Hello everybody, quick introduction: I'm a german student studying in Freiburg, south of Germany. I study political science and literature. Since I think about writing a paper about different national reactions after 9/11 I'm looking for some brainstorming help. I'm looking for laws, that were made for the war on terrorism, for national security, surveillance and controlling, reducing (political) freedom and executive rights. There were quite a few decisions in the US packed up in the "patriot act". I wonder if someone can tell me whether there were any such laws in the UK or not. Here in Germany for example we had only few laws immediatly after 9/11 adressing the terrorism thread or increasing national security and the executive rights of military e.g. But some decisions passed the parliament until today, that have to potential for an enormous change of our system of checks and balances. The parliament is discussing a decision right now, that gives the police a lot more executive rights. To point out my question once more: Which laws were made related to the war on terror, national security, surveillance, freedom rights and executive powers after 9/11? Anything similar to the patriot act or the development in Germany like I described above? Is there any website or documentation of the laws of the parliament of the UK, ordered chronologically and by keyword? I appreciate any help and sorry for my possibly bad english, greetings from germany sap
TheLegalEagle
10-07-2008, 11:52 AM
Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevention_of_Terrorism_Act_2005)
The Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 is a British (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom) Act of Parliament (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_Parliament) intended to deal with the Law Lords (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Lords)' ruling of 16 December (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_16) 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004), that the detention without trial of nine foreigners at HM Prison (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Her_Majesty%27s_Prison_Service) Belmarsh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belmarsh_%28HM_Prison%29) under Part IV of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-terrorism%2C_Crime_and_Security_Act_2001) was unlawful, being incompatible with European (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights) (and, thus, domestic) human rights laws (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_law). It was given Royal Assent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Assent) on March 11 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_11), 2005 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005).
The Act allows the Home Secretary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Secretary) to impose "control orders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_order)" on people who are suspected of involvement in terrorism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism), which in some cases may derogate (opt out) from human rights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights) laws.
In April 2006, a High Court judge issued a declaration that section 3 of the Act was incompatible with the right to a fair trial under article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The system of control orders was described by Mr Justice Sullivan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Sullivan) as an 'affront to justice'.
Despite having passed permanent counter-terrorism legislation only a year earlier, in the shape of the Terrorism Act 2000 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_Act_2000), the British government's response to the September 11, 2001 attacks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11%2C_2001_attacks) was to rush through emergency legislation to increase powers to deal with individuals suspected of planning or assisting terrorist attacks within the UK.
A key feature of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-terrorism%2C_Crime_and_Security_Act_2001) was that resident foreigners suspected of terrorism could be interned without trial, if they could not be deported to another country without breaching British human rights legislation (for example, if they might be subject to torture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture) or the death penalty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_penalty) in their native country). Several individuals were interned, mainly in Belmarsh prison, under these powers; they were free to leave, but only if they left the country, which some did.
The Government claims that it has evidence against these individuals that is inadmissible in court — or unusable in open court due to security concerns — and is reluctant to allow this evidence to be used. However, the House of Lords ruled that the internment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment) of these people, without trial, was contrary to the Human Rights Act 1998 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_Act_1998), mainly because the powers only extended to foreign nationals; the new act allows control orders to be issued against British citizens as well as foreign nationals.
Control orders may contain restrictions that the Home Secretary or a court "considers necessary for purposes connected with preventing or restricting involvement by that individual in terrorism-related activity", including:
restrictions on the possession of specified articles or substances (such as a mobile telephone);
restrictions on the use of specified services or facilities (such as internet access);
restrictions on work and business arrangements;
restrictions on association or communication with other individuals, specified or generally;
restrictions on where an individual may reside and who may be admitted to that place;
a requirement to admit specified individuals to certain locations and to allow such places to be searched and items to be removed therefrom;
a prohibition on an individual being in specified location(s) at specified times or days;
restrictions to an individual's freedom of movement, including giving prior notice of proposed movements;
a requirement to surrender the individual's passport (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport);
a requirement to allow the individual to be photographed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photograph);
a requirement to cooperate with surveillance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance) of the individual's movements or communications, including electronic tagging (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_tagging);
a requirement to report to a specified person and specified times and places