The Serious Civil Liberty Destruction Act 2007
The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 was bad, but it just got worse. Thanks to the Serious Crime Act 2007 it is now not only a criminal offence to mount an unauthorised protest it is also an offence to "encourage or assist" in such a protest, for example to talk about it on a blog, for which you can get up to 51 weeks in prison. Even longer than this government wants to be able to imprison people without charge. This law also attempts to stiffle whistleblowers, but there is a defence of 'reasonableness' however once again they have reversed the burden of proof and it is up to you to prove that whatever you did was reasonable. There is a lot more to be worried about in this law as well, all of which is covered by SpyBlog. Some on the left say that Libertarians complain a lot about Labour but this act amiably demonstrates the reason for this, Labour is simply the ne plus ultra of civil liberty destroyers in this country.
posted by chris at 11/07/2007 09:52:00 am
2 Comments:
I might move somewhere more liberal, perhaps North Korea.
To summarise/paraphrase section 45, plus the notes on interpreting it in other parts of the Act: It is an offence to commit an act capable of assisting or encouraging an offence where you believe that the offence will occur and that your act will assist or encourage the offence.
Blogging about an illegal demonstration after the event will obviously not count since it couldn't assist or encourage the demonstration!
However blogging about a planned illegal demonstration arguably assists anyone who wishes to take part in it by informing them of it, especially if you also give details of when it's taking place, where to meet up, how to get there. Your only defence is to argue under section 50 that your blogging was a "reasonable" action. Perhaps you could claim that by putting all those details up, you ensured that any policemen reading the blog would be fully informed of what's planned!
I'm covering this issue at Magna Carta Plus with this (draft) briefing document.
Your comments would be appreciated.
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