Taking Britain's liberties

摘要

What's a government to do when faced with a bunch of undesirables whose guilt is difficult to prove in a court of justice? Lock them up without a proper trial, of course. That's how the British government is dealing with people it suspects of terrorism. Its actions, including its shocking announcement last week of a new power of house arrest, have rightly been condemned as an attack on civil liberties. But cases of suspected terrorism are not the only ones in which the principles of the criminal justice system have been abandoned. The state has given itself new powers to deal with minor offences and other crimes which are scarcely less draco-nian than those to deal with suspected terrorism.