Section 44 anti-terrorism - empower yourself [vid]!

First an example of the abuse of powers police (and their subservients) now use:

Now the European Court has said enough is enough...

The ability of UK police to use "arbitrary" counter-terror stop and search powers against peace protesters and photographers lay in tatters today after a landmark ruling by the European court of human rights.

Guardian

This is great news, as people can now empower themselves by saying the following to any power-tripping copper who wants to search you and process you for data acquisition (DNA + database terror lists) and then have the audacity to slap a fixed penalty notice on you for £80...

Section 44 is not in accordance with the law and amounts to a violation of article eight – the right to respect private and family life.

(Paraphrase from Guardian sub-text)

Journalists arrested

The landmark case happened after two journalists got stopped after making their way to a demonstration in London:

The European Court of Human Rights was giving its ruling in a case involving two people stopped near an arms fair in London in 2003. It said the pair's right to respect for a private and family life under human rights laws had been violated. It awarded them 33,850 euros (£30,399) in compensation. The court said the stop and search powers were "not sufficiently circumscribed" and there were not "adequate legal safeguards against abuse".

bastardoldholborn

You can read the full Strasbourg court case here.

Know your rights and say no; they are abusing their authority and it needs to stop!

[edit on 23-1-2010 by PrisonerOfSociety]

This kind of stuff warms my heart a bit. To quote from Freedom to Fascism; the system might not work all the time. But here, it really has worked wonders.