no No NO!

I've been pretty blasé about the slow erosion of our civil liberties in the UK over the last few months. When I heard that the government had granted itself the right to detain suspected terrorists indefinitely without charging them with anything concrete (dreadfully inconvenient to have your charges successfully contested, don't you know), I was a little disturbed, but shrugged it off as paranoia. After the transport network attack on 7^th July just past, the right to search individuals without warrant or probable suspicion was granted to the Metropolitan Police operating on the network. I read this as a short-lived attempt at heightened visibility to avert accusations of indifference, and kept moving. Except when being stopped to have my bags searched, of course.

And now an innocent suggestion by ACPOS comes to my attention. Its appeal to the common-sense notion of justice - the same common-sense that dictates the removal of dissidents from the country irrespective of their right to free speech - makes it likely that it'll slip under the radar of the civil rights groups and result in a toehold on the plinth of totalitarianism - establishment of guilt without trial. It's a lovely notion that, if Simon Harris had been on the offenders list (assuming he is, in fact, responsible for Rory Blackhall's death), he would, by some miracle of temporal displacement, have been apprehended before he was due in court and therefore before Rory was killed, but it's pure fantasy.

Whether Simon Harris is guilty of any of these charges or not, putting in motion events that can reasonably only take place after guilt is established beyond doubt would have made no difference in this instance and would be unlikely to make a difference in any conceivable instance. What it would be, however, is a clear transgression of one of the central tenets of the modern justice system - that one is innocent until one is proven guilty. Charging someone with a crime is not enough.