Is the Home Office right ?

[Ross Anderson]

Alastair Kelman:

> The relative freedom we enjoy in the UK despite the 30 year war in 
> Northern Ireland has come about only because of good intelligence and 
> surveillance. Take that away and we are faced with implementing far more 
> repressive policies to counter the dangers of terrorism and organised 
> crime.

Nonsense. The war in Northern Ireland has been going on for 300 years
and all through that period the authorities' ability to find out what
the Jacobins / Fenians / IRA / INLA were up to has depended largely on
informers. Opening the mail, following people around and latterly
tapping phones and email has had a subsidiary role, e.g. catching
people at burglary or buggery so you can blackmail them to work for
you. (Next time a DTI person says `kiddieporn' the correct riposte is
`Kincora boys' home' :-) See Geraghty or any other decent history.

The view from security establishments other than Britain's is also at
odds with yours. As a Danish chief constable put it to me: `Northern
Ireland shows that you can't police by force. They have everything
there a policeman ever asked for - they have helicopters, submarines,
they own the phone system. But they don't have the support of the
people and so they're stuck.'

The correct response to Northern Ireland is to ignore it. Queen
Victoria had the right idea when she kept on riding out in her
carriage after the attempt on her life. The iron gates in Downing
Street remind us that Mrs Thatcher was made of much softer stuff.

The relative freedom we have on the mainland is not so much a product
of law as of culture. Culture in turn can be affected by laws, but
social inertia is huge; freedom was rarely won or lost in a single
day. There will be no sudden descent into Hades if Straw gets his way
- and no magic bullet for Ulster either. Nonetheless he is worth
opposing because of the pernicious long term effects if he succeeds.

Ross

PS We owe a lot to Queen Victoria. What would _she_ think of escrow?