Very true, how control orders came into being had ...

2013-11-06T13:13:13.107+00:00

Very true, how control orders came into being had slipped my mind. And one of the main reasons we still can't prosecute some of these people we now also know is the security services were fearful if intercept evidence was made admissible their wider than known surveillance would become public. A very tangled web.

There's an interesting omission from your intr...

2013-11-06T10:30:42.514+00:00

There's an interesting omission from your introduction:

Those connected with terrorism who really are dangerous, or at least pose a threat to the public in this country either directly or indirectly are prosecuted, or in the cases of Babar Ahmed and Abu Qatada, deported.

Control orders were brought in specifically to deal with the "none of the above" category - those who weren't British nationals but couldn't be deported for human rights reasons. In other words, to deal with the people who had been released from indefinite detention in Belmarsh - but this guy seems to be a British national, so he would never have been in Belmarsh. Yet nobody - politician or commentator - is saying "why didn't we prosecute this guy?". It speaks volumes for the way in which new security measures, introduced to deal with specific threats, are naturalised and become part of the furniture.

Comments on Obsolete: The same old priorities.

Very true, how control orders came into being had ...

There's an interesting omission from your intr...