I was idly reading through the reports of the latest terrorist trials and investigations in the UK when I suddenly realised there is plenty of evidence around our croft that could be used against me in a court of law.
Consider the evidence from some of the trials:
- One of seven men accused of plotting to blow up a gas pipeline in the UK was said to have a CD on his computer with details of the UK’s gas pipeline network. (He was a contractor for gas maintenance company Transco.)
- An Iraqi mini-cab driver was accused of having a video of potential terrorist targets in London, including “high profile” sights such as Big Ben, the London Eye and various Park Lane hotels. (He said it was a tourist video.) He also had a recording of Osama Bin Laden.
- An investigation into an alleged plot to blow up airliners had resulted in police finding more than 400 computers, 200 mobile telephones and 8,000 computer media items such as memory sticks, CDs and DVDs. Police also “removed” 6,000 gigabytes of data from computers, seized electronics components and “recovered” a number of video recordings. The alleged plotters were also said to have books on making improvised explosives and “a map of Afghanistan containing information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”.
- Evidence in previous trials has included street maps of London, tickets to UK football grounds, solar battery chargers and copies of the Koran.
All of this leaves me feeling rather uneasy.
When cleaning out some boxes of paperwork the other day, I found one of my old notebooks that was filled with diagrams of defensive minefields, details of various grenades, mines and demolition charges, instructions on crimping fuses and more.
It dates from when I turned out with the Assault Pioneer Platoon of a reserve infantry battalion in Australia, but there’s nothing in the notebook to indicate that. There’s just page after page of notes on explosives and ordnance.
I occasionally use Google Earth to look up places that catch my interest, including the Firth of Clyde (which contains the Faslane nucelar submarine base), parts of London (including the Houses of Parliament, the Tower of London and our old house), parts of the US (including Dell Rapids and Rapid City - which are somewhere near a big US air force base) and parts of Australia (including Lithgow which has a small arms factory - or is it making golf clubs these days?).
I also have various OS survey maps of the UK and street directories covering an odd assortment of British towns and cities.
I’ve also looked up various maps on Google in the process of researching global warming and among the islands under threat of rising sea levels are Diego Garcia - which has a key strategic US naval and air base.
Computers? We have four! That must be suspicious. And a couple of mobile phones.
Does it count in your favour if most of them don’t work? Or do they become electronic components that could be used in a bomb?
And because of my research into global warming, I have gigabytes of data on the UK energy infrastucture. I’m getting very worried now.
What else is there?
Even more electrical and electronic components are scattered about the place thanks to my various ideas and projects on home-brewed power generation.
The diesel, petrol and fertiliser in the steading buildings could all be used to make bombs. And what about the chicken manure - couldn’t you use this to manufacture saltpetre, as used in making gunpowder.
Then there’s the air rifle, the book on making long bows, and the book on medieval siege warfare, plus my plans for making a trebuchet.
Hmm, I could use a trebuchet to launch a dirty bomb made with chicken manure!
You can see where I’m heading. You could walk into anyone’s home, find any number of items that could be taken out of context and then put them into a “terrorist” context so they could be used against them in a court of law.
I’m fortunate not to have brown skin and a Islamic name or I could be in serious trouble.
But what happens if a radical Australian green group carries out a major terrorist act and the profilers discovered I fit the bill?
Could it be time for a big clean-out? Or would that also be seen as a sign of guilt?
While I definitely see what you mean on how so many things lying around our homes could be used against us in court, I still think that this overwhelming amount of time and energy put into investigating the “useless” things is still better than things being overlooked. Our world has turned into an unsafe place and I still believe that it is better to be safe than sorry. While some worthless information could be held against someone in court, it is still better than that worthless information being overlooked and a terrorists let go free.
But how do you know someone is a terrorist on this basis? Where is the intent in possessing any of these things?
As it happens, many (but not all) of the alleged terrorists in these cases have been acquitted when their cases came to court.
The problem is that the intelligence services, the police and the prosecutors can get tunnel vision. They only see what they expect to see.
This doesn’t just happen with terrorist cases. I’ve been out with my young sons and had police demand to see ID, demand to know why I’m out with the boys and demand to know my relationship with them.
No crime has been committed and to most reasonable people the only thing that is happening is that a man is playing in a park with two small boys.
But, if you’re only expecting to see criminal and deviant behaviour then you can only see a probable pervert with two children.
It does make me wonder about what the police saw when they shot dead a groom on his wedding day and wounded his two friends as they left a strip club in New York.
Did they see three drunks get in a car, back it into a couple of cars and hit a passerby? Or did they see three dangerous drug dealers using their vehicle as a weapon to attack police and ram their way out of a stakeout? (Remember the detectives were undercover and their vehciles were unmarked.)
Fishing expeditions by the intelligence services and the police will inevitably haul in fish, but there’s a big difference between a piranha and a trout.
And as for letting a “terrorist” go free, have we forgotten Blackstone’s doctrine that “the law holds that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer”. Or is that something else that has been suspended because of the “terrorist” threat?