There has been some discussion (mostly a week or more ago -- sorry, I've been distracted) on how Britain ought to treat people who condone or justify terrorism. For instance, in a recent consultation on the use of his powers to exclude or deport non-British citizens under various circumstances, Charles Clarke writes of his intention to chuck out anybody who is guilty of ``unacceptable behaviours'' including,
[using] any means or medium including: [list of media including the written word, public speaking, the internet etc.] [t]o express views which the Government considers [...] [j]ustify or glorify terrorism.
(Two brief comments. Firstly, I think we can safely say that by `justify terrorism' Clarke means `explain why somebody might think planting a bomb was a good idea' rather than `deserve to be blown up by a terrorist'. Secondly, I note that the British government is now singular. It used to be plural. Is all hope now lost, etc. etc.? cont'd page 94....)
Now, the question of what is meant by `terrorism' used to be a matter of opinion and the subject of frequent arguments, the cliché, ``one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter,'' and so forth. But happily the ever-busy Parliamentary draughtspeople at the Home Office have come up with a handy definition of terrorism which they've inserted in section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000: (the literal text is a bit tangled up with references to previous subsections; I've flattened it out here)
``terrorism'' means the use or threat of action where--
(i) involves serious violence against a person,
(ii) involves serious damage to property,
(ii) endangers a person's life, other than that of the person committing the action,
(iii) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or
(iv) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system,
(b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public [or...] involves the use of firearms or explosives, and
(c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.
(The Act further -- s.1(4) -- clarifies that actions may take place outside the UK, that persons, `the public' and `property' may also be foreign, and that `the government' can refer to the government of another country.)
Presumably when Charles Clarke refers to people condoning or justifying terrorism, this is what he means. Certainly he didn't offer any other definition in the document linked above.
Now, this definition passes a quick smoke test: the 11th September 2001 attacks were certainly `terrorism', as were the recent London bombings, IRA bomb attacks, the attacks by `insurgents' (or whatever we're supposed to call them) in Iraq, suicide bombings in Palestine and so forth. Good enough so far.
Unfortunately, as with biometrics and spam detectors, it's also important to consider the false positives. While the definition probably catches 100% of what most people think of as `terrorism', it's a bit broader than that.
For instance, when the IDF killed Ahmed Yassin, a terrorist, in an airstrike, that was terrorism, because: it (a) involved serious violence against a person, (b) involved the use of firearms or explosives, and (c) was done to advance `a political or ideological cause' (specifically,
[to make] a significant blow to a central pillar of the Hamas terrorist organization, and a major setback to its terrorist infrastructure
according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who ought to know).
Now, there are people who routinely describe the Israeli armed forces as terrorists (in my view silly, but there we go). So let's have a less contentious example.
For instance, in 2003, the armed forces of a number of countries, including Britain, invaded Iraq. This (a) involved serious violence against a number of people (as well as serious damage to property, endangering life, creating serious risks to public health, and interfering with various electronic systems), (b) was intended to influence the government of Iraq (either, if you believe the British story, into giving up its `weapons of mass destruction'; or, if you believe the American story, into not being run by Saddam Hussein any more) and involved the use of firearms and explosives; and (c) was done in order to advance a political or ideological cause.
Actually, maybe the war against Iraq wasn't the uncontentious example I was looking for. Let's instead consider D-Day, which (a) involved serious violence etc. etc., (b) was intended to influence the then government of Germany (into not fighting a war any more, or continuing any of its other murderous activities), and (c) was intended to advance an ideological cause; it was therefore an act of terrorism. Personally I don't agree... but that's the law.
Let us hope that our government follows its new policy of expelling or excluding the advocates and defenders of terrorism without fear or favour and that it does not try to discriminate between the terrorism of which it approves and all the rest. Alternatively, they could give up on the whole idea. Up to them, really.
Comments
Posted by Roy Badami, Wednesday, 31 August 2005 23:33 (link):
Presumably when Charles Clarke refers to people condoning or justifying terrorism, this is what he means. Certainly he didn't offer any other definition in the document linked above.
I don't think that's a reasonable assumption. Generally terms defined in statutes are really just macros, and I don't think their intended scope is typically larger than the text of the relevent Act. I'm sure you could find Acts that define the name word of phrase to mean different things, but it's not a problem, because they only have local scope (though they can be explicitly imported into other legislation).
I would take it that he is using the normal English use of the word 'terrorist', and choosing not to further define it (until or unless he says otherwise).
Posted by Daniel Brooks, Thursday, 1 September 2005 01:33 (link):
The problem is that the word "terrorism" is hard to define in such a way that it doesn't include things that the common person wouldn't count as terrorism. It's one of those "I'll know it when I see it" things. It'd be better to simply rely on existing laws against murder.
Posted by Peter Clay, Thursday, 1 September 2005 13:35 (link):
Yeah, it seems to be like "obscenity", a convenient label for things the speaker finds really nasty and expects every right-thinking person to agree with them on the issue. Control of terms and framing is a very effective way of moving a debate around.
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Thursday, 1 September 2005 23:38 (link):
Exactly. The term is too ill-defined to use in this context -- making policy -- without clarification. Clarke is obviously, in the first instance, interested in expelling or excluding various Islamist nutters, and that's what people have mostly been discussing, but what about other sorts of `terrorists'? The Home Office web pages on terrorism don't attempt a definition, and their discussion of threats to the UK is exclusively about al Qaida terrorism and doesn't, for instance, mention Irish republican groups except in a list of proscribed organisations, or discuss the violent sort of `animal rights' nutters at all.
Equally, this story about a recent terrorist attack in Israel shows the perils of too narrow a definition -- the families of Arab victims of a Jewish gunman are not eligible for a statutory compensation payment because the definition of terrorism for which compensation is payable to victims includes the criterion that the terrorist be part of ``an organisation hostile to Israel'', which doesn't apply to this case. (There's also some argument that the conditions have not been applied analogously in respect of Palestinian terrorists acting independently of any organisation, but I don't know whether this is a fair criticism.)
Posted by dsquared, Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:03 (link):
Generally terms defined in statutes are really just macros, and I don't think their intended scope is typically larger than the text of the relevent Act
Very dangerous assumption to make my friend. In principle you're right and it is good drafting practice o ensure that the definition of a term is carried over from Act to Act by an explicit declaration. But in practice, a term that is undefined or ambiguously defined will have the lawyers and judges scrabbling around for clues, and the fact that the same word is defined in another Act about the same sort of thing will usually be very persuasive. Add in a measure or too of bad intentions and bad faith and you can forget about the ordinary English sense of anything.
I seem to remember from the original terrorist act kerfuffle that they meant to catch computer hackers in the legislative net, btw, so look forward to being chucked in jail for "justifying or glorifying" the terrorists by saying anything uncharitable about digital rights management.
Posted by Matt Daws, Thursday, 1 September 2005 11:18 (link):
I seem to remember from the original terrorist act kerfuffle that they meant to catch computer hackers in the legislative net, btw, so look forward to being chucked in jail for "justifying or glorifying" the terrorists by saying anything uncharitable about digital rights management.
Well, according to Chris, "terrorism" means the use or threat of action:
(iv) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system,
Which seems to catch computer hacking quite nicely. I guess it would also catch cracking DVDs say, as that is seriously interfering with the intended fuctioning of the copy protection of DVDs. In turn, I guess this would mean that saying bad things about DRM would be "terrorism" if you were vaguely encouraging people to hack said DRM.
Which probably makes me a terrorist sympathiser. In fact, as I've engaged in a bit of low-level hacking (namely taking apart these people's encryption system) I guess I'm a terrorist. Great...
Posted by Roy Badami, Thursday, 1 September 2005 21:01 (link):
I guess it would also catch cracking DVDs say, as that is seriously interfering with the intended fuctioning of the copy protection of DVDs.
Tenuous. I would expect a court to interpreted electronic system as a physical apparatus, not some abstract copy protection system. It's also unclear what exactly is electronic in the copy protection scheme; certainly the abstract concept isn't, and nor are the bits on the CD...
There is a much better example out there, can't remember who spotted this (Ross Anderson?) and that's campaigning against the existence of a government computer system...
Imagine a time in the future, in which we have ID cards, and the National Identity Register. Imagine NO2ID continues to campaign against it. If NO2ID is campaigning to abolish the register, then that campaigning would clearly be designed to interfer with a computer system; in fact it's goal would be to result in the system being shut down altogether. The campaigning would undoubtedly be designed to influence the government, namely to persuade them to shut down that system. And a court could very easily decide that the anti-ID card movement was a political movement, and hence the campaign was advancing a political cause. So NO2ID would meet all three criteria for terrorism.
(You could make the same argument now, but it's far less likely that a court would accept the tenuous concept of interfering with a computer that doesn't actually exist yet.)
-roy
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Thursday, 1 September 2005 23:56 (link):
Yeah. Of course, the Identity Cards Bill contains itself contains similar provisions. s.31, which defines an offence of `tampering' with the Identity Register, includes,
So, if you get a computing job in the ID Card Agency, don't even think about going on strike.Posted by Matt Daws, Friday, 2 September 2005 18:53 (link):
Roy,
I'm not convinced. Given we're seeing a convergence towards standard forms of hardware running wildly different forms of software, it's silly to suggest that a narrow definition applying only to hardware. The definition, as it stands, says "interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system"; to remove the copy protection of a DVD is absolutely to interfere with seriously the *intended* functioning of that system. To me, that's the problem: the defintion suggests that an "electronic system" is sacrosanct, someone equal to someone's life, which is clearly absurd.
My guess is that the clause is meant to catch, broadly, two scenarios:
i) Hacking into a nuclear power station, military computer, hospital computer etc. Ignoring how possible this is, or how much damage you could realistically do, this is clearly a bad thing. AFAIK, it's already covered in the computer misuse act;
ii) Hacking into say the London Stock Exchange, which could (at least in theory) cause widespread financial chaos. Again, clearly a bad thing; again, I think already covered.
Now, is it that much of a stretch of imagination that a lawyer for a media company to argue that the financial loss caused by (ii) is comparable to that caused by circumventing the copy protecting on a DVD, and that is amounts to "finanical terrorism"?
I do agree with you, however, that your scenario about ID cards seems more (worringly) likely to actually occur in this country...
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Thursday, 1 September 2005 23:51 (link):
Well, maybe, but that would rather depend on their being a `normal English use' of the word, and I don't think there is. Wikipedia quotes a bunch of definitions, but none of them are really as satisfactory as the `duck test' proposed above -- and making policy on the basis of a `duck test' would be
bonkersdangerouscourageous.Posted by Alex, Monday, 5 September 2005 14:34 (link):
If interfering with an electronic system is legally terrorism, and therefore equivalent to blowing people up, does that mean that computers have rights at law?
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