In five pages this paper discusses how freedom of information and civil liberties issues have been affected by the United Kingdom's antiterrorist legislation. Ten sources are cited in the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: JL5_JLukterr.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Commentators have pointed out, in the UK, the EU
and the USA, that the two major flaws in the new British anti-terrorist legislation are the way in which it has been implemented and the extensive powers which it allocates
to the government, not all of which are directly concerned with the prevention of terrorism.
As Williams (2001) notes, both in the US and the UK there has been something of a knee-jerk reaction to
the implementation of laws relating to the war against terrorism, which have tended to gloss over already established principles of civil liberties in the rush to ensure that terrorists are
traced and brought to justice. The National Council for Civil Liberties (2001) makes the point that there are certain measures included in the new British bill which are not directly
concerned with the attacks of September 11th or its aftermath, and which have a much broader range of application than simply the prevention of terrorism, a point which is reiterated
strongly by Cohen (2001). He notes that
David Blunkett had based his bill on the end-product of a trawl of (the loopholes in) our current laws (Cohen, 2001, npa) and that he had reiterated his commitment to
civil liberties and the democratic process. However, the definition of terrorism on which Blunketts ministers were working was not one aimed solely at the tracking and capture of bin Laden