Terrorist Murder In London Could Revive Snooper's Charter

judgecorp writes "Supporters of the Communications Data Bill (also known as the Snooper's Charter) have lost no time in calling for the Bill to be revived, in response to yesterday's brutal murder of a soldier on the streets of Woolwich, South London. The Bill would have allowed monitoring of all online communications — including who people contact and what websites they visit — but was shelved after Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg opposed it, effectively splitting Britain's coalition government on the issue. Now the fear of new terrorism could rekindle support, based on the argument that even 'lone wolf' attackers use the Internet."

Comments

Fear Mongering

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps I missed it, but how was this murder terrorism?

Re:Fear Mongering

[Hatta]

It wasn't terrorism, it was an act of war. The UK and the US are at war, why are you so surprised when the war hits home? People are just fine with senseless random killings of muslims half a world away, but kill one white European....

I'm absolutely not defending these people at all. I'm not fine with random killings on the street whether they are in the UK or Afghanistan. I'm just saying what they've done is no worse than our own public policy implemented by people we've elected. If you hate these people, you have to hate your own government, or be a hypocrit.

If you think this act is horrible, this is what the Afghan people deal with all the time.

Re:Fear Mongering

[Xest]

Dale Cregan shot and threw grenades at killing two police officers last year.

Raul Moat before that hunted for and shot a police officer in the face after having just shot two other people and said he was starting a war with the police.

Both of these were making political statements by attempting to instil fear, neither was classed as a terrorist incident.

The only difference this time is that the perpetrators identified as muslim. The fact they were talking to and not harming everyone else that was around afterwards means they were arguably less effective at instilling fear than people like Dale Cregan was, so if this was terrorism why were other such incidents not?

More realistically these seemed like a pair of London gangbangers desperate for a cause which they could use as an excuse to commit murder. They were not your usual middle eastern jihadis, they even quoted from the Christian bible which shows how poor their association with the jihadi ideology actually was.

We'd be better off dealing with London's gang problem once and for all (the one that triggered the riots) than we would pratting around treating this as a terrorist incident and investing in the security service's ability to snoop - hint: they knew about these guys anyway using existing ability and still couldn't/didn't stop them.

Re:Fear Mongering

[Xest]

I agree this wasn't terrorism but it wasn't war either. These people have no association with Iraq or Afghanistan, it seems they were most probably British.

That means it was not war. It was simple cold blooded violent murder and little else.

I'm anti Iraq/Afghanistan war too, but let's not pretend these guys were fighting for some cause, they were just killers looking for an excuse to kill.

Re:Fear Mongering

[Xest]

Right, and Dale Cregan shot one female police officer as she knocked on a door, and shot the other in the back as she ran away and then threw a grenade between the two of them whilst they were still alive and desperately trying to crawl away.

You'll have to excuse me if I still don't exactly see the difference even when the level of barbarism is taken into account. Even Raul Moat walking up to a police officer whose sat pulled up in his car, sticking a shotgun in his face and pulling the trigger doesn't strike me as particularly free from barbarism.

I agree none of these are ordinary murders, they're particularly extreme murders, but neither case is any more terrorism than the other. There was extreme barbarism in each case, and there was a message in each case.

Re:Fear Mongering

[BasilBrush]

There were plenty of cases of Germans attacking the Third Reich, more obviously there were several attempts by Germans to assassinate Hitler. That didn't make WWII a civil war. Just an international war with some within the country opposed to it.

For sure the Third Reich would have called it terrorism.

Crime, Terrorism, Political act, Resistance, Freedom Fighting. All these things are a matter of perspective. Each using terms to mould the events to the way they see it.

[Godwin smodwin]

Which doesn't in any way mean I have any sympathy for the event in Woolwich, but equally I don't have any sympathy for the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. I abhor violence.

Re:Fear Mongering

[tqk]

... civilian casualties are regrettable ...

Can we value human life any less? The massacre of innocent *non-combattants* is "regrettable"? Anyone who thinks like this has lost the right to be considered civilized. You shed crocodile tears. I will not regret your demise, nor shed any tears for the likes of you.

Re:Fear Mongering

[KGIII]

I was doing a little research for a question below and wanted to make sure that I had the facts before posting (a sin, I know) but it did lead me to an interesting article.

What definition of the term includes this horrific act of violence but excludes the acts of the US, the UK and its allies?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/23/woolwich-attack-terrorism-blowback

It is worth reading and made me think a bit. That's always a good thing, right? So, I recalled reading some comments about it up-thread and figured I'd share the link with you as you too may find it interesting. One of the good things about the internet is that it enables people to bring questions like this to the forefront and enables us to discuss and learn. For those of us who recall the pre-internet days the contrast is startling.

Re:Fear Mongering

[Synerg1y]

Based on that logic, anybody who decides to commit a crime, can write a memo stating that they're doing it for jihad before they do it and become a terrorist?

I'm with OP this is fear mongering by the media, won't stop the sheeple from crying terrorism and whatever else the media tells them though!

Bad Haircut!!!

[Mikkeles]

My barber gave me a bad haircut! We need a Snoopers' Charter! Now!

Why can't we be more like Norway?

[serviscope_minor]

Why can't we be more like Norway?

The prosecutor actually shook hands with Brevik because that's how they always do it and the hell some mass murdering bastard is going to make them give in and change their ways for the worse.

Yet one person gets murdered here and everyone seems to be yelling "terrorist" and going weak at the knees in fear and stupidity.

Re:Why can't we be more like Norway?

[serviscope_minor]

You have a rather special understanding of things if you think taking action to prevent the future murder of people enjoying the Queen's peace in Britain is somehow making things worse.

Because making new laws to prevent murders could never be a bad thing. Same goes for terrorists, peados and criminals right?

Murder is already very, very illegal. No new laws are needed.

Planning murder is already very illegal. No new laws are needed.

Soliciting murder is already very illegal. No new laws are needed.

Starting from July 7/7/2005, an average of 7 people are killed per year due to terrorist attacks. That's on the same level as eye-wateringly obscure medical diseases.

Basically, any money put into preventing those is a complete waste: the money would be vastly better spent elsewhere, such as improving road safety.

Will you welcome a new overlord from a foreign land if they simply offer you peace for submission?

No, I'll try and shoot them, just like the police shot at these murderers. And see, no new laws were needed.

Re:Why can't we be more like Norway?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, as this appears to be as good a point as any to say this:

I'm a Londoner.

We do not yell, we do not go weak at the knees.

We have been bombed in more ways I care to count, We've been stabbed more times than I care to mention.

We don't fap and we don't fuss, we keep going because that's the only thing to do.

This wasn't an attack by Muslims, this was an attack by cowards.

Nothing more, we should spit on their pitiful self importance.

Anything else is terrorism so be careful of your hearts as that where it resides.

We, London, continue.

Science requires Evidence.

[VortexCortex]

That the Snooper's Charter will reduce the threat of Terrorism is an untested hypothesis. Prove it will achieve such goals, THEN we'll talk about having it be a law.

The usual immoral nonsense

[gweihir]

Of course this bill would not prevent any repetition of this act and countless other ways psychopaths with religion can kill people. It will however foster a police- and surveillance-state where the whole population is kept in fear permanently. From the efforts to reclassify this act as "terrorism", I conclude that keeping the population in fear is highly desirable for the UK government, possibly because it is failing at its job in countless other areas.

Just great

[joh]

First, this wasn't terrorism, it was war. Killing a soldier of a nation that kills people in a nation you view as "your" nation is not terrorism, it's plain war. Well, at least it's every bit war as drone attacks in Yemen and Pakistan are war. Or are the soldiers controlling the drones from Texas terrorists and killers?

And: Snooping on all Internet communications to catch "lone wolf" terrorists is a War on the People, nothing less.

This isn't going to end well and this "attack" (on one soldier, OMG) is the smallest part of it. There are people in Britain knived down in the streets every day. Two guys decide to change the course of history and everybody is helping to get the job done. Just great, really.

Re:How about...

[Xest]

Remind me how many people died in the boston bombings again? How did or could guns have helped there exactly?

Remind me how well your firearms trained campus cop fared against the two brothers responsible again?

If we had US gun laws then this would've looked a lot less like a random murder and a whole lot more like an Anders Breivik massacre, so no, how about we don't have US style gun laws here.

The fact the most these guys could muster was a rusty pistol that they appeared to have managed to make little use of and a bunch of knives meaning this was only a one victim attack is actually a vindication of the fact that our gun laws are pretty effective. If even determined killers can't get more than a knackered rusty pistol between two of them then great, our laws are working really well.