Picked up by Revk who's been banging on about the ludicrousness of banning encryption for a while now: http://www.revk.uk/2016/10/next-it-will-be-burning-books.htm...
That's the thing with these people. Its not just idiocy, it's malicious intent. They really do think Orwells 1984 was a handbook not a warning.
Which is stupid of course. S5 is pernicious and unjust overreach, but let's criticize it on factual grounds not misleading exaggeration.
Regarding the 'being suspicious makes you a criminal' clause of the act, it's horribly worded and is in serious need to revision, but the commenter on the blog saying it can't override presumption of innocence until proven guilty is correct. This provision of the law would never get past any competent court. It's a nasty, horrible law but is hardly the end of all justice in Britain.
the problem with that is defining terrorism. Since the government defines what legally constitutes terrorism they exclude themselves from being perpetrators of said activity.
However under the technical definition of Terrorism, which is "the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims." I can make a case that almost every nation state on the planet is guilty of terrorism in some fashion. Leaders of those nation states are then terrorists.
Most people however give a break to using violence if it is "legal" under the laws of a nation, they associate terrorism with the illegal use of violence, instead of the actual definition which is ANY use of violence legal or not "in the pursuit of political aims."
In some instances yes it would be terrorism. Terrorism does not have to involve massive loss of life, or even be life threatening.
People today seem to believe terrorism is only when Brown people blow themselves up in a Town Square, or when someone goes on a Mass Shooting rampage under the guise of a religion.
Terrorism can take many forms, and is more rampant then people want to acknowledge. People today only want to focus on Islamic terrorism, and exclude almost all other forms as they seem to be more socially acceptable often because they are legal
The creation of dual-use tools that can also be used for rule-by-law necessarily involves taking on a plausible existential risk to our society.
To justify this, the threat that they are countering must pose an existential threat to our society that is demonstrably greater.
Translation: "This law is aimed at scary brown people, so I don't have anything to worry about."
Edited - dialing it back a bit.
So apparently not exaggerating a racially charged issue is racism and objecting only based on facts and not made up conjecture doesn't count as objecting. The Trumpification of rational discourse is now complete.