It ought to be pointed out that despite Tim Worstall’s feably attempted ad hominem against “Harriet Harman, Peter Mandelson, Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon” etc, all those named and indeed the entire British government adopt exactly the principle he outlines. The British government’s stance against the use of torture to extract evidence is absolute.

What Rob said. Further, the reason we insist on proof of guilt is that the alternative is actually worse – Lock up the wrong man and you’ve got TWO things wrong:
- an innocent man is punished
- the guilty man remains free.

Insisting on proof of guilt reduces the chance that this will happen.

If you violate “that legal principle”, you will get no Law AND mass murder. Look at the states around the world without the just and universal rule of Law which we enjoy (or at least used to). Are these stable countries? Do their citizens live in peace and plenty? Of course not.

- Benjamin Franklyn

If he is a soldier fighting in an officially declared war, he hasn’t committed a crime. But he may be captured, detained indefinitely, with no right to trial or means to prove his innocence, and will not be in fact punished for shooting any number of people- his release will come at the whim of the government as a prisoner exchange, or when an armistice is declared or whatever.

Terrorists are in neither category, and thus the legal system cannot actually cope with them, because it isn’t designed to. What needs thinking about here is definitions- of whether a terrorist attack, or plotting one, is a criminal offence or not, or an act of war, or some other thing.

Strawman? There is no proof the people concerned have actively attempted to commit mass murder, fund mass murder or solicit mass murder. If there were they should be put on trial properly.

We are either innocent until proven guilty or not. If there is proof enough for the State to want to detain people without trial there is enough proof for a trial. Locking people up without knowing the charges and evidence against them is to admit defeat – either the security services aren’t doing their job* or the State is saying ‘We’ve allowed a massive problem to develop without allocating the appropriate resources to the security services’. Either way you cut it this situation does not justify secret control orders which are detention without trial. Nor does it justify surveillance without warrants under RIPA or warrentless mass surveillance of the population through internet monitoring, ID cards and what have you.

You only have to look at the stop and search legislation that has been abused from day one to see what will happen. Rather than having a credible and specific threat prompting a Cheif Constable to authorise a temporary stop and search policy a number of Police forces kept reapplying for them so that it was continuous.

* Which they seem to be doing well enough. There have been a few derailed plots where successful intelligence operations have proved crucial to securing convictions.

We agree that allowing ten guilty men to go free is preferable to incarcerating an innocent. But it would be a commonplace to observe that letting ten million guilty men go free to avoid jailing an innocent is not indicative of a just but a broken judicial system.

And what about the ‘Rogue Male’ scenario? What if, in 1934 say, one had the opportunity to kill Hitler? Should one have taken it, despite the fact that all his depredations lay as yet unrealised? Ah, but you say, that is arguing from a privileged position of knowledge: that of hindsight. Yet in pursuing many of the Jihadist malefactors, our security services are often in a position of privileged information that is not applicable in a judicial setting. Where do we draw (or re-draw) the line? At this point, many feel it apposite to quote Benjamin Franklin: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” But note the qualifications: essential liberty. Temporary safety.

Adopting the die-hard position that this is liberty, here I make my stand is certainly a defensible premise, but it has to be acknowledged that there is room for argument that the nature of the threat makes such an absolutist position untenable.

“This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake! “