International Law

Domestic Extremism - secretive, unaccountable, therefore untrustworthy Police units, ACPO, TAM, NCDE, NPOIU, NDET, NETCU

The unaccountable taxpayer subsidised private company, the Association of Chief Police Officers, has now published a "micro-site" about its complicated and even more unaccountable and secretive Domestic Extremism quangos.

http://www.acpo.police.uk/ncde/

The National Coordinator Domestic Extremism was established in 2004, with the aim of reducing, and where possible, removing the threat, criminality and public disorder associated with domestic extremism in the UK, and working with police forces to ensure the facilitation of peaceful, lawful protest.

What is domestic extremism?

Unlike terrorism, which is defined in the UK by the Terrorism Act 2000, there is no equivalent legal definition for domestic extremism. This is because the crimes committed by those considered a domestic extremist already exist in common law or statute.

Exactly the same is true of terrorists - murder is murder regardless of any "terrorism" offences.

The term is generally used to describe the activity of individuals or groups carrying out criminal acts of direct action to further their protest campaign. These people and activities usually seek to prevent something from happening or to change legislation or domestic policy, but attempt to do so outside the normal democratic process.

Domestic extremists are generally associated with a single-issue campaign, and for policing purposes, have been categorised into five themes:

* Animal rights
* Extreme right wing
* Extreme left wing
* Environmental
* Emerging trends

Who or what are "Emerging trends" domestic extremists ?

We are extremely worried that the Police seem to conflate every "single-issue campaign" which has public demonstrations or protests, with "domestic extremists"

The alphabet soup of acronyms and the secrecy which surrounds them, are mechanisms for deliberately confusing the public and for passing the blame when things go wrong.

About NCDE

NCDE is the national lead on domestic extremism, on behalf of ACPO Terrorism and Allied Matters (TAM), for the UK.

NCDE is made up of three units who work collaboratively to coordinate the police response to domestic extremism:

Intelligence - NPOIU (National Public Order Intelligence Unit)

Investigation - NDET (National Domestic Extremism Team)

Prevention - NETCU (National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit)

Missing from this list is

WECTU - Welsh Extremism and Counter-Terrorism Unit

CIU -Confidential Intelligence Unit (part of NPOIU)

Are there any "Domestic Extremism" police intelligence and surveillance units in Scotland under the Association of Chief Scottish Police Officers (APCor is this all simply handled by the Strathclyde (Glasgow etc.) and / or Borders and Lothian (Edinburgh etc.) Police forces ?

Are there any "Domestic Extremism" police intelligence and surveillance units in Northern Ireland, or is everyone there treated as a potential terrorist ?

Note that none of these units is directly accountable to any individual Police Authority or even to an elected Government Minister.

ACPO have published a list of "Frequently Asked Questions" (you need to click on each question for the javascript to reveal the "answer":

Full post as published by Spy Blog on April 30, 2010 (boomark / email).