Even if we buy the codswallop about this being a war between the free and civilised world, and the barbaric and oppressive uncivilised world, then it looks like they're winning, because they've apparently caused the free world to become less free...
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Anti-terror tactics 'weaken law'
By Frank Gardiner
Security correspondent,
BBC News
Many measures to fight terrorism were illegal, the report said
The UK and the US have "actively undermined" international law in the way they fight terrorism, a report by judges and lawyers has said.
The International Commission of Jurists carried out a three-year global study.
Gains made in the previous century to a shared consensus on human rights have been immensely damaged over the last seven years, it concluded.
The report will make uncomfortable reading for many in governments on both sides of the Atlantic.
After a painstaking study carried out over three years in several countries, the panel of eminent lawyers and judges have concluded that the framework of international law that existed before the 9/11 attacks was robust and effective.
Lack of safeguardsBut now, it says, it is being actively undermined by many states and that liberal democracies like the US and the UK have led that undermining.
Many of the measures used to fight terrorism, says the report, are illegal and counter-productive.
The panellists express concern at the lack of adequate safeguards in the use of control orders, the weakness of diplomatic assurances in relation to deportations and at what the report calls "excessive detention without charge".