Police departments across the country are feeling the need to upgrade their forces’ weaponry with military grade firearms.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police cites an increasing number of “assault weapons” on the street, particularly since the 2004 expiration of a ban on civilian possession of certain semi-automatic weapons deemed to be “assault weapons”.

However, statistics released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies cast doubt onto this reasoning: of the firearms used to commit crimes, the vast majority are not so-called “assault weapons.” This was the case even before the ban on assault weapons came into force in 1994, and indeed this was the view then of many law enforcement agencies — in 1990, for example, a group of 100,000 police officers presented Congress with a message stating that just 2-3% of crimes were committed using “assault weapons.” A California Department of Justice report echoed these statistics, concluding that assault weapons comprised just 3.7% of the guns used in crimes.

Paul Erhardt is spokesman for firearms manufacturer Sigarms, who supply 40% of police firearms throughout the U.S. He sees the situation rather differently to the IACP; he thinks that police forces increased and continue to increase their firepower as a visceral reaction to events such as September 11th, and that rational concerns about the expiring assault weapons ban were far from the main cause.

Regardless of the reasoning, the result is that police forces are rapidly arming themselves, often with military surplus hardware — a shocking development that has previously been reported on this site and by other agencies.

Has this vast increase in police firepower served society? Are we safer as a result? The answer, it would seem, is a resounding no. There has been a vast increase in paramilitary raids on the part of police forces — now at 40,000 a year — completely out of proportion with dropping crime rates. Innocent Americans are being targeted and sadly hurt or even killed in botched raids, and all too often police officers themselves are hurt when confused homeowners return fire — particularly likely in cases when SWAT teams operate “no-knock” entrances under cover of darkness.

The trend, then, is of a society made more dangerous for innocent civilians as a result of an increase in police firepower, and sadly it seems inevitable that this trend will continue.

The Conservative party in Britain will scrap Tony Blair’s planned compulsory ID card scheme if it wins the next election, according to a statement by Shadow Home Secretary David Davis.

The Labour Party’s proposed scheme would create a nationwide database of biometric data and personal information, linked to existing databases detailing citizens’ private data. Its estimated cost will be around £10.6-£19.2 billion ($20.9-$37.8 billion), and registration will be compulsory for all citizens over 16 or visitors staying for over three months.

The scheme has met with outrage among many proponents of civil liberties: however, it also has some public support. In March 2003, for example, the scheme was favoured by 61% of the public; this has since fallen to around 50%. While welcomed by many, it’s difficult to see whether or not this move will help or hinder the Conservatives in the next general election.

The announcement is just one part of an attempt by the Conservative party to paint themselves as “the party of civil liberties”; Davis recently compared the Labour party’s 90-day detentions of terrorist suspects to the internment of civilians under Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, for example.

There was also more than a hint of party politics in the announcement, too: Davis was quick to point out the failings of the Labour government under Blair, calling them “a government desperate to clutch at any measure that might make it look robust and competent”.

Labour were quick to respond, with Home Secretary John Reid claiming that the Conservatives “talk tough while acting soft”, and that measures such as the ID scheme would be a “key tool” in Britain’s fight against terrorism. According to Reid, the Conservatives “can’t be trusted with Britain’s safety”.

Regardless of its impact on public opinion, the announcement has once again brought the debate over civil liberties to the forefront of public discourse. With patience for Labour’s War on Terror growing thin, will this be a catalyst for a Conservative government in 2009 or 2010? Only time will tell.

Under a European Union directive tabled this week, anyone found denying or even questioning the official history of the Holocaust or recent conflicts in Africa and the Balkans could be punished with up to three years in jail.

The legislation was proposed by Germany, the current holder of the rotating EU presidency. Germany currently has domestic laws against Holocaust denial, along with other European countries such as Austria, Belgium, France and Switzerland; this new legislation would bring in Europe-wide legislation that extended beyond the Holocaust to also include recent conflicts.

The legislation has sparked a backlash amongst many observers. Deborah Lipstadt, professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, Atlanta, vehemently decried the proposals. “I adhere to that pesky little thing called free speech”, she said in a statement released Thursday, “and I am very concerned when governments restrict it.”

The benchmark set by the legislation is that the “minimisation” of genocidal crimes must be borne out of “racist and xenophobic motives”. Exactly what qualifies as “racist and xenophobic” is anyone’s guess, as is the reason why “racist and xenophobic” minimisation of such crimes is deplorable but minimisation for other means is not.

The law would have a particular impact on scholarly research, if activists were successfully able to convince a judge that any minimisation had racist or xenophobic implications. The events at Srebrenica, for example, where an estimated 8,300 Bosniaks were killed by ethnic Serbs, have been the subject of heated debate over the last decade. General Lewis Mackenzie, Chief of Staff for the United Nations Protection Force in Yugoslavia, has himself denied the figure of 8,300: “Evidence given at The Hague war crimes tribunal casts serious doubt on the figure of ‘up to’ 8,000 Bosnian Muslims massacred. . . . The math just doesn’t support the scale of 8,000 killed.”

Whatever the truth, such scholarly debate would be severely damaged and perhaps even stopped altogether under the new legislation. The pursuit of truth would be cast aside in favour of an unconditional acceptance of the official account of events, and the citizenry’s right to free speech would be completely trampled upon.

This view is echoed by scholars such as Lipstadt, who believes that the facts should stand for themselves. “When you pass these kinds of laws it suggests to the uninformed bystander that you don’t have the evidence to prove your case.”

While one would hope such opposition would prevent the law from passing, there is certainly a precedent for such legislation among European nations. Last February, for example, controversial British historian David Irving was jailed for three years in Austria for denying the Holocaust — something Lipstadt herself decried at the time: “I am not happy when censorship wins, and I don’t believe in winning battles via censorship. . . . The way of fighting Holocaust deniers is with history and with truth.”

This legislation, if passed, will truly be a strike against the already precarious state of free speech in Europe, and pass it probably will: there seems to be no opposition to the directive from national governments or from MEPs and, since most people are not Holocaust deniers, the legislation seems to have gone unnoticed by most of the public. That shouldn’t be surprising, though: the thin end of the wedge rarely meets with much resistance.

First they came for the Holocaust deniers. . .

Apparently attempting to out-do California’s recent attempt to tell parents how to raise their children, the Texas State Legislature has introduced a bill that will fine parents $500 if they miss or choose not to attend a meeting with their child’s teacher.

The bill was introduced by Republican Wayne Smith, who claimed the measure would help forge bonds between teachers and parents, helping kids along the way.

Teachers, however, see the measure in a different light. Kathy Carlson, an elementary school teacher in Carrollton, Texas, voiced her opposition to the measures: “Sometimes I think [that parents] think we’re out to get them. When you’re talking about fining and pressing criminal charges, it kind of reflects that attitude…”

Under the proposed legislation, schools would send a choice of three dates to parents. Parents who failed to respond or who failed to attend the scheduled meetings would be arrested, fined up to $500, and receive a criminal record.

Concerns over enforcement of the law will likely prevent its passing; it also faces opposition from many state Representatives, including Public Education Committee chair Rob Eissler. However, the bill is just one in a string of recent encroachments into the role of parent on the part of state governments: with people apparently supporting the spirit of such measures — if not necessarily the proposed punishments — then it would appear only a matter of time before they become law.

In yet another blow to the Chinese people’s online liberty, the PRC’s Paramount Leader Hu Jintao has vowed to “purify” the Internet.

Hu’s comments were made at a meeting of China’s politburo, a 24-member council that rules China by decree.

Internet usage in China has increased rapidly in recent years, growing by 23.4% to an estimated 130 million users — despite widespread efforts by the ruling Communist Party to censor Internet communications.

China’s Internet police task force is estimated to be 30,000 officers strong, and all Internet communications pass through a censoring filter — the so-called “great firewall of China” — controlled by the Ministry of Public Security.

Hu reinforced the Party’s belief that Internet communications should promote ideals that sit well with the Party, stressing the need for the Party to “maintain the initiative in opinion” and to “raise the level of guidance” online.

Although Chinese citizens have little or no access to foreign opinion sites, the rise of blogging and forums has led to the general public’s hitherto unprecedented ability to read news of government misdeeds and discuss political views that don’t mesh well with the Party’s. How this ominous new policy will affect Chinese citizens’ ability to do so only time will tell, but as of now the future doesn’t look too rosy for China’s online dissidents.

California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber plans to give California parents a lesson in parenting — whether they like it or not.

Next week, she will introduce a bill that will outlaw the spanking of children under four by their parents, a move that has sparked a flurry of both criticism and support in California and beyond.

Lieber believes that banning spanking in such a way is the logical continuation of laws that banned slavery and protected women from being beaten by their husbands.

Whatever your view on spanking, however, is such government intrusion into parenting really necessary? Is abuse — if you can even call it abuse — of children so prevalent in California that the government must intrude into parents’ lives in this positively scary fashion?

Under the new law, parents caught spanking a child could face up to one year in jail: apparently, the trauma exacted upon a child when they are deprived of a parent — or both parents — and possibly put into state care are nothing compared to the trauma they receive when being spanked.

There is no news on exactly how the government hopes to enforce the new law, either. Even Governor Schwarzenegger has expressed concerns at the practical aspects of the law, calling its enforcement “next to impossible”: nevertheless, he is receptive to the passage of such legislation, stating in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News that: “I think any time we try to pass laws that say you’ve got to protect the kids, it’s, in general, always good.”

Such initiatives are not new, or limited to California, however. Massachusetts attempted to implement legislation last year, for example; as did Wisconsin 15 years ago. Both attempts failed amid criticism that they would be unenforceable.

Hopefully, the California bill will fail too: it certainly looks that even in California, typically a bastion of statist liberalism, most consider this a step too far. However, it is certainly strange that the bill won even the support that it did — are people that insecure in their ability as their parents that they would have the state adopt that role instead?

A recent study of social attitudes in Britain has discovered that support for civil liberties is on the wane, with the majority of the population seeing infringements on their rights as a reasonable price for apparent security.

The British Social Attitudes Survey, released every year since 1983, reports that the vast majority of British citizens support compulsory, biometric identity cards, are in favour of detentions of terrorist subjects without charge, and support the tagging and wire-tapping of terrorist suspects without charge.

There was some positive news: 75% of Britons oppose torture, for example, and 63% oppose the banning of demonstrations. A slim majority, 55%, oppose the suspension of trial-by-jury for terrorist suspects. In addition, 80% supported terminally ill patients’ right to assisted suicide.

Overall, however, it’s a grim picture. The vast majority of the British public seems to be willing to sacrifice their own rights and the rights of others if it means an ostensible increase in security; gone is the British attitude of the past, where civil liberties, and those who had fought for them, were things to be proud of.

Perhaps it’s our memory of World War II growing fainter; perhaps it’s simply the realities of a “post 9/11 world”. Whatever the cause, people are growing content with a lack of freedom: a contentedness I for one find particularly depressing.

From this summer, European travellers to the U.S. will face even more affronts to their civil liberties when new regulations designed to combat terrorism come into effect.

In a deal between the European Union and the Department of Homeland Security, travellers will now be forced to have all ten of their fingers scanned, an increase from the current two. These prints will then be entered into a national database alongside those of criminals, where they will be cross-referenced with fingerprints found on various items across the world, in an attempt to see if the person in question had visited any places the U.S. government thought they shouldn’t have.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was — unsurprisingly — singing the program’s praises this week, calling it a “quantum step forward in security” (sadly not understanding his own metaphor). He also spoke, as proponents of such invasive systems so often do, of how the system would combat terrorism:

“It also creates a powerful deterrent for anybody who has ever spent time sitting in a training camp, or building a bomb in a safe house, or carrying out a terrorist mission on a battlefield.”

A noble aim, for sure: who wouldn’t want to strike fear into the hearts of such people? The problem is the fact that such measures so frequently extend far beyond targetting terrorists and other criminals: they are turned against the ordinary, law-abiding public. Not a paranoid thought at all — take the National Security Agency’s monitoring of call records, for example, or the Department of Justice tracking your movements without probable cause.

Such fears are echoed by many groups fighting for the privacy of ordinary citizens. UK civil liberties group Liberty issued a statement this week thoroughly denouncing the “intrusive and unwieldy” system and the creation of a “database of innocent people”; director Shami Chakrabarti said:

“This must be the Keystone Cops school of border control . . . accumulating the fingerprints of millions of innocent passengers will not deter would-be suicide bombers.”

Privacy groups were also joined by security experts in questioning the effectiveness of the plan. Simon Davies, head of Privacy International, commented that the program would “turn thousands of law-abiding British travellers into terrorist suspects” and that airport queues would increase dramatically as airport staff struggled with the extra workload.

The physical system itself has also been brought under scrutiny, particularly following a recent Japanese report in which researchers were able to fool 11 out of 15 tested fingerprinting systems with a simple, difficult-to-detect latex strip covering the fingers. Many security experts fear that the system will be easy to fool for those who need to fool it — the sort of people the system ostensibly keeps out.

So, we have an intrusive, easily-fooled system which permanently stores the data of all people — innocent or guilty — who pass through it, a system whose only success will be to force terrorists to be slightly more careful. As Chertoff himself states:

“We will have a world in which any terrorist who has ever been in a safe house or has ever been in a training camp is going to ask himself or herself this question: have I ever left a fingerprint anywhere?”

A system which terrorists can defeat simply by wearing gloves in their training camps, or by wearing a simple latex strip over their fingers when they are scanned, or by entering the country by other means, but nevertheless stores intimate, private data on hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens? No, Mr. Chertoff, this is not a “powerful deterrent”, nor will it force terrorists to change their methods or abandon the country altogether; it will simply serve to inconvenience innocent citizens at a huge cost to their privacy, which seems to me hardly something to celebrate.

The UK Press Complaints Commission, a regulatory body for the newspaper and magazine industry, has called for a “voluntary code of conduct” for blogs similar to the one adhered to by the mainstream press.

Claiming that blogs offer “no means of redress” and have “no professional standards”, PCC director Tim Toulmin claimed that the Internet was “how the newspaper industry would look like if it was unchecked”.

Under the PCC-suggested system, all bloggers would adhere to “self-imposed regulation”; despite this, Toulmin claims that he is not in favour of “regulating the internet”:

“We’re not in favour of regulating the internet. The flow of information should not be regulated by any government.” — BBC News

Toulmin also described the terms “free speech” and “free press” as “relative”, citing libel laws and data protection as examples of two justified encroachments on free speech. Self regulation, Toulmin claims, can be similarly justified.

The PCC’s comments come at a time when divisions between the mainstream press and bloggers are becoming increasingly blurred. In August, for example, blogger Josh Wolf was imprisoned for failing to hand over unpublished video footage in laws designed to apply to mainstream reporters.

Such attempts to “rein in” the hitherto anarchistic atmosphere of online publishing have met with strong protests from many online bloggers, and the tensions between regulated and unregulated media are unlikely to come to a head any time soon — particularly considering the passionate reactions such attempts have created thus far.

In a trial measure rolled out this week, British police gained the power to take the fingerprints of members of the public while out on patrol, cross-referencing the data against a national database containing 6.5 million fingerprints, the BBC reported.

Using PDA-like devices, officers can obtain a response from the database in as little as a couple of minutes, and strategically the scheme will be combined with other police powers — including Automatic Number Plate Recognition facilities.

This will enable police to identify “vehicles of interest” — which are also cross-referenced against a national insurance and taxation database — fingerprint the occupants, and discover their identities; all within a few minutes, and without the need for justification or charges.

Currently, police must arrest a member of the public and take them back to a police station before their fingerprints can be taken; “live scan” machines in police stations have a 99.5% accuracy rate, more reliable than the new handheld devices which are accurate 94-95% of the time. The new measures will override this, meaning anyone can be fingerprinted without the burden of suspicion needed to charge a suspect.

Government minister for police, Tony McNulty, said in a statement released Tuesday that such measures would “reduce any inconvenience for innocent members of the public”; how exactly their apparently random selection and fingerprinting will reduce inconvenience for them is anybody’s guess.