Quote:The UK is the field test arena for the finest in Orwellian police-state tactics and equipment meant for subjugating the world.

Quote:

Quote: The UK is the field test arena for the finest in Orwellian police-state tactics and equipment meant for subjugating the world.

Nicely said.

Quote:Counter-terror police have recorded a 37% increase in "suspicious reconnaissance" of potential targets in the first four months of 2007.

Metropolitan Police commanders said the "undiminished" threat level justified the continued use of random stop-and-search powers.

But they accepted the reasons for almost 23,000 stops under anti-terror laws in London needed more explaining.

Campaigners say anti-terrorism stop and searches "criminalise" communities.

However, the Home Office may expand the powers yet further.

In February London police came under fire from their watchdog, the Metropolitan Police Authority, in a major report into the effect of counter-terrorism policing on the capital.

The watchdog found that the force's use of special anti-terror stop and search powers were doing "untold harm" to communities in the capital, in particularly Muslims.

Under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, police officers may randomly stop someone without reasonable suspicion, providing the area has been designated a likely target for an attack.

The power is currently in force across the whole of London.

Under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 police officers may randomly stop someone without reasonable suspicion, providing the area has been designated a likely target for an attack. The power is currently in force across the whole of London.

But coming under fire for the use of the power, senior officers told the watchdog that the threat to the UK from terrorism remained "undiminished" - and that police had to use as broad a range of tools as possible.

Commander John McDowell, the Met's deputy national co-ordinator for counter-terrorism in the UK, said he agreed with analysis that the threat had worsened.

"There have been public pronouncements that the threat has grown in volume and I would concur with that," he said.

"Since 2005 we have seen an increase in activity and an increase in the gradient of the graph."

Commander McDowell said that the first four months of 2007 had seen the police record a 37% increase in what it classed as suspicious reconnaissance - incidents that may be the first stage in planning an attack on the public.

He cautioned that this increase in reporting may be partly attributable to improved intelligence gathering as the security services expand counter-terrorism operations.

Powers defended

Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman of the Met Police said the figure showed why officers were right to continue to use the Section 44 powers.

While police could never be certain that a stop directly reduced the threat of a specific potential attack, he said it was important in a wider counter-terrorism context.

"What we do know is the mode of behaviour around a terrorist," he said. "If they feel that they could be stopped and searched under these powers, they could be prevented [from attacking]. What I don't know is how many are truly prevented."

New book

Assistant Commissioner Hayman said that he accepted some of the criticisms of how the powers had been deployed - in particularly the lack of public information on who was being stopped.

He said the force would introduce a new rule book for officers involved in Section 44 stops - and the Met would also build a publicity campaign to explain to key communities why police believed the power was necessary.

Some officers were "unsure" of how the powers should be used, according to the Met's report into their use.

The defence of the powers came days after the Home Office said it was considering introducing a wider "stop and question" law.

The new power would give police an automatic right to stop and question anyone in the UK about suspected terrorism, building on the Section 44 power currently in force.

The proposal immediately drew fire from civil liberties groups and Muslim campaigners who predicted it would criminalise entire communities.

Quote:Federal agents do not need a search warrant to monitor a suspect's computer use and determine the e-mail addresses and Web pages the suspect is contacting, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

In a drug case from San Diego County, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco likened computer surveillance to the "pen register" devices that officers use to pinpoint the phone numbers a suspect dials, without listening to the phone calls themselves.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of pen registers in 1979, saying callers have no right to conceal from the government the numbers they communicate electronically to the phone companies that carry their calls.

Federal law requires court approval for a pen register. But because it is not considered a search, authorities do not need a search warrant, which would require them to show that the surveillance is likely to produce evidence of a crime.

They also do not need a wiretap order, which would require them to show that less intrusive methods of surveillance have failed or would be futile.

In Friday's ruling, the court said computer users should know that they lose privacy protections with e-mail and Web site addresses when they are communicated to the company whose equipment carries the messages.

Likewise, the court said, although the government learns what computer sites someone visited, "it does not find out the contents of the messages or the particular pages on the Web sites the person viewed."

The search is no more intrusive than officers' examination of a list of phone numbers or the outside of a mailed package, neither of which requires a warrant, Judge Raymond Fisher said in the 3-0 ruling.

Defense lawyer Michael Crowley disagreed. His client, Dennis Alba, was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being convicted of operating a laboratory in Escondido that manufactured the drug ecstasy.

Some of the evidence against Alba came from agents' tracking of his computer use. The court upheld his conviction and sentence.

Expert evidence in Alba's case showed that the Web addresses obtained by federal agents included page numbers that allowed the agents to determine what someone read online, Crowley said.

The ruling "further erodes our privacy," the attorney said. "The great political marketplace of ideas is the Internet, and the government has unbridled access to it."