Magna Carta Plus News

The Manchester Evening News reported:

Officers stationed on key routes into the city have been instantly checking registration plates of vehicles against a string of national databases. Known criminals have been intercepted and ordered to turn around.

On Wednesday evening alone, 50 vehicles were turned away from Manchester by officers determined to keep the streets trouble-free.

Chief Constable Peter Fahy told the M.E.N: “We were instructing anyone with a previous conviction that they had to leave the city. Quite a number of them had serious previous convictions.”

The policy will be repeated if trouble flares again.

Numerous points and questions can be raised over this:

• What legal power do police have to tell someone to leave a city when there’s no evidence they are doing anything illegal or intend to do so?
• Did they do this for any person with any conviction? Trivial or otherwise? Violent or otherwise? Spent or otherwise?
• Surely anyone intent on riot would simply have gone to another venue, got a friend to give them a lift or returned in a different vehicle?
• What about drivers using their spouse’s, parent’s or relative’s car? Would they have been turned away due to the owner of the car having a decade old conviction for petty theft?
• Having a previous conviction does not mean one is intent on riot.
• What if someoe turned away actually lived in the city and was trying to get home? What do the police expect them to do?

[Hat tip: Anna Racoon via abelard]

See House of Commons Hansard Debates for 17 Mar 2011 (pt 0001):

John Hemming: …I will now look in more detail at Andrew France’s case. I have some of the documentation with me, including a county court order-for proceedings that have now completely ended, so it is a public document, and there is no issue of privilege. The document is there in the courts. In the recitals, it states:

“upon the first and second Respondents agreeing that they will make no further disclosure in respect of this matter to any third party, including in particular the media and John Hemmings MP.”

It is somewhat surprising that I am such a threat to the system that so much effort will go into stopping one of my constituents speaking to me. He was wrongly imprisoned on a made-up allegation of rape, so he went through a serious process. He won his criminal appeal but he complained about a social worker in the process, so the authorities decided to start proceedings in the family courts. Luckily, an excellent judge junked it in the bin, because it was transparently such nonsense, and everything ran smoothly for the family. However, my constituent was under no illusion that had he not agreed to those recitals in the court order, the council would have taken action-he was told-which would have been to apply for a care order taking his four-year-old daughter into care.

Mr Bacon: For the benefit of the House, can my hon. Friend clarify, in case anyone did not notice? Is he saying that a court order was made prohibiting a constituent from talking to him as a Member of Parliament?

John Hemming: Exactly.

Note: The family courts in England and Wales operate largely in secret, though some inroads have been made in recent years allowing some reporting to occur.

Glenn Greenwald writes:

At this point, I didn’t believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record. In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlaki’s father asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration late last night, according to The Washington Post, filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims. That’s not surprising: both the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly insisted that their secret conduct is legal but nonetheless urge courts not to even rule on its legality. But what’s most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is “state secrets”: in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are “state secrets,” and thus no court may adjudicate their legality.

The executive power to secretly execute citizens without any judicial oversight is surely the power of a tyranny rather than a constitutional republic. There would be no way of holding the POTUS accountable for his exercising of such power. It negates the rule of law.

The Telegraph reports:

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, will today announce she plans to sign up to the so-called European Investigation Order (EIO), The Daily Telegraph understands.

It comes despite concerns by fair trial campaigners and has angered backbench Tories.

It raises the prospect of personal details of individuals being passed on without their knowledge in the most minor of cases, such as leaving a restaurant without paying.

Foreign police officers would also be able to come to the UK and work alongside police here in investigating individuals, although they would not have any powers of arrest.

The EIO is designed to help law enforcement agencies in EU states share information and be more effective in combating cross border crime.

But Fair Trials International (FTI) said it could result in disproportionate requests, such as demands for the DNA of plane loads of British holidaymakers following a murder in a resort they had visited.

A report by FTI said: “This could include requests to interview suspects or witnesses or obtain information in real time, by intercepting and monitoring telephone or email communications or by monitoring activity in bank accounts.

“States could also be required to obtain or analyse DNA samples or fingerprints and send the information to the issuing state within fixed deadlines.”

Police would not be able to argue that the request or alleged offence being investigated is disproportionate.

Previous examples of minor criminal offences already pursued around Europe include a carpenter who fitted wardrobe doors and then removed them when the client refused to pay him and the Polish authorities requesting the extradition of a suspect for theft of a dessert.

Big Brother Watch have also covered this issue. Note that there will be no judicial oversight and such surveillance may be performed for “crimes” which are not recognised in Britain.

…in case it gets removed by the police and they demand £150 for its return.

If I tried to do what the police did here, it’d be regarded as theft now matter how insecure the car was. Which begs the question: Why should it not be regarded as theft when the police do it?

Our Kingdom have written an excellent overview of the use of and legal battles over the stop and search powers from Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

Tory Peer, Lord Selsdon, has launched a bill to limit the right of officials to enter homes. See my personal blog for more details.

Is Britain’s war on photography going to ease? The Independent reports:

Police forces across the country have been warned to stop using anti-terror laws to question and search innocent photographers after The Independent forced senior officers to admit that the controversial legislation is being widely misused.

The strongly worded warning was circulated by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) last night. In an email sent to the chief constables of England and Wales’s 43 police forces, officers were advised that Section 44 powers should not be used unnecessarily against photographers. The message says: “Officers and community support officers are reminded that we should not be stopping and searching people for taking photos. Unnecessarily restricting photography, whether from the casual tourist or professional, is unacceptable.”

Hat Tip: Samizdata

Britain’s slide into total surveillance will take another step soon as the Telegraph reports:

All telecoms companies and internet service providers will be required by law to keep a record of every customer’s personal communications, showing who they are contacting, when, where and which websites they are visiting.

Despite widespread opposition over Britain’s growing surveillance society, 653 public bodies will be given access to the confidential information, including police, local councils, the Financial Services Authority, the Ambulance Service, fire authorities and even prison governors.

They will not require the permission of a judge or a magistrate to access the information, but simply the authorisation of a senior police officer or the equivalent of a deputy head of department at a local authority.

Ministers had originally wanted to store the information on a massive Government-run database, but chose not to because of privacy concerns.

However the Government announced yesterday it was pressing ahead with privately-held “Big Brother” databases which opposition leaders said amount to “state-spying” and a form of “covert surveillance” on the public.

It is doing so despite its own consultation showing there is little public support for the plans.

Yet again, the government sets up a scheme of mass indiscriminate surveillance, yet again access to the information is given to numerous public bodies, with officials able to use them on their own authority and without any need for a warrant.

The Stasi would be proud of this sort of thing. Britain is becoming increasingly like a hi-tech version of East Germany.

The Register report that the number of local council officials who can authorise use of surveillance powers under RIPA is set to be cut:

The number of local officials who can authorise access to communications records and order surveillance operations will be cut under changes to snooping regulations announced today.

The Home Office’s move follows repeated controversy over the use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) by local authorities probing trivial trangressions such as littering and people putting their bins out on the wrong day.

Only director-level officials will now be able to authorise use of RIPA powers, Alan Johnson said.

Whilst this may reduce some of the worst excesses and is a small step in the right direction, it fails to address the fundamental problem lying behind such powers, namely that officials are able to use them under their own authority without adequate oversight and there is no effective way of holding them accountable for the use of these powers. The use of these powers should require officials to obtain a warrant from a judge, where they must persuade the judge that the use of surveillance is both necessary and proportionate and must explain what evidence of criminal activity they expect to uncover. Parliament must also be able to exercise effective scrutiny, both via an annual report but also a committee that meets regularly to over see the system. More radically, I wonder whether people should be informed of the surveillance done on them, once the investigations are safely over, for how else is one to discover that such powers are being abused?