Category Archives: Big mad database

Gordon Brown, earlier this month, used anti-terrorism legislation to freeze Icelandic assets in Britain, in response to their government failing to guarantee British deposits in their faltering banks. My links with Iceland begin and end with the purchase of frozen foods from that nation’s commercial namesake. But it still troubles me deeply. We should be profoundly concerned at the use of anti-terrorist legislation for political and economic ends. This is at the heart of fears about the extent of the powers the state has claimed since the attacks of 11 September 2001.

The British government has demonstrated precisely why civil liberties campaigners have been so concerned at the demands of Labour to trade our liberties for the promise of greater security. New terrorist legislation has – rightly – been considered in the post-9/11 world. Yet anxieties that counter-terrorist legislation should be given checks-and-balances, and justified as a necessary trade of liberty for security, are dismissed in a cavalier fashion by New Labour. A casual use of anti-terrorism powers for completely different ends is the most obvious symptom of that attitude.

A minister, Geoff Hoon, recently told Lib Dem MP Julia Goldsworthy that “the biggest civil liberty of all is not to be killed by a terrorist”, when she spoke out against a new database of all British citizens’ communications records. He is, of course, right in suggesting that we should contemplate and weigh up any options that would significantly reduce the chance of a terrorist attrocity. However, deciding where the balance lies between the likelihood of thwarting a terrorist, and surrendering the very way of life those terrorists seek to undermine, is a question he should treat with greater respect.

The rights and wrongs of Icelandic financial institutions are irrelevant to the fact that Brown abused legislation intended for very different purposes. This should profoundly worry anybody who cares about good governance. By using anti-terrorist legislation as a convenient way to respond to the global banking crisis, the British government have demonstrated why we should fear their cowboy attitude to checks-and-balances, and to the careful drafting of specific powers for specific purposes.

Anti-terrorist legislation should be used against terrorists. This seems a pretty reasonable assertion. Iain Dale has highlighted an Icelandic petition against this perverted contortion of the Terrorism Act, which spurred me to write on the topic. What worries me the most is that this ‘thin end of the wedge’ can be (and is being) replicated in the state’s use of other terrorist legislation. For example, new terrorist laws provide police with the powers to stop and search individuals, even if they actually do so for reasons unrelated to suspicion of terrorist offenses. Local councils have also been exposed using counter-terrorist powers to intrude into Britons’ privacy, to investigate matters wholly unrelated to acts of terror.

If we want to give our government the power to freeze Icelandic assets, or to give our police officers those powers in other criminal matters that they have been given in terrorist matters, then let’s debate and consider laws in parliament that openly permit those ends.