UK: 7/7 spurred tough anti-terror measures some say went too far

[webfact]

7/7 spurred tough anti-terror measures some say went too far
By JILL LAWLESS

LONDON (AP) — After four home-grown suicide bombers killed 52 London commuters on July 7, 2005, Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed that Britain would stop at nothing to defeat terrorism. "Let no one be in any doubt," he said. "The rules of the game are changing."

Since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States four years earlier, Britain had made its anti-terrorism powers among the toughest in the Western world. Now they became tougher still.

"What 7/7 did was it made people realize that the threat was internal as well as external," said David Anderson, Britain's official reviewer of terrorism legislation.

After 2005, police were given power to hold terrorism suspects for four weeks without charge, or to place them under a 16-hour-a-day curfew. It became a crime not just to commit or plan for terrorism but to glorify terrorist acts. The government moved to deport extremist preachers who had made their home in Britain. The ability of intelligence agencies to scoop up Internet users' electronic data expanded vastly, and British spies began collecting information on their own citizens on a hitherto unseen scale.

Civil libertarians sensed the spread of a Big Brother state, and waged legal and political battles that managed to water down or reverse some of the measures. But a decade later, Britons are more watched than ever. Last month's gun attack on tourists in Tunisia, which killed 30 Britons, shows the terrorist threat has not gone away, and could spur a new round of counter-terror measures.

"That's always the fear, of knee-jerk reactions, the need to be seen to be doing something even if what you are doing is reputationally damaging," said Rachel Robinson, a policy officer at human rights group Liberty. "That's what we've seen time and time again."

The July 2005 bombings on three subway trains and a bus — the deadliest attack on British soil since World War II — were carried out by young Britons inspired by al-Qaida.

In a bid to stop more plots, Blair's government expanded the definition of a terrorist offense and introduced new powers to detain terror suspects.

The 2006 Terrorism Act allowed terror suspects to be held for 28 days without charge. Blair had argued that the complexity of terror plots meant the limit should be 90 days, but lawmakers defeated him. They also rejected a bid two years later for 42-day detention.

Suspects who could not be charged — often because the evidence against them was secret — could be held under control orders, a form of house arrest that meant they could be electronically tagged, kept under curfew for up to 16 hours per day and barred from using telephones or the Internet.

Rights groups loudly opposed the measures, and when a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition took power in 2010, it said the previous Labour administrations had "abused and eroded fundamental human freedoms."

Under the coalition, pre-charge detention was cut to 14 days. Control orders gave way to a less-restrictive replacement. Government curbed the power of police officers to stop and search people without suspicion.

But one aspect of counterterrorism just kept expanding — surveillance, both in the streets and online.

In 2005, Britain already had as many as 4 million surveillance cameras, whose use as a crime-fighting tool had been encouraged by authorities since the 1990s. Tony Porter, Britain's surveillance camera commissioner, says the number today could be 6 million.

"The overwhelming view from our European colleagues is that the U.K. is the European — if not the world — capital of surveillance," said Porter, a former counterterrorism police officer charged with ensuring responsible use of the country's publicly operated cameras.

Porter says the cameras have broad public support. But he worries the public is ill-informed about "the size, scope and scale" of the camera network, and how fast the technology is changing. Police are currently testing facial-recognition software that can identify suspects through family resemblances.

"Part of my role has been to work with police forces, local communities ... just to start that debate, so we don't latently accept surveillance without truly understanding what it does," Porter said. "We need to have a society where surveillance cameras are there to support communities, not spy on them."

Unlike visible security cameras, online surveillance was largely hidden from the public until former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked details about the activities of American spies and their allies.

British politicians and spies have been at the forefront of electronic data-gathering. In the months after the 7/7 attacks, Britain helped pass a European Union directive requiring telecoms companies to retain data for up to two years. Last year, it was struck down by the European Court of Justice.

The British government attempted to introduce the Communications Data Bill — dubbed the Snoopers' Charter by opponents — to force British telecommunications providers to retain for a year records of all phone and email traffic and website visits. It was eventually shelved amid opposition from Liberal Democrat lawmakers.

Court rulings have also curbed some British surveillance activities. But public debate about the civil liberties implications of snooping has been more muted here than in the U.S. or some other European countries.

Anderson said in Britain, "there is a relatively high degree of trust in the state and in its intelligence agencies," and the word spies often evokes benign images of James Bond or Bletchley Park code-breakers.

There have been fewer leaks to expose the covert activities of Britain's MI5 and MI6 than there have been about the CIA — though whether that is the result of luck, deference or genuine high standards is debatable.

Britons also know that the threat of terrorism is real, and there is evidence to suggest cyber-spying works. In a report released last month, Anderson said spies' use of bulk communications data helped foil plots including an al-Qaida plan to have sleeper cells launch waves of attacks in several European countries.

The attack in Tunisia has brought more promises of swift action. Prime Minister David Cameron vowed to "step up our own efforts to support our agencies in tracking vital online communications." His Conservative government, elected in May, plans to introduce a new, more limited, version of the Communications Data Bill.

Cameron has also introduced a law requiring schools and other public institutions to identify and tackle signs of radicalization — a step opponents claim seeks to turn teachers into spies.

Anderson thinks some of the measures brought in since 7/7 have been effective, and some have been excessive.

His report said "a comprehensive and comprehensible new law should be drafted from scratch ... providing for clear limits and safeguards on any intrusive power that it may be necessary for public authorities to use."

He recommended a judge, rather than a government minister, should sign off on requests to intercept data — already the procedure in the U.S. and many other countries.

Anderson describes the last decade as "five years getting tougher, five years cautious liberalization and I think now we're at a crossroads."

"It remains to be seen what this government does," he said.


-- (c) Associated Press 2015-07-06

[Jockey]

I prefer this version of what happened on 7/7

[MaxYakov]

I prefer this version of what happened on 7/7

< Snipped: extraordinarily long youtube video >

Do you have an Executive Summary?

[Jockey]

I prefer this version of what happened on 7/7

< Snipped: extraordinarily long youtube video >

Do you have an Executive Summary?

Verint Systems is the security firm that is responsible for the CCTV surveillance cameras, in the London Underground rail network, and it is an Israeli company, with approximately 1000 employees. This documentary explores why no CCTV footage of the four Muslims boarding the tube-trains has been released by Verint; who claim that their cameras were not working. Why? Because the four Muslims were not on the tube-trains that blew up. Regarding the 7/7/2005 terrorist attacks in London, the documentary looks at the facts and at what we were told, and compare them. Then, using Ockham's Razor and common-sense, let us see what conclusions can be drawn, so we can all understand what most likely really did happen that day.

[Thakkar]

Presumption of innocence and privacy are the underpinnings of democracy--a democracy that the government is supposedly defending against the terrorists.

If Democracy is compromised by the loss of privacy, the terrorists have already won, no matter how many bad guys all that spying helps you kill.

T

[BringMeSunshine]

I prefer this version of what happened on 7/7

< Snipped: extraordinarily long youtube video >

Do you have an Executive Summary?

it says that

-the bombs were planted on the tubes and buses by the government in a conspiracy to generate public support for the 'war against terror'

-the Moslem 'bombers' were british patriots who were told that they were helping out in a security-planning exercise, playing the "part" of suicide bombers

-the Moslem 'bombers' were told to make anti-west islamist videos as part of their 'characters' in this training exercise

-the Moslem 'bombers' were supposed to get blown up on the tubes/buses, but arrived late in London (as their trains from Luton had been cancelled); therefore the bombs (that were already planted underneath the trains) exploded without them

-the Moslem 'bombers' were left alive and so had to be shot by police in the docklands, so they couldn't blow-the-whistle on the government

the videomaker was taken to court and tried to call the Queen as a witness....

[Lissos]

If Democracy is compromised by the loss of privacy, the terrorists have already won

Or, terrorists win when they can operate within our own domain easily because we insist on a wide brush of 'respect', 'equality', 'privacy' for all without discernment, allowing those plotting to blow up a bus to feel comfy.

Rather than 'respect at all costs' and 'privacy at all costs' perhaps discernment is better. If someone isn't suitable for a job, gets rejected for it and happens to be an overtly Conservative Muslim who wants to work at a super market checkout where it is highly likely that some alcohol, pork products and scantily clad local slappers are going to be in the vicinity at some stage, nowadays they will scream 'discrimination' if not given the job.

Indeed, because you're going to be a pain in the ass, you may even fully intend to be, employers know it, you know it and you know you can use our nation's various legislations to be so and to get 'our' culture altered to appease you or treat you as 'off limits' for discernment, just as someone plotting to blow up a bus will use a fundamentalist 'privacy' / 'don't upset minorities' to their own advantage, against us, and if not in p!ace already then will demand it be.

Terrorists haven't won when we need to keep tabs on things,because their 'goal' was not to erode privacy, but to kill the kuffar, or to dominate us with their own demands (happening now). Terrorists win when they've succeeded in blowing up a bus, a train, a concert, a cartoonist because we've sat around hand wringing about 'sensitivities' of the Muslim 'community', and privacy. What's more important?

Ensuring that your last email didn't come under a radar (and then forgotten about because it was harmless) ? Or ensuring that your mother, father, children, neices and nephews don't get torn apart into an unrecognisable bloody shreds after some loser 3rd generation c***t who's parents were given asylum in our nations, is 'inspired' by videos on the internet and detonates a suicide bomb in a mall on Christmas Eve because he felt 'angry' at western society and our policies?

I know which one is important to me now. At one stage I was a privacy fundamentalist, and while scrutiny from the public (evidence in itself that we too believe that privacy / secrecy fundamentalism carrys inherent dangers) about surveillance acts as a worthy moderating element, enshrining and worshiping privacy / secrecy as untouchable is as extreme a position as some of the surveillance 'doomsday' claims out there, enjoyed by Icke / Alex Jones fanboys.