Preserving civil liberties

[D-Notice]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,1526312,00.html

MPs will also need to be vigilant in monitoring yet another anti-terrorist bill already promised for this session. To his credit, Charles Clarke... openly conceded last week that the government's ID card bill would not have prevented the bombings. At least this should make it more difficult for the government to apply more pressure on MPs to support the unnecessary and divisive bill. But Mr. Clarke will seek tomorrow, at an emergency meeting of the EU justice and interior ministers that he will chair, much wider retention of telecoms traffic data. Liberal Democrats rightly questioned why, when terrorists would be able to use pay-as-you-go phones or internet cafes to escape detection, European states were being required to maintain logs of all citizens' calls, text messages, emails and websites. Even Franco Frattini, the EU's commissioner for justice and security, called for a much shorter period (six months to a year) than the five years that Mr Clarke is reported to favour.

MPs must remember draconian procedures introduced to control terrorists can end up applying to non-terrorists. Look no further than last week's disgraceful ruling by the law lords. They upheld the right to withhold from potential parolees evidence denying their release - a procedure introduced to apply to terrorists, now applied more widely. It denies ordinary criminals the right to challenge their imprisonment.

The case is Roberts v Parole Board or a pdf version

I guess the Belmrash ruling from last Xmas was a one-off :-(