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Currently "urgent" refers to situations where someone is in immediate risk of death or severe harm. This is unlikely to change - they don't have the staff to include more stuff.

I agree that it's a very worrying bill with several attacks on important civil liberties.




This is unlikely to change - they don't have the staff to include more stuff.

If we can expect anything, based on recent history, it is that surveillance techniques that previously required onerous human labor, will soon easily be done in automated fashion.


Indeed. Probably has something to do with the fact that they quietly (and not so quietly, in some cases) took an axe to the judiciary a few years back.

It could also be argued that if someone is a terror suspect, then there may be an immediate risk, but to know so they must have more access, so it is therefore urgent that they do. This is the kind of Kafkaesque circular logic I'm increasingly coming to expect from the state.


Oh, the urgency I'm talking about is children being raped by gangs of men. This is a much more common use of police intelligence needing urgent access to phone records than terrorism.

As you say, with terrorism there's not the immediate need and there's usually a bunch more information.


How is the inquiry into the Rotherham non-investigation going, anyway?


Why pick out that case?


IN that case the police didn't need any special surveillance powers. They were being approached by children who said "I am being repeatedly gang raped by men who have groomed me with money and drugs, and who are now selling me as a child prostitute"; and by sexual health clinics who were providing abortions and STI services to children; and by teachers; and by social workers.

Those police did nothing with that information.

It's a reasonable point: Why do they want these extra powers when they've failed to protect so many vulnerable children?




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