen to you?
If they had legitimate reason to do so then I think that's all perfectly OK. However, the "legitimate reason" would have to be very strong indeed, such as him being a known terrorist (though in that case why is he allowed to walk the streets?), or there is good reason to believe that he is invoved with serious crime. If he gave no such reason for concern, and wasn't in a secure area (a nuclear plant, for example) then that's terrible. Has he made a complaint?
I'm English, white, thirty-eight, scruffy and slightly rough looking, and I have been stopped and searched (well, my rucksack or holdall) several times at night, walking home from a friends' in the early hours (after a few hours of watching films or multiplayer console gaming) and I've never objected to that, but then a bloke walking around at two or four am, especially carrying a holdall (containing an XBox or PS2 and stuff, but the coppers don't know that) is slightly suspicious, so I don't blame the coppers. If they searched my bag and found nothing illegal, but then cuffed me and took me back to the cells and tested me for all sorts then I'd want a damn good explanation afterwards. If it turns out that I looked like a wanted criminal (especially a serious one like a terrorist or a rapist) or that the police had another good reason for their behaviour then fair enough, but otherwise I'd be very displeased and would certainly complain.
Incidentally, I haven't been stopped by the police around here for a few years now, the police presence has decreased in recent years, no doubt due to cuts and this area being to poor for it's residents to be considered important enough to deserve the deterent of police presence.
What a country...
Anyway, I have no objection to the police having my (and everyone else's) DNA and fingerprints on file, as it will certainly help both to solve and to prevent crimes. What I don't see the need for are identity cards - they can (and will) be forged/stolen/lost.
And until the courts start handing out real sentences, then it doesn't matter too much what the police do - the criminals know that they have very little to fear, and that decent people aren't allowed to defend themselves against the scum.
aowen hasn't replied yet ... I find this hard to believe when reading the list of all the things the police did - swabbed for DNA even? And where did this happen, in the U.K.? Need more info.
Maybe he's got arrested also (actually, Andrew has posted since this reply!)
I mean, if the happening is as fictional as your location "Betelguse" (even though I thought that's a star and not a planet) and took place there then I'll have a large pinch of salt to go with that.
Yeah, if the happening is as fictional as your location "Betelguse 5"...
Seriously, I agree with Winston - terrorism is overrated. The amount of serious injuries and deaths from Road Accidents etc.. is 1000's times more significant. In many ways, the media type play into terrorists hands by elevating their impact. The maths speaks for itself.
I think that we are heading into a Big Brother state (ha! back to Winston!).
CCTV in the UK is many times higher than in the rest of Europe and the US (apparently).
Well, the coppers still have done nothing. Makes you glad you pay your taxes, doesn't it? :(
Yep quite an entertaining thread for all the wrong reasons, I still remember the thud that hammer made when it knocked that little skanky skiprat down :lol:
....and I'm still worried about what extras I'm getting when I order junkfood :D
Comments
Doesn't this also rather put a dampener on things?
who would find it offensive?
On the flip side, if someone looks very similar to a known terrorist and is seen either by the police, or CCTV, or whatever, wouldn't you expect the authorities to check that person out?
For police carrying out their enquiries? You can't avoid innocent people getting questioned and investigated before being cleared.
hmmm not sure why, in fact i thought my post was in support of the police, but if you think that way, okay dokey.
If I were your colleague I would contact David Davies (the MP, not the former head of the F.A.)
Whoops, that'll teach me to just scan a post rather than reading it properly.
phew, thanks, i kept re-reading it myself, and started to worry i had written something bad. :wink:
I mean, if the happening is as fictional as your location "Betelguse" (even though I thought that's a star and not a planet) and took place there then I'll have a large pinch of salt to go with that.
Racial profiling might be not uncommon in some societies though, but this is not what your case seems to be about.
I'd advise your friend to write to his MP detailing as much as possible and contact a solicitor. Writing to the local Police Authority and contacting the local media is also a good idea. Overzealous policemen fear nothing more than the sunlight of exposure creeping over them. Your local paper and radio stations are a good bet.
don't the police swab for DNA on everyone they bring in these days, just to make sure they haven't commited a crime they aren't aware about. i could be wrong.
can't understand their reasons for bringing him in though. usually if a stop and search reveals nothing they let the guy go. they must have had suspisions, or the guy was trespassing or something similar. like karingal said they police don't just pull random people off the streets to take their DNA. even in the interview they have to ask him questions, they can't just ask 'have you ever commited a crime in your life?'.
we do need more info, of course aowens freind may not be telling him the whole story.
Was he running round the train station with wires poking out of his pants screaming 'jihad'? :wink:
We are rather safer now than we were when the IRA bombing campaign was at its height, yet we suddenly need all this extra legislation. We are told that the new legislation will only be used for serious crime or terrorism. But we were told this for the RIP Act too, which is now being used to check parents are sending their children to the right school - hardly serious, hardened criminals!
I'm not in the slightest afraid of terrorists. I'm a lot more concerned about how our own goverment acts as an amplifier with a gain of around 10,000 - and the almost irrational unthinking panicked reactions of officialdom to even the merest hint of a threat.
You also have to think about the future - all these new (and unneeded) laws that are being passed would be great armament to a potential future government who feels the need (for whatever reason) to become highly authoritarian. It's happened throughout history enough times that it's extremely foolish to allow a benign government to pass sweeping legislation because 'they would never use the laws like that', because it's only a matter of time before that legislation is used in novel ways (and not in a good way, either). We have already seen terrorism legislation in a small way being used (abused) to stifle dissent (the elderly Labour member who was held on terrorism charges for the time honoured practise of heckling during a conference). It's only a matter of time before any sweeping legislation is abused in this way, and in much more significant ways.
We now have thoughtcrime laws (one person has already gone to jail for writing poetry). Certain books are now illegal to possess. My mind contains information which is now illegal for me to write down in the UK! We already have a law that can put you behind bars for posessing materials that could be helpful to terrorists - which, by the way, is an excellent law for an authoritarian government to use to suppress dissent; a bread roll is material that can be helpful to terrorists...I dread to think what terrorism investigators would think if they saw my electronics work bench, then saw the bucket of sodium chlorate in my shed (which makes a good nonspecific weed killer for the patio which is why I have a bucket of it in the shed - but also when mixed with the right stuff can make a pretty good bang, or mixed with other stuff, a most excellent smokescreen). Just because this government doesn't intend to use such flimsy reasons to arrest someone under the Terrorism Act, it doesn't mean one in the future may not and this is an important point everyone seems to be forgetting. We are already getting situations where people are being harrassed by overzealous officials merely for enjoying the hobby of photography in a public place.
And of course at the same time we're also running full speed towards the nanny state. Don't get me started on that.
ha ha. funny you should say that though, i was watching a prog about tourettes sufferes, and they were saying how the reason they swear is because the affliction makes them should out inappropriate things. for instance, in worse cases of it, they might see a woman and shout that they'd like to rape her. and of course after 9/11 if is difficult for them to travel by plane in case they start shouting out that they are terrorists.
I probably shouldn't find that funny but :lol:
Was he questioned?
yeah you shouldn't. :-D
i think it was keith allen who took them all to paris and they all started shouting that they had bombs, and they were terroists, while the producer kept telling them to shut up.
apparently though you will get arrested at an airport if you tell the checkout clerk that you don't have a bomb in your bag. which goes against logic.
edit - and what with the question 'did you pack the bag yourself'. what if you say 'my mum packed it, cos im totally lazy' will they search it? who is more likely to put a gun in there. do terrorist groups plant their bombs in other people cases? if so they'd do it in secret and you wouldn't know about it. fecking daft.
'er i didn't pack it, some foreign guy did it for me, quite helpful of him really considering he was a stranger'
Maybe the 'logic' is that if you blurt out that you don't have a bomb, then obviously your guilty conscience is trying to draw attention to you and your jihadi ways and therefore you are a terrorist or other evildoer or freedom hater or something.
Saying nothing apparently is also suggestive of guilt of something these days.
A friend of mine is a pilot who works out of Manchester. He told me that the security there are quite inept and will ask the police to walk thru the metal detectors. Then they asked the officer to empty his magazine. He was non-plussed and asked what he could have in the clip that was more dangerous than bullets?
ha ha, i've heard that before. it was an armed police officer going into court, he told the security guard he was carrying a conceled handgun, but the security guy made him go through the metal detector anyway.
One aspect that particularly peeves me is the "we have to save the planet" brigade. Now I believe that the planet got on very well without us before we appeared and will do so again after we're gone, and will cope with anything we might do in the meantime as well - although nature isn't particularly known for its sensitivity, and probably isn't averse to exterminating a few billion of us in order to make a point. What they really mean is "we have to save our own necks".
What might help effect a more realistic attitude to life would be another alien invasion - maybe more on the lines of Independence Day than Fear Agent, though - evil aliens who run MacOS 10 on their computers is always an advantage - or Vista, in which case we wouldn't have to bother defeating them.
If they had legitimate reason to do so then I think that's all perfectly OK. However, the "legitimate reason" would have to be very strong indeed, such as him being a known terrorist (though in that case why is he allowed to walk the streets?), or there is good reason to believe that he is invoved with serious crime. If he gave no such reason for concern, and wasn't in a secure area (a nuclear plant, for example) then that's terrible. Has he made a complaint?
I'm English, white, thirty-eight, scruffy and slightly rough looking, and I have been stopped and searched (well, my rucksack or holdall) several times at night, walking home from a friends' in the early hours (after a few hours of watching films or multiplayer console gaming) and I've never objected to that, but then a bloke walking around at two or four am, especially carrying a holdall (containing an XBox or PS2 and stuff, but the coppers don't know that) is slightly suspicious, so I don't blame the coppers. If they searched my bag and found nothing illegal, but then cuffed me and took me back to the cells and tested me for all sorts then I'd want a damn good explanation afterwards. If it turns out that I looked like a wanted criminal (especially a serious one like a terrorist or a rapist) or that the police had another good reason for their behaviour then fair enough, but otherwise I'd be very displeased and would certainly complain.
Incidentally, I haven't been stopped by the police around here for a few years now, the police presence has decreased in recent years, no doubt due to cuts and this area being to poor for it's residents to be considered important enough to deserve the deterent of police presence.
What a country...
Anyway, I have no objection to the police having my (and everyone else's) DNA and fingerprints on file, as it will certainly help both to solve and to prevent crimes. What I don't see the need for are identity cards - they can (and will) be forged/stolen/lost.
And until the courts start handing out real sentences, then it doesn't matter too much what the police do - the criminals know that they have very little to fear, and that decent people aren't allowed to defend themselves against the scum.
Incidentally, remember my thread at:
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=19581&highlight=bikes
Well, the coppers still have done nothing. Makes you glad you pay your taxes, doesn't it? :(
Maybe he's got arrested also (actually, Andrew has posted since this reply!)
Yeah, if the happening is as fictional as your location "Betelguse 5"...
Seriously, I agree with Winston - terrorism is overrated. The amount of serious injuries and deaths from Road Accidents etc.. is 1000's times more significant. In many ways, the media type play into terrorists hands by elevating their impact. The maths speaks for itself.
I think that we are heading into a Big Brother state (ha! back to Winston!).
CCTV in the UK is many times higher than in the rest of Europe and the US (apparently).
Yep quite an entertaining thread for all the wrong reasons, I still remember the thud that hammer made when it knocked that little skanky skiprat down :lol:
....and I'm still worried about what extras I'm getting when I order junkfood :D