British police and security services already have some of the most powerful surveillance laws in the world, with weak judicial oversight and little criticism on privacy issues from a public that generally trusts its government and Civil Service.
Surveillance cameras are everywhere, especially in cities, and there are relatively few restrictions on the mass collection of telephone and internet data by the government.
All of which raises the uncomfortable question of what more can be done to prevent the kind of terrorist attack that killed seven people in central London over the weekend.
.. Despite the huge armed presence in public spaces and new detention and surveillance powers, the impact has been limited, and, if anything, it may be further alienating already marginalized communities.
.. “It will only be defeated when we turn people’s minds away from this violence,” she said, and make young people “understand that our values, pluralistic British values, are superior to anything offered by the preachers and supporters of hate.”
.. For the last decade, he said, the British have promoted a policy of getting Muslim communities to cooperate with security forces, “which is pretty much the opposite of the French approach.”
Mrs. May is acknowledging that “the communities are not so good at policing themselves,” Mr. Heisbourg said.
.. “You can’t eradicate the internet,” he said. “These people have not gone away but gone to a different platform, one much more difficult for intelligence agencies to monitor.”
.. On Sunday, Mrs. May’s successor as home secretary, Amber Rudd, said that technology companies could do “so much more” to restrict extremism online.
.. she also said that social media giants should limit end-to-end encryption, which many extremist groups use to plot attacks.
.. the British government passed some of the most far-reaching legislation in the world, giving law enforcement agencies widespread powers to monitor both internet and phone traffic. Britain currently has access to the metadata of online communications without a warrant, but not to the content of individual messages.
.. “In terms of surveillance power, Britain is already better equipped than any other European country,” said Mr. Neumann of King’s College London. “There is no real judicial oversight
.. “The British have no trouble listening in to anyone’s phone or going into anyone’s house,” he said. “But the government uses those powers very carefully, which shows how the unspoken consensus here works,” he added, noting that the country has no written Constitution.
.. Anjem Choudary, a lawyer who managed to avoid breaking the law while spending nearly two decades preaching jihadist views. He was convicted in 2016, only when film emerged of him pledging allegiance to the Islamic State
.. “He was a real life radical preacher who recruited people face to face,” he said, “and much more important for jihad in Britain than Twitter or Facebook.”
.. “Choudary was for years the single person most responsible for Islamist recruiting and propaganda, but he wasn’t charged until 2015, when May had been home secretary for five years,” Mr. Neumann said.
Canada is not a great democracy, but do we care?
The majority of powers the Turkish president gained — the freedom to appoint cabinet ministers and senior judges without parliamentary approval, the power to unilaterally dismiss parliament, the power to decree certain sorts of laws without parliament at all — are all powers the Canadian prime minister already has. Yet no one would claim Canada is less than a full democracy, and it’s worth pondering why.
Any Canadian loudly worrying about the replacement of Turkish democracy “with what amounts to a dictatorship” — in the words of the Globe and Mail editorial board — should take a moment to consider how Canada’s political system would look if a third world tinpot proposed adopting it.
.. We can certainly question the Turkish government’s intentions. President Erdogan has clear authoritarian tendencies and exists in a country with an authoritarian political culture.
.. Yet the Erdogan administration’s official justification for last week’s amendments (and presumably the motive of the 51% of Turks who voted for it), that is, the need to make government more efficient and effective, is a common justification for the more authoritarian aspects of the Canadian political system as well
.. Canadian prime ministers come to power by winning control of the lower house of parliament, an achievement which almost never requires winning a majority of the popular vote. PMs then appoint members of the upper house directly, which means it can be taken for granted that any legislation they propose will quickly sail into law.
.. by the end of his term Harper had appointed seven of the court’s nine justices
.. America, with its feuds between the White House and Congress, and contentious Supreme Court nomination hearings, is often explicitly cited as an example to avoid, a system in which “nothing gets done” because there are too many competing poles of democratic authority.
.. the Canadian system, in which a prime minister is elected once every four years and given more or less free reign to do as he wishes
.. What’s feared is not a political system, but the particular ideologue running it. What’s feared is chauvinistic strongmen, not strongmen per se.
The Supreme Court jumps into a playground fight over a phony war on religion
It was a manufactured controversy, cooked up by conservative interest groups that are hoping to chip away at constitutional provisions in 39 states restricting taxpayer money from going to churches.
.. The complaint became irrelevant last week when the state’s new governor, Eric Greitens, reversed Missouri’s position and said he would allow religious organizations to compete for such grants.
.. Sonia Sotomayor asked Layton: If representatives of the state “are not willing to fight this case, are they manufacturing adversity by appointing you?”
.. It was about interest groups whose business model depends on perpetuating the culture wars trying to frighten people into thinking Christianity is under siege. It was a springtime version of the annual “war on Christmas.”
.. Michael Farris, CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented Trinity in the case, was fairly straightforward about his motives, telling reporters in the plaza that “there’s a broad concern among religious people in this country that we’re becoming second-class citizens.”
.. Layton told the justices that Missouri in 1820 adopted language based on Thomas Jefferson’s 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which said that “no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.”
.. What has changed now? Nothing — except the rise of interest groups (on both sides) that justify their existence and boost their fundraising with such controversies.
.. The goal this time: to roll back restrictions on public money going to churches. An article in the conservative National Review argued that “a victory for Trinity Lutheran would fundamentally alter the landscape of school choice.”
.. Eventually, though, he admitted that “why we’re here in the first place is the Missouri state constitutional provision” — the one saying no public money may be used “in aid of any church.”
.. So that’s what it’s about: Invalidating dozens of state constitutional provisions keeping public money out of churches. “There are 39 states with constitutional amendments like the one Missouri has.
Another Hatchet Job on Snowden
After Defense Secretary Robert Gates had joined other senior officials in lamenting the “grave damage” from Manning’s revelations, Gates was asked by Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin to put it in writing. Gates came back with an honest report: Early claims of damage had been, in Gates’s words, “significantly overwrought.”
.. Yet, balancing whatever that “damage” was is the significance of Snowden’s argument that the warrantless bulk surveillance of Americans was illegal under the Constitution and created the risk of a future leader imposing a “turnkey tyranny” on the United States because of all the embarrassing and incriminating information that would be collected on American citizens.
There is now no doubt that Snowden’s constitutional concerns were well-founded and it is not hard to imagine how an unscrupulous politician might make effective use of people’s personal secrets or their unguarded comments.
But it is easier to discredit Snowden by simply portraying him as a Russian spy.
.. Any contact with Russians – no matter how unintentional in Snowden’s case – is regarded as somehow disqualifying.
.. At one point, Epstein glibly says of Snowden, “In signing this [nondisclosure] document, he swore an oath not to divulge any of this information.”
But that’s not correct. The only oath that we, as military or other government officials swear is: “To support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.”
Ethicists describe such an oath as a “supervening value,” far more serious than a promise like that embedded in the contract one signs in agreeing not to disclose classified information that could be harmful to US national security. In other words, what do you do when your oath conflicts with the contract language, which one has the priority?
.. Watching what happened to fellow whistleblowers – like Thomas Drake – who tried to “go through channels,” Snowden knew that he had to “get out of Dodge” to have any hope of remaining at liberty long enough to complete his mission.