Security work on the Blairs’ County Durham home, believed to cost GB pound 65,000, was also met by the taxpayer, but any “home improvements” will be funded by the couple themselves.
– The Telegraph
It stands to reason, doesn’t it? MI5 has got all this evidence against terrorists taken from tapping their phones, so if it could be used in court, which it can’t, dozens of them would be behind bars.
We would be able to prosecute suspected terrorists, rather than leaving them in judicial limbo – subject to control over their movements, but never actually accused of, charged with or tried for anything.
Every year, about 1,500 intercept warrants are issued by ministers to enable the police and the security and intelligence agencies to monitor the conversations of suspects.
Yet none of the information they gather can be used as part of any prosecution. Nobody can even ask in court whether a phone has been tapped.
– The Telegraph
The call-handler shouts as telephones ring all around him, ” ‘allo, ‘allo”. This is where a stream of information from the public about bomb attacks, bodies and al-Qaeda is first sifted.
It is the Iraqi version of the confidential telephone line set up in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. Like Crimestoppers in Britain, the freephone Tips line enables people to talk to the security forces about alleged terrorist plots and other criminal activity. About half a dozen calls have come in with potentially useful information about the kidnapping of four British security guards and a British computer consultant. More may follow after Dominic Asquith, the British Ambassador to Iraq, appealed to the abductors last week to let the men go.
– The Times
Anti-terror chiefs in the United States have hired a team of America’s most original sci-fi authors to dream up techniques to help them combat al-Qaeda.
Ideas so far include mobile phones with chemical weapons detectors and brain scanners fitted to airport sniffer dogs, so that security staff can read their minds.
The writers have also put government scientists in touch with Hollywood special-effects experts, to work on better facial-recognition software to pick out terrorists at airports.
The Department of Homeland Security has set aside around $10 million – one tenth of its research budget – for “high impact” projects dreamt up by the best brains in futuristic fiction.
– The Telegraph