UK Counter Extremism Bill To Target Ordinary Citizens

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Counter extremism bill will target ordinary UK citizens

A UK terror law watchdog has warned that new counter extremism measures planned by the government target innocent citizens and threaten to completely eradicate people’s personal freedoms.

According to David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of the controversial terrorism legislation, the UKs new Counter Extremism Bill will see citizens with anti-establishment views unfairly targeted for harassment by authorities.

Independent.co.uk reports:

“They say that if you are going to engage in extremist activity, then you could be made subject to some coercive measure whereby you might not be able to use social media, or you might be limited in your associations, or in where you can go, and so on,” he said.

“I think silence coerced by law … is a very dangerous business, particularly when you are looking at something as vague as extremism.

“I’ve not met anyone who can really define it in a satisfactory way.

“There’s talk of British values, people who oppose diversity, democracy, the rule of law, tolerance. We can all think of people, I’m sure, we would love to see silenced in one way or the other, preachers of hate, of whatever kind.

“I think the trouble with rules like that is that all sorts of people are going, in principle, to be subject to them. People are going to complain about neighbours, they’re going to complain about people they work with, the police are going to feel they have to investigate all sorts of people who are miles away from being terrorists, but may just practise religion in a conservative way, or may have eccentric political views.

“That’s not really the way we have ever done things in this country. We didn’t ban communism during the Cold War, and I think we should be strong and robust enough to argue back.

“To start applying the force of the law to people who oppose certain values, I think, is a really difficult and dangerous line to go down,” he said.

Asked if such provisions in the Bill could themselves be opposed to fundamental British values, Mr Anderson, who is to stand down from his review of terror laws role in February, said: “That’s of course one way of putting it.”

Mr Anderson said he expected changes to the controversial Investigatory Powers Act, which some have branded a “snooper’s charter”, after the European Court of Justice ruled that measures in it allowing the “general and indiscriminate retention” of emails and other electronic communications were illegal.

He said provisions in the Act making telephone providers retain call logs for 12 months in case police want to look at them made sense.

“It certainly does look as though in some respects the Act is going to have to be amended. My own view is that the power is a particularly useful one to the police, and not only in terrorism cases, and it’s actually not very intrusive at all,” he said.

Mr Anderson said the UK had learned lessons after an “overreaction” following 9/11.

Asked if Britain had the balance right on anti-terror laws, he said: “I would say we are not in too bad a place. We made some terrible mistakes in the past. I think we really went over the top in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. In ways that I think are still having bad effects, and everyone can see that now.

“Even 10 years ago, we maybe overreacted in ways that we shouldn’t have done to the 9/11 bombings. But, I think what we have done is learn from that. The laws I’m reviewing now are actually less onerous, less restrictive than the ones I started to review in 2010/11.”

1 Comment

  1. This doesn’t unfairly catch citizens, that’s it’s whole point, it is for citizens. They are stealing your rights under the guise of terrorism, you need to have a discussion on those limits. Because we all know that terrorism is a charade run by the US and Israel, to keep money flowing out of the country. They’re looting the system with war before they collapse it under debt and there goes the economy. They’re extracting hundred of billion through war, to expand their oil deals and power, while using those same terrorism laws, to shut down and incarcerate those who are doing changes to different technologies…. And they’re allowing Tesla a controlled, industry, first time monopoly player, because they plan on buying his company, but for now, if you have an delusions of grandeur, for mass producing anything alternative energy, they will attempt to bribe you, threaten you and if neither kill you or incarcerate you under the NDAA. This is absolutely mental. A government gone rogue on it’s own power and now they’re upset because they never rigged the election machines, because they too, were bullshitted by their own bullshit they were putting out that HIllary would win, they never even bothered rigging them, they thought she’d win in a landslide. Hahahaha! Too smart for their own good.

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