A legal rebuke to this secrecy culture

Say what you will, the Law Lords have done the cause of freedom proud! Control orders drastically curtail the movement and freedom of association of suspects, people not convicted (or charged) of any offence. Now the Law Lords have found the system “legally flawed!”

“Ministers ought to face up to the fact that they can only deal with these terror suspects in two ways: either put them on trial or allow them to go free. The first option would be preferable. Assuming that the police and security services have not been utterly incompetent or corrupt, there is probably a case for treating these individuals as a potential threat to public safety.

The barrier to such prosecutions is the fact that phone-tap evidence – which we must presume provides the bulk of the case in such instances – is inadmissible in conventional courts.

The intelligence services claim that opening up such evidence to public scrutiny would expose the methods of the secret services and compromise their work. Yet this has not been the experience of the US, which has long allowed intercept evidence in its courts. And the opposition parties have signalled their willingness to accept safeguards in any legislation to maintain the privacy that the intelligence services need to do their job.”

See HERE.

El Cantar Del Los Seres Libres

El Cantar Del Los Seres Libres

Gato montés, hermano de mi alma,
indómito sé tú, y sin cadena;
no sigas senda alguna de los hombres,
y vélate en vistillas y malezas.
Halcón del cielo, compañero alado,
sino para cazar, nunca descendas;
y como en torre, anídate en peñasco
que rodean fosos anchos de torrentes.
Gran cárabo, trasnochador conmigo,
en claustro cavernoso de cipreses,
guárdate los secretos escondidos
a quien no ve la luz en las tinieblas.

Clark Ashton Smith