As a benificiary of the protection of intellectual property (IP) in more ways than one, I ordinarily respect “pay to read” articles on the Internet and only quote sections that can be covered by a reasonable interpretation of “fair use”.

However, in the wake of the bombings and other recent events in London, The Economist, in general a very level-headed publication, even on topics that strike close to their home, has published a “subscriber-only” article that I believe is so important for Americans to read that I must risk the wrath of the IP police.

Traditions are very important in England. Given that they have an unwritten constitution that is based on tradition more than a document (living, interpreted, strictly by the original intention, or whatever preference you have for the US Constitution and its reading by the US Supreme Court), it is not surprising that other, less critical but possibly equally important traditions are honored, and not only in the breech.

The tradition of the London Bobby, the policeman armed with only a truncheon, even if that, is old and revered…

…and apparently now dead in the face of terrorism, even though the Irish Republican Army and their fellow travelers committed similar atrocities of killing innocents.

The new face of London’s police
Jul 28th 2005
From The Economist print edition
Policemen and politicians are shooting from the hip. That’s bad

LONDONERS are living under a shadow. Nine bombs since July 7th in the hands of young men who without warning sought to take as many lives as they could - including their own - represent an alarming new threat. One lethal shooting, of an innocent Brazilian man by London’s Metropolitan Police on July 22nd, bears witness to the perils of the response.

In extraordinary times countries seize on extraordinary measures. The police marksmen who gunned down Jean Charles de Menezes in an underground train were acting under procedures designed to stop a suspected suicide-bomber before he detonates his charge - in the words of their former boss, to “destroy his brain instantly, utterly”. In the rush to arm itself against the bombers, the government this week laid the ground for emergency anti-terror legislation that includes powers to stop those training terrorists or planning an attack, to prosecute anyone “glorifying” or fomenting terror, and possibly to let police hold suspects for up to three months.

Because suicide attacks are new to Britain, it is right that the country should examine its defences. But Mr de Menezes’s violent death contains two lessons - that the police and the security services will make full and frequent use of their “exceptional” powers, and that they will make mistakes.

Guard the guards

Since those first blasts, the police have on 250 separate occasions thought they might be dealing with a suicide-bomber, the chief of the Metropolitan Police reported this week. They have almost opened fire no fewer than seven times, Sir Ian Blair disclosed. His moral - that “we have got as close to calling it as ‘that’ and we haven’t” - and news of an inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission into the shooting were designed to be reassuring. Instead they suggest that, in the three to six months of the inquiry, police procedures that have once failed fatally will be tested thousands of times.

That matters because the police face some hard questions about Mr Menezes’s shooting at Stockwell in south London. On what grounds was he followed as he left the only entrance of a block which contained not only a flat under surveillance, but many others beside? Why, if police thought he was dangerous enough to kill once he boarded a tube, was he first allowed to board a bus? Was he warned when he began to flee the (plainclothes) police pursuing him? When the new guidelines for shooting-to-kill suicide-bombers were introduced at the start of 2002, why weren’t the public or Parliament told?

A YouGov poll for The Economist shows overwhelming public support for the police and their tactics (see article). That is partly a well-deserved reflection on an investigation that has rapidly identified the terrorists. But the public should temper its gratitude with vigilance. Britons need to be sure that, if the investigation into Mr Menezes’s death finds fault with the operation, police procedure and training will change, and that whoever is responsible will be held accountable.

It seems likely that the police over-reacted on the basis of poor information. Politicians do the same under pressure. Emergency legislation which is at first judged a triumph often turns out to be either authoritarian or foolish. The internment of suspected Irish terrorists without trial in the 1970s turned out to be counterproductive; Britain made itself a laughing stock when it gave employment to resting actors who were paid to read the words of banned Sinn Fein politicians.

We have seen the future

Good policing is about good information. Draconian or daft laws corrode the very links to Muslim Britain that the government and police say they need to combat terrorism. The new legislation will be drafted in haste, but is likely to remain in force for a long time. Although the second wave of bombs on London on July 21st failed to detonate, it carried a baleful message: bombings and manhunts will be part of British life for many years.

Which is why, as Britain contemplates new emergency powers, it needs to build in safeguards against the constant danger of mistakes and the police’s tendency to make full use of their powers. One protection is for all new legislation and policy to require an annual revision. A ritual, perhaps, but one that creates the scope for debate and a reminder that what has come to be part of the furniture of law enforcement was once seen as a regrettable sacrifice of liberty to security.

For the same reason, new legislation should when possible be supervised by judges and, better, the courts. The three months sought by the police is too long to lock someone away without charge. The lengthy incarceration of an innocent young Muslim man (that, after all, is who would be confined) would destroy his faith in Britain and the loyalty of his family and friends. If there is a case for legislation to allow suspects to be held more than 14 days, the person to contain the security services’ zeal is a judge.

But the best place for suspected terrorists is in the dock. That is a reason to help bring people to trial, by creating a new charge of acts preparatory to terrorism and also to overrule the security services and admit as evidence information from intelligence intercepts. There are ways to minimise the fear this will compromise intelligence operations.

The third safeguard is free speech. Nobody likes preachers spouting hate. Under today’s laws a jury convinced that their words lead directly to violence can put them in jail. But the new laws would outlaw something far vaguer and harder to define—and sweep bookshops and websites into the net.

That is both foolish and draconian. Foolish because in an open society and the age of the internet such a ban on free speech would not work. Draconian because it elevates the jihadis’ arguments. Are they so potent that they should be dignified by being banned? Are not the counter-arguments upon which British society is founded stronger? Nothing would be more beguiling to disillusioned Muslim youth than the illicit words of imams banished by British bureaucracy.

Tony Blair this week vowed that his government would yield “not one inch” to the terrorists. It just has.

Even in the face of repeated attacks, even without a written bill of rights that we enjoy in the United States, there are those in the United Kingdom who call for preservation of the unwritten rights that are so easily lost in the heat of calls to “destroy the evildoers!” that inevitably arise after atrocities.

It is our reaction to the actions of the evildoers, the compromises to our freedoms and liberties we are willing to make that result in us oppressing ourselves as much as the evildoers tell their followers they are supposedly oppressed by us, that convert us into the very evil we are portrayed as by those who hate us, our reaction and any actions taken in consequence that in the end determines who wins this conflict.

Think carefully before you act, a lesson taught to me when I was very young.

Think carefully before you act.

Whose side are you on?

What actions do you support?

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