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Comment by diggan | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, it seems to be a very over-reaching law, as far as I can gather. From https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

> Who can be examined?

> The examining officer may only stop and question a person for the purpose of allowing a determination of whether that person appears to be someone who is or who has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of “terrorism” as defined in section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000

I guess that makes sense... But then in the end of the same paragraph:

> An examining officer may stop and question a person whether or not there are grounds for suspecting that the person is or has been concerned in terrorism.

So, essentially anyone can be examined for any reason (or no reason at all)?

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They may stop and question anybody. But they cannot stop and question people for the purpose of, for example, recovering stolen goods.

Basically, the officer must currently be working on a terrorism case to be able to use these powers.

Stolen goods can't be used for terrorism?

I mean how am I supposed to know if you don't intend to use that banana you didn't pay for as part of a phalic terrorism display without getting access to your text messages?

You’re deliberately ignoring an honest explanation.

But does the answer actually say what the law states, or does the law state what the (ignoring) response is describing. What was intended by a law and what the law actually says can vary wildly; and calling that out, when the law gives far greater power than it was intended to, is both reasonable and important.

The law says you just have to say the magic words, then you get full power. If you slip up and admit you were doing it for another reason, you might get a slap on the wrist.

You are correct. But in historical practice, we see that laws get misused. Powers, however legitimate, get abused. Restrictions gets stretched, and then stretched to the breaking point, and then obliterated.

So, while they deliberately ignored an honest explanation, they also had a legitimate point.

No, they're pointing out the ways that explanation is dishonest. You cannot look at the political landscape and tell anyone in good conscience that officials will use an honest interpretation of the law.

And again, that's not at all a theoretical exercise here.

No one sincerely thinks Craig Murray might be a terrorist. Those who would say such a thing are in fact not sincere. They just say it as a political loyalty statement, or to psych themselves up to abuse him/gloat in his abuse.

With every law that is as... vague.. as this, I always ask myself one question: "If the Nazis would rise to power, how badly could they abuse it by doing only slight changes to how it's interpreted?"

Here the answer is: Pretty bad

Your laws don't have to survive a well meaning democratic government. They have to survive one that is cunning, evil and tries to actively abolish the Rule of Law and democracy.

This is a bad law.

That this level of wisdom is buried layers deep in an HN post is a bit of a shame.

Spot on.

An evil government is not going to obey the laws anyway, so might as well make the well meaning government more effective to prevent the other one.

Historically there are not many instances of this happening tho, unless we are speaking of truly absolute majorities that follow already dictatoric governments. Evil governments have it very easy if the laws they encounter when they get into office are ones that are practical for evil governments.

Even the actual Nazis had to fake a reason for why they need to abolish democracy ("Reichstagsbrand"). The reason why they could do that were laws. Laws that might have looked okay in democratic times.

When you have a healthy, strong democracy your division of powers and opposition should be able to hold off a evil government for enough time voters can vote them out again. That is a core idea of democracy and the reason why there are the different branches.

Now your governments can create/modify/remove laws in a way that weakens that division between the branches and makes it easier for evil government to remove their opposition, influence the justice system and command the military to break their oaths etc.

Our task during non-evil governments is to avoid accidentally weakening those defenses.

Your perspective of history seems limited to the current first world countries.

Governments in Asia, Africa, and South America routinely ignore laws for petty reasons.

Yeah, that means you didn't have the proper seperation of powers to begin with, which was kinda the point of my argument.

If you're down that road and eroded that seperation, getting that thing back into the bottle is really hard without revolutions or massive public uproar. If you never had that seperation to begin with, even worse.

TL;DR: evil governments can ignore laws if the justice system is not independent. Hence the inportance of keeping it independent.

Step one; get overreaching, extreme powers passed into law because they'll only be used to fight "terrorism".

Step two; redefine everything as terrorism.

We're already at step two, since no one sincerely thinks Craig Murray is a terrorist.

He is not likely taken part in terrorist activities personally, but he admitted to supporting terrorists, so it's not out of the realm of plausible he also provided material support and aid to them. I'm not saying it necessarily happened, but it's not unbelievable.

In the post admitted to supporting Palestinians, and pro-Palestine causes. Is there more to this, or are you painting all Palestinians as terrorists?

He supports Hamas and Hezbollah: <https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/171333500612114051...>.

If only all fascists in sheepskins would get this treatment to start with

Stop with this cheap "all Palestinians" baiting. He explicitly and directly endorsed Hamas and Hezbollah on his social media. And directly said he endorses any action by them right after Hamas murdered 1400 people, so there's no doubt whether or not he makes any distinctions. Maybe you should do at least minimal research before regurgitating formulas the media stuffed your head with.

Show us some proof. Tall claims require tall evidence.

For the record, Israel is killing medics and press members, and have done so for their entire existence. Their status as a state, and the US's backing of them at any cost including threats of violence and terrorist accusations if we don't just 'fall in line'.

Maybe you should realize the character of who you're supporting. Israel is not a legitimate country and the US has no right instigating more bullshit in that region.

There are no correct sides in this conflict except with innocent civilians which nobody seems to genuinely care about.

Accuse me of whatever you want, the alternative is being okay with one side raping and pillaging, which imo is worse.

I'm not going to debate your ignorance and your hate. The proof that Murray supports terrorism is in his own tweets, which are quoted many times here. You are free to remain blind to it, as you are obviously blind to many other things, in service of your hate, which makes you support murderers and rapists. That still doesn't change the facts.

Neither Hamas or Israel are correct in their aggression. I urge you to read about the formation of Israel and ask yourself what value colonialism has in the modern age.

Strange that favoring peaceful civilians, of any ethnicity btw, means hatred. People are so binary in their thought that they assume only two sides exist.

And how is the detained going to ascertain that the officer really is working on a terrorism case and not conducting their own fishing expedition? Given that no lawyer may be present, I'm also sure that the target of the investigation is not to be disclosed to the victim.

I would just sit there and repeat "I want a lawyer" until they actually arrest me for something.

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