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A comment on Australian local council intercepted phone, email data to hunt litterbugs. Parent comment

Re:Australian local council intercepted phone, email data to... by alan_cx on Wednesday July 10, 2013 @06:54AM (#6018586)
Add to that UK police using terrorist powers to harass... sorry, stop and search kids who dare to be out in public. Oh, I also believe the police can use the terror excuse to search homes with out a proper warrant. Most people who are treated like this don't even know why. They just get quoted the act section number. Something like, "we are searching you / your home under section xyz." No mention of the terror laws.

This is exactly why we should be very careful about giving sweeping powers to authorities under the guise of "terror".

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Re:Australian local council intercepted phone, email data to... by cmdkeen on Wednesday July 10, 2013 @08:21AM (#6018985)
The UK did away with S44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 precisely because there was backlash against the mass use of groundless searches. What was especially galling is that the UK has pretty broad search powers anyway based on reasonable suspicion, so anyone choosing a S44 search was basically admitting they didn't expect to find anything.
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