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Thursday 3 January 2008

Is this the future for "dissident" UK bloggers

From THe Washington Post comes news that "Saudi Arabia's most popular blogger, Fouad al-Farhan, has been detained for questioning, an Interior Ministry spokesman confirmed Monday... Farhan, 32, who used his blog to criticize corruption and call for political reform, was detained "for violating rules not related to state security,"

Maybe Guido Fawkes, Devils Kitchen etc. etc. should be concerned, I am sure Gordon Brown would love to be able to do this to us.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Maybe Guido Fawkes, Devils Kitchen etc. etc. should be concerned, I am sure Gordon Brown would love to be able to do this to us.

Labour has (with hardly a squeek from the Opposition parties) passed the Serious Crime ACt 2007, which has had Royal Assent and is now awaiting Commencemnt Orders, probably before April 2008.

Serious Crime Prevention Orders which enhance the sneaky
ASBO technique of imposing an arbitrary set of restrictions, using the civil standard of proof ("on the balance of probabliities") but imposing criminal sanctions (prison, fines etc.) if you disobey the Order.

These SCPOs ccould easily be imposed on bloggers or journalists etc, who publish, or who even just offer to publish Government whistleblower leaks etc. ("encouraging or assisting" serious crime e.g. breaking the Official Secrets Act, or advertising or promoting an unauthorised demonstration near Parliament Square / Whitehall etc.)

See Serious Crime Act 2007 - proof of how useless the Opposition is to Labour's repressive legal fantasies