International Law

Counter-terrorism Bill - covert DNA sampling and analysis with no effective safeguards

Media reports about the Counter-Terrorism Bill 2008, currently being debated in the House of Lords, seem to be focussed exclusively on the 42 days internment without charge issue, which may or may not be dropped by the obstinate, unelected, Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The Labour Home Office Minister, former naval Admiral, and military intelligence chief, Lord West of Spithead, attempted to defend the indefensible:

9 Oct 2008 : Column 350

Lord West of Spithead (Labour)

[...]

We have to be careful that we do not move towards a Big Brother-type society. I know that the Committee is conscious of that; I certainly am when I am sitting at my desk in the Home Office looking at these issues.

The Orwellian doublethink of this Labour Government, and of their security bureaucrats, apparatchiki and political commissars is always evident when they shy away from the accusation of creating a Big Brother surveillance society, whilst simultaneously plunging ahead with creating exactly the omnipresent surveillance and snooping infrastructure which forms the foundation of such a society.

According to the novel, doublethink is:

The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies -- all this is indispensably necessary.

Lord West then went on to use a weasel worded bait and switch justification, that the proposed Clause 19 Disclosure and the intelligence services powers, regarding DNA samples and analyses and databases, used for Counter Terrorism, which are currently not "on a firm legal footing" i.e. are actually illegal, should be made legal, to allow DNA checks and sharing with foreign intelligence agencies DNA samples e.g. those found at "terrorist training camps".

The "bait and switch" is that this Counter-terrorism Bill grants powers under Clause 18 Material not subject to existing statutory restrictions which are not strictly limited to terrorism investigations, but are generally applicable all crime, no matter how petty.

18 Material not subject to existing statutory restrictions

[...]

2 (b) for purposes related to the prevention or detection of crime, the
investigation of an offence or the conduct of a prosecution, or

[...]

Lord West went on to say:

Lords Hansard 9 Oct 2008 : Column 396

Full post as published by Spy Blog on October 12, 2008 (boomark / email).