Undermining Our Intelligence

The UK has faced terrorist threats for years: extending pre-charge detention serves only to sabotage our security services and our liberty.

By Rachel North
November 15, 2007 12:00 PM
Guardian

On Tuesday I was asked to give evidence before the home affairs select committee about the government's proposed anti-terror legislation. Under questioning, I explained that I am opposed to the further extension of detention powers, because I have not seen any compelling evidence that such powers are necessary. The police and security services say it could be needed in the future. But should legislation be passed because of what might be needed one day? Do we buy possible future security at our liberty's expense?

Over the last two years, many other people directly impacted by 7/7 have expressed their serious concerns to me about the erosion of ancient freedoms in the name of defeating terror. But not everyone agrees on how we should act. Two men who lost loved ones on 7/7 told me that they would definitely support increased detention powers if the police and security services showed that they needed them.

The government say the increased complexity of plots, and the new threat of suicide bombings means we need 90 days - no, 56 days - no, an unspecified number of days - to hold people before charging them.

But monstrous as the 7/7 atrocities were, they did not change the world.

We've had threats and attacks from extremists for decades, and we've always coped. What is so different now? Isn't terrorism organised crime - only cloaked in political ideology and extremist theology?

M16 officers can confirm that tackling organised crime (such as smashing international heroin trafficking operations), requires national and international police and security services to look at large quantities of evidence cached in computers and translate intercepted conversations in different languages, in order to investigate global networks of suspects who are extremely well-resourced, adept at using technology to communicate and practised in using anti-surveillance techniques. These criminal gangs do not hesitate to kill, have their own security muscle, legal advisors and sometimes, the assistance of corrupt officials. Yet the police and security services have not demanded extra detention powers to deal with this challenge.

We have always battled terrorists and criminals with good police and intelligence work.

I strongly suspect that banging people up without charge - suspects effectively serving up to a two-month prison sentence without having been found guilty of anything - would diminish, not enhance the chance of obtaining good intelligence.

Would you be more or less likely to report your suspicions about your neighbour/tenant/colleague/brother if you knew that the suspect could languish in a windowless cell for weeks on end without being charged with any crime?

Why hand terrorists the gift of a society that is a little angrier, a little more fearful, a little less free?

I expect terrorists to despise and attack our way of life, our liberties, our tolerant tradition of freedom. I do not expect my government to do the same.

We do not need to give away our freedoms - freedoms people have died to protect - to overcome this latest threat. By staying true to what we are, cherishing what we have, we protect ourselves - and win.