And today, sadly, it seems more approriate than ever.

BTW - No copyright on this image, please use as you see fit if you have a mind to.

Just watching the debate on clause 3 of the Terrorism Bill which relates to websites, which has clarified for me how this will work - as opposed to how the government claims it will work…

…well it’s now as clear as it ever will be given that Hazel Blears was pitching this part of the bill for government.

Let run through the scenario.

First, the powers the government are seeking will not be for ordinary coppers but for ’specially trained anti-terrorist officers’ and require the authorisation - possible, maybe, she’s not entirely - as a Superintendent.

This is, accordly to the Bleary One only a ‘notification procedure’ that affects your right to mount a ‘didn’t know it was there’ defence should you be prosecuted at a later stage.

What is claimed will happen is that you will receive a notice instructing you to remove the offend material with what appears to be 48 hours - and if you choose to ignore the notice and are then prosecute you cannot use the ‘didn’t know it was there, guv’ defence.

You - in this case, however - appears not to be the website owner but website hosting company, and their industry association, the ISPA, were apparently consulted on and agree with these proposals BUT - according to Blears - would not automatically react by taking down websites where they’ve received such a notice but consider whether they should or should not comply with it having looked at the offending material themselves.

Yes - that was a very large pig flying past the windows as you read that last sentence.

The ISP also didn’t ask for any judicial oversight of this process and, apparently, also agree that an appeals procedure in these matters in entire unnecessary.

Oh, and the government’s objections to judicial oversight?

We, first it not quick enough for them because the Lords amendment specifies oversight by a High Court judge - not that that matters as they’re no keener on using Circuit Court Judges who can usually be pulled in to provide interlocutory injunctions on a couple of hours notice when required.

And the other objection?

Well it seems that applying judicial oversight in such matters would give these notices similar oversight status to the extended 28-day internment detention without charge process in terrorist cases and that is ‘not proportionate’ in Bleary’s opinion.

However my favorite comment of day came not from the government benches - not that there are many there in chamber for this part of the debate - but from an opposition member, Dr Julian Lewis MP, Member of Parliament for the New Forest.

Dr Lewis - as he was at great pains to point out, was one of the first people in the UK to sue a website owner for libel, having sued the late Steve Regan of Scallywag magazine for accusing him ‘of being a secret homosexual and a liar for denying it’ - strangely given charles Clarke’s earlier comments about Human Rights Lawyers, Blears passed on the chance to upbraid Lewis for having a vested interest.

But that’s by the by as Lewis’s contribution to the debate wins him the Wen Jiabao award for an outstanding contribution to free expression by being the MP who asked what the government was going to do about removing information from search engines like Google - because he knows that they can do things like that these days!

The reason Lewis is so concerned about this is - so he said - because search engines are able to ‘bring up’ information like the scurrilous accusations that Scallywag made about him.

Naturally, being a bit of geek, I had to put this assertion to the test, all of which revealed that relevant searches for, for example ‘Dr Julian Lewis + Scallywag’ or ‘Dr Julian Lewis + Simon Regan’ do indeed bring up a small number of accounts relating to this incident - something of the order of 30 hits or so at most - all of which do indeed make reference to Regan’s allegations…

…in the context of reporting the fact that he was sued and also faced a criminal prosecution over this matter for which he was convicted.

What’s even more interesting is that the top item returned for such searchs is this article which refers to the case, which appears on the website of…

… Dr Julian Lewis MP.

UPDATE:

Should just point, as was noted several times during during the debate, aside from being illiberal and censorious these provision are also next to useless as they only apply to webhosts operating in the UK.

I thought I’d mention that as, should these provisions make it on to the statute books and in due consideration of the UK industies complicity in this matter, it is extremely likely that this blog will be relocating to US-based service provider where it will enjoy the full protection of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

I think that all of us current hosting in the UK owe to the IPSA to make that move, don’t you?

UPDATE:

Amendment 22, which starts the run of amendments on judicial oversight has been removed by 319 - 255.

Bollocks - just what we need, another win for the four Home Office dwarves; Safety, Bleary, McNulty and Twat.

Just spotted this at the end of the same Guardian article on the Terrorism Bill in which I noted errors including provision of a link to the wrong Bill entirely.

The human rights lawyer Geoffrey Bindman said existing legislation already outlaws the activities which ministers say the glorification offence will deal with.

He added: “The government wants to have a law that can be used prosecuting anyone one who says anything favourable about terrorism.

“But that becomes a very dangerous inroad on freedom of speech, because people may wish to express views about a repressive regime which may involve suggesting that ultimately it may be necessary to use violence to bring an end to that regime. That seems to me a perfectly respectable thing to do.”

All of which is, in my estimation, a reasonable position to take.

What caught my eye, however, was the sentence following that comment from Geoffrey Bindman.

Mr Clarke said his critics in the human rights community were “lawyers with a vested interest in a particular area“.

Sorry? Lawyers with a fucking vested interest in a particular area???

Is that the only fucking answer you’ve got, Safety? Anyone who disagrees with us has a ‘vested interest’ which makes their opinions entirely invalid?

Just fuck right off now!!

You want to talk about vested interests, then fine - let’s have a full public inquiry into the circumstances leading to the Iraq War and the false information that was fed to Parliament in order to secure a vote authorising British involvement in the invasion and then we’ll see just what kind of vested interests were kicking around that issue.

Oh sorry, I forgot. That isn’t going to happen is it thanks to the ‘nod and a wink’ deal with the opposition which pushed through the Inquiries Act before the last general election and which puts ministers like yourself in full and complete control of every aspect of any public inquiries including inquiries in the conduct of the government - not that we’re likely to see one of those any time soon.

And of course, Ministers like yourself had no vested interest at all in putting forward that piece of legislation, did you?

Vested interests?

No, just another government minister who’s a shameless, low-rent, conniving piece of shit!

It appears that an Aussie TV station has got hold of another run of Abu Ghraib photos, reputed to be the one’s that US government is trying to avoid releasing to the ALCU.

The article is here, you’ll need to scroll down for the new images, the first one’s posted have been seen before with new images below, and if you workplace has a tight access policy you might want to consider this non work-safe material.

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny

James Madison - 4th President of the United States of America and signatory to the Declaration of Independence.

If you think the votes that will take place over the next two days on the Terrorism Bill are about the ‘glorification of terrorism’, then like the BBC in this report, you have got things very badly wrong.

Having read through the order papers for the debate on the Terrorism Bill, the explicit offence of ‘glorifying terrorism’ has gone - it’s just not in there - nor do any of the amendments tabled by the government reintroduce such an offence.

What is in there is the offence of ‘encouraging terrorism’ which does include the notion that one may indirectly encourage others to commit terrorist acts and this does, in addition, include the idea that one may commit this offence if one is reckless in making statements relating to terrorism. It is this indirect component of this offence which makes it different from the offence of ‘incitement’.

The main amendment to this section of the Bill that the government will be moving today seeks not to reintroduce the offence of glorifying terrorism but merely to remove a definition of ‘indirect encouragement’ inserted by the Lords, which reads as follows:

For the purposes of this section, “indirect encouragement� comprises the making of a statement describing terrorism in such a way that the listener would infer that he should emulate it.

It would be tempting to write this amendment off, in other circumstances, as merely piss-poor law-making but such a view fails to take into account that we’re dealing here with a conniving bunch of bastards.

Why should the law not provide a clear definition of ‘indirect encouragement’, one that would permit Judges to adequately direct juries as to the meaning of the law if and when such cases come to court? For no better reason than the fact that government has failed to get a definition it wants on to the statute books via normal parliamentary processes and is now trying to leave the door open in the hope that when such cases do come to court, if they ever do, juries will take their view of what indirect encouragement should mean.

What we have here is quite simply a framework for law-maling by propaganda; an attempt to define the precise parameters of this offence by banging away at the public in the press with their preferred definition - which does include glorification - in the hope that when the time comes and a relevant case comes to court, jurors will have swallowed their bullshit wholesale and deliver a precedent that suits their purposes.

UPDATE: Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Attorney General, has said that the Tories will support this offence, but given no indication as to whether they will support the removal of the Lords’ definition of ‘indirect encouragement’.

UPDATE: The Beeb have now updated the page in question to state that the Tories will ‘partly’ back this new offence, which does suggest they may oppose the removal the clause defining ‘indirect encouragement’.

SEE CORRECTION AT BOTTOM OF POST - Glorification is, sadly, back in after all.

Appalling though this is, this is still not the most important issue to arise out of these amendments - look closely enough and you will find something far worse and yet something which has received little or no attention in the media.

One of the most substantive amendments introduced by the Lords in their deliberations is a major change to the provisions for dealing with websites which are alleged to be ‘encouraging terrorism’.

The position here is simple, the Bill includes powers for such websites to be closed down by the issuing of an order to the internet service provider which hosts them - a new power that, in the original Bill, was vested in a Police Constable.

Yeah, that’s right - the Bill as sent to the House of Lords gives ordinary coppers the power to shut down websites where, in their opinion, those websites are directly or indirectly ‘encouraging’ terrorism or publishing ‘terrorist materials’ - suddenly the Police have become the sole arbiters and enforcers of government censorship.

The House of Lords, thankfully, took a rather different view and inserted new clauses removing this power from the sole domain of the Police and vesting it where, by right and tradition, is should belong - with the Judiciary. Under the Bill as it returns to the Commons today and tomorrow, in order to shut down an alleged terrorist-supporting website, Police will have to obtain an order from a judge and present evidence to substantiate their claim that it encourages terrorism or disseminates terrorist publications.

For anyone who belives in justice and equality before the law this is the only right, proper and acceptable means by which such powers should be exercised.

The Lords’ amendments are not unreasonable - they do include provisions for the Home Secretary to waive the rights of the website owner to advance notification of proceedings where this would compromise the action that is to be taken or interfere with an ongoing investigation, so in total this new set of clauses provides a fair, measured and propotional response to what is a genuine problem - there are websites out there which do openly and actively support and encourage terrorism and provide information and materials which relate to the commission of terrorist acts. And as with the oft-quoted principle of shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre, even the most hardened advocates of free expression will concede that websites of this kind lie outside what is acceptable free expression in a civilised and orderly society.

So, taking all that into consideration, let me ask this…

Why are the government seeking to remove all those amendments which provide for judicial oversight of orders to close down alleged ‘terrorist-supporting’ websites and reinstate provisions which make ordinary coppers the sole arbiters in such matters, unless the website owner mounts an appeal after the fact of site being shut down?

What possible justification can there be for such a process when, in a matter such as terrorism, the Police would surely have no difficulty in obtaining the necessary warrant for such actions from a Judge in a matter of hours?

And what is a Police state if not a state in which powers which should rightly be vested in the judiciary in the interests of justice and the protection of the civil liberties of its citizens are, instead, vested in the Police?

I rest my case.

Members of Parliament should oppose those motions that seek to remove the clear definition of ‘indirect encouragement’ and should certainly oppose the government’s efforts to remove judicial oversight from the Bill in relation to the powers to close down websites.

Oh, and one more thing - if ever there was a measure before Parliament which absolutely requires a blogswarm, it is this one.

Remember, if you are the kind of blogger who writes about contentious issues, then this Bill and the principle is sets up could affect you in future, for if we permit the police such arbitrary powers in relation to commentaries on terrorism then what it stop the government seeking to apply the same principle to other contentious subjects in future legislation?

UPDATE: On a purely technical point which has just occured to me, I wonder whether anyone in government has considered quite how this part of the Act will work in relation to search engine caches?

If the excuse for pushing for Police powers to shut websites is a simple matter of haste - i.e. getting sites closed quickly - isn’t this going to be a complete waste of time if the site is not also immediately removed from Google’s cache and does this not then completely negate any argument about reacting quickly?

UPDATE 1:30pm: The Guardian joins the BBC in getting it completely and utterly wrong.

Just to reinterate, there is NO offence relating to the glorification of terrorism in the Terrorism Bill that is being considered today, there are only the offences of ‘Encouragement of Terrorism’, ‘Dissemination of Terrorist Publications’, plus new offences covering training and prepararing for terrorist acts and possession of nuclear materials.

There is also a wonderfully absurd clause - 16 - which increases the penalty for non-complience with an order to turn over data encryption keys, issued under section 3 (I think? Spyblog will know for sure) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, from two years to five years in ‘national security’ cases. This would be all very well and good had this section of RIPA ever come into operation - which it still hasn’t more than five years after the Act received Royal Assent.

If there is some problem of understanding here, the text of the Terrorism Bill is here, and the Lords’ amendments and order papers for the debate on the Bill are here and here.

To compund their error, the Guardian have even succeeding in providing a link to entirely the wrong piece of legislation, last years’s Prevention of Terrorism Bill (now Act) which deals with Control Orders and is not being debated today.

UPDATE:

The government’s amendments to clauses 1 and 2 of the Bill passed by 315 to 277 - which the BBC still claims reintroduces the offence of ‘glorifying terrorism’ despite the fact that I still cannot find anything in any of the order papers for the Bill which refers to the clause in the original bill which set out that offence.

Quite what the fuck is going here is entirely unclear as none of the Lords’ amendments that were voted down appear to relate directly to this offence, so it looks like we’ll have to wait to see the redraft which goes back to the Lords to find out what happened.

CORRECTION:

Having finally pieced together what’s been going on with the rewrites to the Bill, it now appears that technically ‘Glorification of Terrorism’ is back in the Bill, not as a separate offence but as part of the definition of what constitutes encouragement of terrorism. Lords’ Amendment 5, which tried to provide a definition of indirect incitement directly replaced the glorification provisions, which go back in with the removal of this amendment.

This confusion has arisen because the pulbic bills section of the Parliament website only contains the latest version of the Bill plus the order papers for amendments, but not any previous version, leaving you to have to trace clauses through the explanatory notes.

I will be e-mailing them to complain about this and ask that they move to a clear versioning system giving access to the text of Bills at all stages in the process.