Jon Bright (London, OK): An Iraqi man living in Britain has been prevented from taking an AS-level in biology, according to this article in Nature. They report:
Since 2006, A.E. [the pseudonym of the man in question] has been under a control order that has limited his movements and affiliations, according to his lawyer, Mohammed Ayub of Chambers Solicitors in Bradford, UK. The order has made it impossible for A.E. to find work, says Ayub. So he instead sought to further his education. English-language courses went unopposed, but when in September A.E. applied to take the two science courses, the government told him he could not enrol...
...To protect the suspect, A.E.'s name and much of his personal information have been withheld from the public. What is known is that he is an unemployed Iraqi national in his mid-thirties who studied medicine at university in his home country.
Everyone at the moment is worrying about the extension of the period of detention without charge from 28 days. But AE has been suffering a very similar restriction of liberty to prison since 2006:
Control orders were introduced by the UK government under the 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act as a way of restricting the activities of suspected terrorists when prosecution would mean “revealing sensitive and dangerous intelligence”. Among other things, control orders can be used to impose curfews, travel bans and limits on a person's access to mobile phones and the Internet.
The government isn't really suggesting that an AS-level course in biology would give you enough training to commit biological warfare. All it would do is give some of the rudimentary knowledge that could, after much more training, perhaps allow someone to construct a biological weapon. But it is this 'perhaps', this potential future, that is being 'controlled' here.
Control orders stem from the twisted logic of preventativism that was generated by the war on terror, was complicit in launching the Iraq war, and is now pervasive in how we think about our security policy. The potential cost of liberty for any suspect is being inflated to such an extent that we are beginning to demand theoretical control over their every possible future action, at the expense of any fundamental right to liberty. If anyone is under any suspicion, however slight, they simply must be prevented from going about their business (through orders of detention or control) - else we permit the possible future where they turn out to commit an act of terrorism; the consequences of which would be unthinkable.
Is Gordon Brown trying to improve his control on the future? This is the argument behind increasing the length of pre-trial detention. But where does it end? Permanent control orders for every suspect you can't detain while not telling why you suspect them of intending to attack us? We can only really combat encroachments on our liberty if we argue against this mindset of preventativism. Those, like myself, who are against even the idea of 28 days detention, must be honest about one thing: liberty for suspects might increase the possibility of a terrorist attack. Liberty means, to some extent at least, giving up control of the future, allowing unpredictability and negative possibilities into the system. But the alternative is a completely controlled future - free of risk and therefore free of possibility; a future, I think, which we genuinely should not tolerate.
