Counter Terrorism Bill 2008.

Today the UK parliament voted in favour of the Counter Terrorism Bill 2008 by nine votes which ironically came from a political party linked to loyalist paramilitaries.

This act governs the way in which the UK security services, MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the police will attempt to protect the UK from the threat of Islamic and other forms of terrorism.

For a number of years I have been in the rare position of being able to experience the activities of the UK security services first hand, in fact you could say I was born into it. This allows me to share with you the most secret of all official secrets; The UK security services aren't particularly good at what they do.

In my case alone they have made a number of shocking errors including but not limited too;


Encouraging "known associates" of mine to act as informers against me yet failing to grasp the very basic concept that the information would be tainted because the reason the person is associated with me is because I slept their girlfriend.

They have offered often large financial incentives to people will to act as infiltrators and saboteurs in my activities yet failed to realise that the offering of such incentives would only encourage these people to overstate their ability to complete that task.

Mistake like these have meant that despite deploying a high degree of resources against me they have only achieved a rather dull stalemate so it comes as no surprise to me that the UK's security services are unable to deal with domestic terrorist threats or secure British interests abroad.

In my opinion the security services inability to succeed in even the simplest task stems mainly from the way it recruits and retains staff. This process often follows three distinct phases;

1. Identify a candidate with a specific weakness. In low level cases this can be something as simple a need for money to support a drug habit. When recruiting higher level staff it is normally something more complex as demonstrated by MI5's obsession in the mid-late 1990's of recruiting freshly liberated lesbians, a demographic that appears to have come of age in the last few years. More recently they attempted to recruit the 1st generation of educated black women who no longer fitted into the traditional black stereotype nor fitted into a predominately white graduate culture which expects to be able to name ever hip-hop artist ever. A more specific example would be that of a young lady with a chequered sexual history who had been socially isolated by two years living with her parents before a year living in a foreign country.
   
2. Convince the candidate that they wish to join the service. This can be done by attempting to convince the candidate that the service can solve their particular weakness. More often though it is done by appealing to the vanity and telling them that rather then being misfits and malcontents they are in fact a special member of a master race and are needed to protect and control the less enlightened ones in society. This is demonstrated beautifully by the language used on the http://www.brightlondon.co.uk/ website which I suspect is a front organization for recruitment.
   
3. Make the candidate totally dependent on the service. In the case of actual officers this is done by simply getting them to sign the official secrets act because "previous experience infiltrating and destroying companies such as yours" doesn't look good on a CV even if they were allowed to write it. For candidates whose role requires a degree of plausible deniability this control is exerted by less overt means such as getting the candidate to sign up with the services preferred bank, mortgage provider, telephone provider, insurance company, Energy Company etc. Often assets are also encouraged to marry and have children because the desire to keep that relationship going makes them less likely to disobey. Sadly the right to life of these spouses and children is rarely an operational concern.
   

This immensely exploitative and abusive recruitment process means that rather then attracting the best in their field to the service of the country they are in fact only recruiting those in their field who are so stupid they cannot see through the conspiracy and realise that recruitment will only ever work to their disadvantage. This deception is why the service is desperately clinging to Sadie and Anna, not because either of those women will become successful but because they want to avoid sending out the message to potential recruits that the service will not turn on its own. A position which based on the experience of my father and his peers is one I know to be wholly untrue.

A recruitment process which seems specifically designed to exclude perceptive people may be fine if you are hoping to recruit drivers and mechanics but is unforgivable when attempting to recruit people whose main role is to see through others plots and certainly explains the UK security services inability to break terrorist plots.

If we had a strong government it would respond to the news that the UK Security Services cannot achieve in 28 days what their Canadian counterparts can achieve in just one by challenging the way those security service operates and force them to make changes that would allow them to do the job they are being paid to carry out. Sadly though we have Gordon Browns government who possess neither the brains nor the balls to make tough decisions. This means that they have once again shirked their responsibility to the country and passed yet another repressive counter terrorism bill. Presumably the only way they manage to sleep at night is by convincing themselves that bringing the paranoid, bigoted and often violent gangsterism of the espionage world out of the shadows and into mainstream society they are somehow making mainstream society a richer place.
The part of the bill you are all most familiar with is;

Part 2, section 22: The power to increase pre-charge detention from 28 to 42 days. This has received the most media attention because it represents the clearest attack on the cornerstone of the British legal system - habeus corpous -the principle that states no-one shall be detained without being formally accused of any crime. Aside from meaning that people can now be locked up for six weeks without even being charged of a crime the draft of this bill takes the authority for that decision out of the hands of judges, lawyers and investigators and places it firmly in the hands of the Home Secretary (part 2, section 22, schedule 1, section 40)

Of course once the home secretary has decided she wants to lock someone up for 42 days she has two days to make a statement to the house of commons stating she is satisfied the power is justified (Schedule 1, section41 part 3a). However this statement must not include the suspects name or any detail of why they are being detained (Schedule, section 41 part 5 a+b) Neither Parliament or the law lords will be able to overturn the Home Secretaries decision meaning if they disagree with the assessment their only recourse is to unseat the home secretary - a process that will take far longer then the 42 day detention period.

Clearly the circumventing of the entire British Legal system and giving the Home Secretary the power to lock people up for six weeks without a charge or any evidence being produced is the most dangerous part of this act but having read the entire thing in all it's tedious detail with this act the devil is most certainly in the detail because we also have;

Part 6, section 65 - specially appointed coroners. Since the inception of the coroner’s court system some 900 years ago the procedure for assigning a coroner to case was quite simple. The case goes tot he first available coroner in the jurisdiction the body lies. The counter terrorism bill changes all that because it gives the home secretary (again) the power to specially select a coroner and appoint them to a case (part 65 section 65 18A)

It is virtually impossible to see how changing the coroner system has any impact on the fight against terrorism because rather then being part of the investigation a coroners hearing normally occurs at the end of the investigation often years or even decades after the death occurred. Also there are extensive safeguards to keep coroners proceedings secret with Public Interest Immunities available for sensitive witnesses and even the possibility of the entire hearing being held in closed court.

It is worth noting though that recent coroner's inquests have been a source of great embarrassment to Gordon Browns government. Time and time again inquests into the deaths of soldiers such as that of the crash of the RAF Nimrod have helped shed light on New Labours despicable decision to send its soldiers into war in Iraq and Afghanistan without the proper equipment often costing them their lives in the interests of saving the treasury some cash.
Given the apparent lack of any security reason for these changes it is very hard not to conclude that they have been included in the act to stifle dissent and save the government its myriad of blushes. This conclusion is only reinforced when you learnt hat not only will the Home Secretary will have the power to appoint individual coroners she will also have the power to determine how much each coroner is paid for their case - a sort of legalisation of the bribing of judges.

The third part of the act which raises concern is;

Part 7, Section 77: Cost of policing gas facilities. This section gives the power to compel gas companies to pay for part or all of the cost of protecting their facilities from terrorist attack (fuel protests as they used to be known) While this provision has little impact on national security or civil liberties it does provide a worrying insight into the attitude of the New Labour government.

Pretty much since its inception the cost of policing and securing national infrastructure has been met through taxation, the levels of which are set democratically through debate in Parliament and representation at the ballot box. In passing this law the government is circumventing its responsibility to fund its own spending and placing that responsibility into the hands of unelected private companies. As these companies operate in a virtual monopoly they won't hesitate in passing on the increased costs onto you the consumer in the form of higher gas bills. No doubt the cabinet are already patting themselves on the back and telling each other how clever they are because by forcing a by proxy increase in fuel bills they leave the way open for a headline grabbing announcement on how they plan to tackle the price increase and show everyone that they do really care about the working poor.

In his speech welcoming the Japanese Prime Minister to London Gordon Brown announced that he would be pushing ahead with the counter terrorism bill in order to stick by his principles. In passing the bill he has most certainly done that it is just a shame that his over-riding principle of government is to avoid all and any of the responsibility that comes with the job of Prime Minister.