Stop and Question

According to the BBC and The Times, the Blair government is thinking of giving increased stop-and-question powers to the police, claiming it is needed to prevent acts of terrorism on British soil. At present, police need "reasonable suspicion" before they can stop and question people on the street. The proposed measure relaxes this need for "reasonable suspicion" and allows police to just stop and question anyone-- a policy already in effect in Northern Ireland. Moreover, anyone who resists the questioning will be fined £5,000 for "obstructing justice".

This comes a few weeks after it was revealed that the 7/7 terrorists (i.e., those that bombed the Tube) slipped through MI5's surveillance, so the Home Office must be looking for ways to ensure that this won't happen again. Outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair goes a step further, writing in the Sunday Times that prioritising civil liberties over fighting terror was "misguided and wrong". A few excerpts:

"We have chosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first.

"I happen to believe this is misguided and wrong. If a foreign national comes here, and may be at risk in his own country, we should treat him well. But if he then abuses our hospitality and threatens us, I feel he should take his chance back in his own home country."
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"Over the past five or six years, we have decided as a country that except in the most limited of ways, the threat to our public safety does not justify changing radically the legal basis on which we confront this extremism.

"Their right to traditional civil liberties comes first. I believe this is a dangerous misjudgment. This extremism, operating the world over, is not like anything we have faced before. It needs to be confronted with every means at our disposal. Tougher laws in themselves help, but just as crucial is the signal they send out: that Britain is an inhospitable place to practise this extremism."

I won't argue here about the importance of civil liberties vs. national security-- everyone else is already doing this (often with help from a quote by Benjamin Franklin). But i would like to make this point to the Brits (and the Americans): be careful with what you wish for.

For a society that hasn't experienced government abuse in recent memory, the prospect of increased security might be preferred over civil liberties. After all, if you have nothing to hide there's nothing to fear, right? Wrong.

I just came from countries where police regularly stop people for no reason at all-- you don't have to act suspiciously, you just have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was doing nothing wrong and neither were my hosts, but we all felt dread when we saw policemen approach us. Sometimes the police stop people just because they need money for a snack; refusal to feed them can lead to a trip to the station. Knowing that the police can just arbitarily stop you won't help you sleep at night.

Only a society that hasn't experienced government abuse in recent memory would be too willing to give up their liberties for security.