About Social Media Today
What to make of the splat between MI5 and the judiciary?
I'm instinctively suspicious of secretive, unaccountable state institutions. Without proper accountability, we all know how branches of the state end up doing the wrong thing.
But does that mean one should be sceptical of MI5 or of the judiciary? The latter is no more answerable to the rest of us than the former.
I'm very familiar with all the civil liberties arguments. Readers of this blog will know I'm pretty suspicious of overbearing state power. But is it the judiciary or the intelligence services that are weilding power without accountability here?
Is it really wise for the judiciary to ham-string the ability of the British state to act against terror?
Remember how, entirely seperately from this recent row, the judges ruled that the state could not detain terror suspects - even one's who had entered Britain illegally? They did so despite the fact that the suspects were entirely free to leave the country. Indeed, their detention came as a last resort precisely because they refused to leave the country.
Lord Hoffman ruled then that there is no "state of public emergency threatening the life of the nation" and that "The real threat to the life of the nation .... comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these."
That was a few months before the July 7th bombs went off.
Who is he to decide if there is a threat? Who is he to determine public policy in response to it?
