The Prime Minister Theresa May’s ‘Four-Point’ Plan: Do we need more counterterrorism powers?

Dr Simon Hale-Ross, Lecturer in law at Leeds Law School and counterterrorism expert, questions the validity of Theresa May’s four-point plan, and illustrates that the current counterterrorism structure in the UK is more than adequate at dealing with the current terror threat posed

The UK should urgently legitimise the revocation of UK citizenship to the Islamic State’s British members

The Islamic State has recently taken control of huge swathes of the Middle East, with British citizens thought to be amongst those involved in the violence. Simon Hale-Ross argues the European Union must stop dwelling on the human rights issue and adopt the directive dealing with Passenger Name Records, and the UK must seek to legitimise the removal of UK jihadist passports

The European Union should introduce legislation to harmonise anti-terror laws in the 28 Member States

Reports suggest up to 5000 European Union citizens have joined jihadist militant groups located in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen. Approximately one in 15 of those returning to their Member State of origin are suspected of involvement in terrorist activities. This serious threat challenging European Unions internal borders is unprecedented, observed following the terrorist attacks in Paris and Copenhagen in 2015, and an earlier attack in 2014 perpetrated by an Islamic State operative. In response, to ensure the safety of their citizens and protect national security some Member States of the European Union have introduced legal measures at port and border controls. Germany is planning new anti-terror legislation aimed at confiscating citizens’ identification cards, for a period of three years, and the UK passed legislation allowing for the seizure of passports and travel documents of those suspected of being involved in terrorist activity. Further provision has been created or proposed, introducing temporary exclusion orders lasting for at least two years. In light of the differing laws and measures between the Member States, the European Union must introduce legislation to harmonise anti-terror laws throughout the 28 Member States with regards to port and border controls, safeguarding a balance between individual fundamental human rights protected under the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, whilst maintaining public safety and national security

The decreasing of safeguards in UK anti-terror law is a worrying trend that should be halted

The recent assertion that current anti-terror laws are inadequate in providing the State an avenue for the prosecution of those who travel to Syria and Iraq to fight with the terror group ISIS is simply incorrect. This call has merely served to create a panicked parliamentary and media response. Simon Hale-Ross argues for an end to the movement towards greater permissiveness in our anti-terror law

The conceptualisation of a racist, sexist, authoritarian police subculture…has become the routine gist of a much progressive left political rhetoric. Is this just politics?

This article contrasts and examines two significant historical events of the 1981 race riots and the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. Both of these events triggered the commission of public inquiries, the 1981 riots with the Scarman Inquiry and the Stephen Lawrence murder with the 1998 Macpherson Inquiry. Both produced reports that analyse and consider the impact they had on changes in legislation brought about by the reports’ respective recommendations, changes in police policy and if the recommendations did help to ease divisions of racial difference in UK society

The UK’s Legal Response to Terrorist Communication in the 21st Century: Striking the right balance between individual privacy and collective security in the digital age.

The dynamics of private life have changed along with the vast advancements in 21st Century communications technology. Private conversations no longer simply take place in the citizens’ home or through using a landline telephone, but rather online through the Internet, social media and through the ever-growing list of chat applications available on the smartphone that allows encryption. However, what often follows the legitimate use of technological advancements is criminal, or in this case terrorist exploitation. In the digital age it has become increasingly easy for terrorist groups to communicate their propaganda and for individual terrorists to communicate freely. This has served to create an investigatory capabilities gap thereby increasing the pressures on UK policing and security agencies’, in fulfilling their task of protecting national security and protecting the citizens’ right to life. In response, the UK and the European Union (EU) have attempted to close the capabilities gap and thereby ensure collective security, by enacting new laws allowing the law enforcement agencies’ to monitor electronic communications. The UK Government has recently enacted the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (IPA) that introduces and preserves the ability to bulk collect, and retain electronic communications data, and to attain the operators’ assistance in decryption. Although the IPA attempts to take a human rights approach, the main contentious elements in the Act are those in relation to the authorities’ capabilities to intercept electronic communications data on mass, and to retain such data. Specifically, concerns currently surround the introduction of ‘backdoors’ into encrypted online services, and bulk interception and equipment interference warrants, and bulk personal data sets, all of which serve to weaken the security and individual data protection and privacy rights of, potentially, the entire population. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has been the most influential judicial body in terms of individual data protection, and thereby on the UK’s law making process, through its key judgements in Digital Rights Ireland Ltd v Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources and others, and the conjoined case of Kärntner Landesregierung, Michael Seitlinger, Christof Tschohl and others (Digital Rights Ireland). The CJEU has done this by asserting the EU’s constitutional and legal prowess in protecting data protection, such as Article 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and byway of two directives, namely the Data Protection Directive in 1995 and the e-Privacy Directive in 2002. In order to close the capabilities gap ensuring national security, the UK Government must ensure the law endures by safeguarding the cohesiveness with the jurisprudence of the CJEU and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The courts do focus on different elements, built around the Conventional rights, with the CJEU focused on data protection and the ECtHR on Article 8 right to privacy. To solve the balance between individual privacy and collective security, a human rights focus is required with emphasis placed on the practical reality that one cannot assert privacy rights, if one’s right to life is not fully protected in the first place. This focus must re-forge the UK’s counterterrorism legal structure. Taken in conjunction with the UK’s already broadly worded counterterrorism legal framework, particularly the lack of a freedom fighter exclusion within the legal definition of terrorism, the consequence is to almost criminalise any expression of a view that the armed resistance to a brutal or repressive anti-democratic regime, could in certain circumstances be justifiable, even where such resistance is directed away from non-combatant casualties’. Although the current counterterrorism structure is broad, the UK and the EU must police the Internet and remove the safe places used by criminals and terrorists. The IPA fashions a way within which to achieve this, but because it can be aimed at the whole population, subject to authorisation safeguards, and following historical case law dealing with blanket policies that effect the innocent, it is likely to receive continual CJEU and ECtHR judicial scrutiny. Post the UK’s exit from the EU however, the CJEU may become less important leaving the ECtHR to conduct the analysis. At present, the UK must follow CJEU rulings when the matter concerns EU law, whereas ECtHR decisions are merely recommendatory. The thesis found that overall, the balance between collective security and individual data privacy rights in the UK are fairly stable because of the role and importance of judicial review; judicial independence, and the over-arching scrutiny provided by commissioners and parliamentary committees. It is further argued that a blanket approach to retaining electronic communications data is necessary in finding the terrorist in the ever growing haystacks, because sometimes privacy rights and data protection must be curtailed to ensure the state can protect citizens’ rights to life

Thermodynamics of Dyonic Lifshitz Black Holes

Black holes with asymptotic anisotropic scaling are conjectured to be gravity duals of condensed matter system close to quantum critical points with non-trivial dynamical exponent z at finite temperature. A holographic renormalization procedure is presented that allows thermodynamic potentials to be defined for objects with both electric and magnetic charge in such a way that standard thermodynamic relations hold. Black holes in asymptotic Lifshitz spacetimes can exhibit paramagnetic behavior at low temperature limit for certain values of the critical exponent z, whereas the behavior of AdS black holes is always diamagnetic.Comment: 26 pages, 4 figure

The decreasing of safeguards in UK anti-terror law is a worrying trend that should be halted

The recent assertion that current anti-terror laws are inadequate in providing the State an avenue for the prosecution of those who travel to Syria and Iraq to fight with the terror group ISIS is simply incorrect. This call has merely served to create a panicked parliamentary and media response. Simon Hale-Ross argues for an end to the movement towards greater permissiveness in our anti-terror law

The UK should urgently legitimise the revocation of UK citizenship to the Islamic State’s British members

The Islamic State has recently taken control of huge swathes of the Middle East, with British citizens thought to be amongst those involved in the violence. Simon Hale-Ross argues the European Union must stop dwelling on the human rights issue and adopt the directive dealing with Passenger Name Records, and the UK must seek to legitimise the removal of UK jihadist passports