The sooner phone tapping 
evidence is permitted in our courts to help secure convictions of terrorists the better. How can anyone argue against presenting evidence to show we are serious about locking them up?
The safety and security of our citizens should be the first objective of any government. Yet Britain is one of few countries in the world to ban the use of evidence from intercepted phone calls, emails, letters and faxes as part of a prosecution case in court. Phone intercept material from intelligence services in the courts are commonly used to secure convictions in America, Australia and countries in the European Unions. It’s time we did the same.
How many terrorists have escaped conviction because of our reticence about it? The lifting of this ban could mean they will now go ahead.
Gordon Brown is today expected to support recommendations from a review which proposes making this evidence admissible in court.
I cannot understand the delay in introducing this law, it should have happened immediately following the American 9/11 atrocity and our own London bombings. We need to use all modern technologies to secure convictions against those who want to commit evil murderous acts against innocent people, and to know that it will count as evidence in court.
I heard Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, speak on this issue today. She believes that intercepted evidence could be a crucial tool for law enforcement and dealing with the threat from terrorism. The police welcome it too.
But, ludicrously, Shami pointed out that while evidence from a bugging device used in a bedroom to record intimate moments could be produced in court, phone intercepted evidence to help secure a conviction against a terrorist was banned.
While opponents to these changes include MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, who have argued that it would reveal their sophisticated intercept techniques, I see no reason why highly sensitive evidence of this nature could not be heard in camera to prevent any sensitive information being published. The positives far outweigh any negatives.
Successive Labour Home Secretaries have fudged on this issue, it’s crucial that we do not delay its introduction any longer.
The problem is… while MI5 and MI6 know where these terrorists are they can keep a watch on them and find out about any planned attacks etc etc lock then away and new terrorists will take there place and it takes money and time for MI5/MI6 to find them watch them listen to them and basically know what they are up too.
In some but not all cases its best to know where they are and what they are doing rather than lock them away.
You also have to remember that its crucial that the people that work under cover for MI5/MI6 never have there identities given away.
If it was in the governments best interest to allow phone tapping as evidence rest assured it would be law tomorrow.
As Craig Murray(http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2008/02/the_bugging_of.html) said yesterday:-
Commentators are generally puzzled by the government’s refusal to make bugging material admissible as evidence in court, and tend to take the view that this is a last vestige of liberalism.
In fact this is the opposite. Bugging material is in fact used in court, sanitised as “intelligence”, and given in tiny out of context clips to judges in camera to justify continued detention without trial or control orders. It is also used at the Special Immigration Appeals Tribunal, a de facto terrorism court.
As you say – ludicrous.
Amazing really that all our conversations on mobile phones CAN be intercepted, and our e-mail too. You’d think sophisticated terrorists would use smoke signals.
Home Secretaries will always fudge on this. They don’t want to commit themselves.
Ellee: This is a huge emotional hot button topic here in the USA. Many oppose wiretaps; I do not. It is said that our security services have broken up plots at an average of one a day since 9/11. That means we have sleeper cells here, as I’m sure in Britain (after your atrocity in The Tube). All 41 recommendations of the 9/11 panel have been approved but 11 remain to be activated, as I understand it. There is no time to delay when it comes to stopping these thugs for who human life means nothing and putting them out of business for good! I’m glad you posted this!!!
Difficult for me to judge, not being in the UK at the moment. But it does seem to me that when you are dealing with people who don’t even value their own lives, extreme measures are sadly necessary. I think I agree with MM above.
“The safety and security of our citizens should be the first objective of any government.”
So it should, but I don’t believe that this is the true motive of any government which refuses to have proper border controls.(Sorry to keep repeating myself)
There is another form of terrorism which kills far more people and that is violent street crime. The police and Government are weak in dealing with this though they know exactly who the perpetrators are.
We are being deliberately turned into a police state under the guise of terror prevention. What other conclusion can I possibly come to ?
“How many terrorists have escaped conviction because of our reticence about it?”
Not many. For all the hystrionics from Government and senior police chiefs we are remarkably terror free. Nothing like the IRA terror campaign of the ’70s.
“Ah – but this is because the security services are playing their socks off.” To paraphrase Commissioner Sir Ian Blair.
Partly I agree, but mainly because the threat is deliberately overstated.
There will always be terror. There will always be some degree of threat on our streets – living bravely with that is always the price to be paid for freedom. Not by carving away liberties, stepping up state intrusion into our lives. That’s the path to tyranny.
Phone tapping evidence could help convict Britain’s ordinary citizens doing nothing but deemed subversive by Brown’s SS.
Agreeing to phone tapping as an acceptable norm of life is letting the terrorists win the argument.
“Politicians, like lawyers, do not want a solution to a problem that works well and is cheap. They want a managing methodology, one that requires their constant ongoing intervention and the liberal application of money (preferably taxpayers’).”
Tuscan Tony.