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Britain Debates Even Tighter Security

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Times Staff Writer

Less than a week after authorities rounded up suspects in an alleged plot to blow up passenger jets over the Atlantic, calls are rising in Britain to pass tougher anti-terrorism measures that would allow suspects to be held longer without charges and introduce profiling to airport screenings.

Neither measure has been formally introduced, but several senior officials and Parliament members have floated proposals to strengthen anti-terrorism laws, which already are stiffer than many measures elsewhere in the West.

Proponents say the proposals would allow police more time to assemble evidence against terrorism suspects and end long security lines at the airports.

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But opponents worry about eroding civil liberties, and fear airport screening focused on those “traveling whilst Asian” would further alienate the nation’s 1.5 million Muslims.

Conservative Party leader David Cameron called for a new bill of rights and measures allowing the government to use evidence gained in wiretap surveillance in court, currently inadmissible as evidence.

“I do not believe that the government is doing enough to fight Islamist extremism at home, or to protect our security,” the opposition leader said.

Cameron criticized the government for limiting spending at the Home Office, which oversees law enforcement and anti-terrorism efforts, and criticized the government for not prosecuting or deporting clerics who preached hate.

“Why has so little been done to use the existing law to deal with the radicalization that is rife within our shores?” Cameron demanded.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott immediately lashed back, calling Cameron’s accusations “almost beyond belief at a time when we should stand united in the face of alleged terrorist threats.”

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“His claim that we haven’t done enough has to be judged against the Tories’ failure to support many of the measures that we have introduced to fight terrorism,” Prescott said.

The Conservative Party successfully resisted Prime Minister Tony Blair’s original proposal to allow terrorism suspects to be held for 90 days without charge. The current legislation, which took effect last month, gives police up to 28 days to build a case -- a window that U.S. anti-terrorism officials, in most cases limited to 48 hours, have looked at with envy.

The Blair government has not formally proposed revisiting the acrimonious debate over terrorism measures.

But Home Secretary John Reid said in light of the new alleged terrorism plot, the potential consequences of being unable to detain suspects long enough “now should be apparent to everyone.”

“When we come back to that, I hope we all remember that the police and security services say they need up to 90 days,” he told the BBC.

Calls for introducing profiling techniques followed this week’s chaos at the airports, where a heightened security alert created hours-long lines and resulted in extensive flight cancellations.

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Immediately, one of Britain’s most senior Muslim police officers, Ali Desai, chief superintendent of London’s Metropolitan Police, warned that profiling on religious or ethnic lines risked creating “a new offense in this country called traveling whilst Asian.”

Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh and many fair-haired Chechen terrorists would have walked through such profiling systems, he argued.

“Profiling has been tried in Britain, with the Catholic community in Ireland. It didn’t work. It just alienated the Catholic community,” Fahad Ansari of the Islamic Human Rights Commission said in an interview.

“Even the Americans, after Pearl Harbor, they interned all the Japanese, and the American president after that had to apologize. Are we entering a situation where the future prime minister of Britain is going to have to apologize to our future generations?” he said. “It legitimizes prejudices and racism inside society.”

In a proposal that already has inflamed Muslims, former Metropolitan Police Chief Lord John Stevens called for profiling at all airports, saying Islamic terrorism in the West has been “universally carried out by young Muslim men,” usually traveling alone or in small groups.

In the Times of London, columnist Martin Samuel picked up the theme Tuesday, discounting arguments that terrorists seldom fit a terrorist profile.

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“In the event of racial profiling, there will be no Mid-Surrey branch of Al Qaeda forming on the hoof. As for cunning disguises, we know them. There are two looks: beard on and beard off,” Samuel wrote.

Many British officials who are floating the idea of profiling, however, talk of targeting not ethnicity, but behavior.

“If you take buckets-and-spade holiday-makers who are going off on vacation, they look like a family and they act like a family; you would exercise basic technology and you would not ask them to start removing their shoes,” said Philip Baum, a former security consultant for TWA and editor of the journal Aviation Security International.

“But there are those people who are suspicious because of their behavior,” he said. “Those who are looking particularly nervous or anxious, or give you some cause for concern. There, you possibly do a full physical search of body and baggage.

“But that would be a very small percentage of fliers.”

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