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A comment on UK police use terror powers to seize BBC Newsnight journalist's laptop. Parent comment

Re:UK police use terror powers to seize BBC Newsnight journa... by pjc50 on Friday October 30, 2015 @05:23AM (#10476840)
extreme runaway government power

It's always strange to me to compare the response to Islamic terrorism with the response to IRA terrorism. The latter was more deadly in the UK, but the illiberal response was mostly contained within Northern Ireland itself. Yet people seem far more scared about Islamic terrorism and far more willing to encourage a brutal response. Is this simply down to racism?

(Censorship has long been an issue though. See: Spycatcher, the Zircon affair, Matrix-Churchill, and "Gerry Adams' words are read by an actor")

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Re:UK police use terror powers to seize BBC Newsnight journa... by notahacker on Friday October 30, 2015 @06:28AM (#10477042)
Not really. The IRA was a relatively easy-to-understand phenomenon, and in the mainland UK generally saw causing civilian casualties as an propaganda own goal to be reduced through coded warnings rather than a means to achieve greater status in Paradise. And policing in Northern Ireland was far more draconian than occasionally confiscating journalists' laptops when politely questioning them might have yielded more useful results.

The 3.5k killings perpetrated by all sides over the course of the Troubles over many years also rather pales in comparison with the body count in the overseas conflicts that ISIS is also recruiting for.

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Re:UK police use terror powers to seize BBC Newsnight journa... by pjc50 on Friday October 30, 2015 @08:12AM (#10477326)
And policing in Northern Ireland was far more draconian than occasionally confiscating journalists' laptops when politely questioning them might have yielded more useful results.

This is absolutely true and the security services have largely refused to learn the right lessons from NI.

The thing about the overseas conflicts is that they're overseas, and there are many more countries and intelligence services involved on various sides. That makes them a lot harder to tackle and purely domestic solutions somewhat futile.

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Re:UK police use terror powers to seize BBC Newsnight journa... by camexp on Friday October 30, 2015 @06:15AM (#10476996)
Reminds me of a certain programme. "...under broadcasting restrictions he must inhale helium to subtract credibility from his statements." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOUeauLWEaE

After reading the "Welcome" page, this post should probably be deleted, even though I think it is at least vaguely relevent, but is effectively comedy. Sorry about that.

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