A few days ago, I found myself aghast at the notion that Britain might tell its cops to stop and question “suspicious-looking” individuals. Silly me: it’s already happening.

• Increase in anti-terror targets (The Beeb)

Apparently, all of London is a potential target (well, so is all of the rest of the planet — that’s what potential means — but let’s not quibble), and the terror threat is “undiminished”:

Counter-terror police have recorded a 37% increase in “suspicious reconnaissance” of potential targets in the first four months of 2007.

[...]

Under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, police officers may randomly stop someone without reasonable suspicion, providing the area has been designated a likely target for an attack.

The power is currently in force across the whole of London.

Now, looking at this “suspicious reconnaissance” thing: the Beeb’s article doesn’t define suspicious reconnaissance, but I imagine it involves displaying heightened interest in a particular building or complex, taking lots of photos, spending a great deal of time on the grounds of said building(s)….

…sort of the thing a tourist might do, no? Apparently most of these stops happen around “transport hubs” (26%) and “tourist attractions” (23%). Sure makes me want to go visit London again!

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the more one looks for “suspicious reconnaissance”, the more one finds it.

Anyway, this is all just a regrettable-but-necessary measure to ensure the security of the Nation, right? Okay, so a few pinko-anarchist civil-liberty nuts are whinging about it — but like those cameras, it makes most people feel ever so much safer, doesn’t it?

In February London police came under fire from their watchdog, the Metropolitan Police Authority, in a major report into the effect of counter-terrorism policing on the capital.

The watchdog found that the force’s use of special anti-terror stop and search powers were doing “untold harm” to communities in the capital, in particularly Muslims.

How to combat al Qaeda-based terrorism: piss off the Muslims! Yeah, that’ll work well. (A particularly cynical conspiracy theorist might suggest that the Metropolitan Police are deliberately polarizing London’s Muslims to justify their extra powers — and presumably their extra funding — as part of the “War on Terror”, but we all know better than that. Right?)

And as the icing on this particular cake, Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman of the Metropolitan Police justifies the unrestrained use of these invasive powers with an argument that, by its very construction, cannot be refuted:

While police could never be certain that a stop directly reduced the threat of a specific potential attack, he said it was important in a wider counter-terrorism context.

“What we do know is the mode of behaviour around a terrorist,” he said. “If they feel that they could be stopped and searched under these powers, they could be prevented [from attacking]. What I don’t know is how many are truly prevented.”

So the absence of evidence justifies these powers.  “Nothing’s happening — it must be working!”  One could just as easily claim that I have single-handedly deterred terrorist attacks upon greater Vancouver by drinking high-quality beer!  After all, nothing’s happened — it’s working!  (Sorry about that Air India thing; I was underage at the time.)

Oh yes, right: Ben Franklin, essential liberty, temporary security; you know the drill.