We're all (egg-wielding) terrorists now

I do not subscribe to stereotypes of terrorists, but the protestors -- grannies and all -- gathered outside Excel certainly didn't look likely candidates to me. They obviously did, however, look like terrorists to the police who, armed with a ream of legislative powers to stop and search people, turned to Section 44 of the Terrorism Act. The nice thing about Section 44, if you a police officer, is that it is just so, well, easy.

Section 44 is made easy by Section 45, which says that although a police office can only use Section 44 "for the purpose of searching for articles of a kind which could be used in connection with terrorism," he or she can do so "whether or not the constable has grounds for suspecting the presence of articles of that kind." So if you're a police officer who wants to stop and search a demonstrator, then you can do so even if you have no reason for suspecting they have anything more dangerous than a pensions book or a rotten egg. It's altogether much less hassle than using troublesome legislation that was drawn up for policing demonstrations.

The reason that this incident should ring alarm bells for the tech industry and the country as a whole is that a precedent has now been set for law enforcement bodies -- not to mention the Egg Marketing Directorate -- to use one part of the Terrorism Act for purposes other than fighting terrorism; in this case, to quell political dissent and lawful demonstration. When the legislation went through parliament, the government was all-but forced to promise this would never happen, yet here we are, two years later, with a blatant example broadcast to the nation.

It does not bode well for the privacy of that 12-months'-worth of communications data that is to be retained under the Terrorism Act for the express purpose of catching terrorists.

The Home Office has trotted out the same platitudes to assuage fears that communications data retained under that Act will be accessed for any purpose other than fighting terrorism, in the same way that it promised the police would never use Section 44 for anything other than legitimate (I use that word in the wider sense) cases.

It's promises have proved to be worthless. The trouble is while that misuse of Section 44 of the terrorism act by police is a physical, visible act that can easily be caught on TV, misuse of the data-retention measures introduced by the Terrorism Act will, by its nature, be invisible to the television cameras. This is all the more worrying because it is perfectly likely to be used to investigate a wide range of people, right down to those whose closest brush with terrorism is to mis-label eggs.

Unscrambling these laws is likely to be as difficult as unscrambling eggs, but there is still time.