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.

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.