(a) the action falls within subsection (2),

The government has embraced the idea of panopticism as related in Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. “Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance” (Foucault, 582) This statement becomes all-too-apparent in relation to terrorism and the post-9/11 world. Although the spectacle united a front against terrorism, it is the threat of surveillance that has been used to hegemonize the public. With new laws permitting all types of surveillance on suspected terrorists and the new, broad definition of terrorist, everyone needs to be very careful of words, actions, and eventually thoughts. The loss of civil liberties is the inevitable consequence of increasing political power.

Finding wrongful convictions of terrorist activities is much too easy. It seems as though anytime something is printed about terrorism, most of the time it will be some being released without charge. Here are a few other examples. Karen Serir and her husband were “arrested in an operation to disrupt an alleged plot to bomb Edinburgh's Hogmanay celebrations.” “Mrs Serir was released after 36 hours in custody and her husband, a chef, was detained by immigration authorities for four months before being released on bail: he is no longer allowed to work. The Hogmanay party went ahead with police saying they had no reports suggesting a "specific" threat.” (Gillan) There are no details of his “specific” threat. Another is Omar Mohommad, “a 46-year-old Jordanian living in Coulby Newham, Middlesbrough, with his English wife Tina and their three children when police came to the door asking if there was "an Arab living in the house".” (Gillan) He was later released, but detained for two days before informed as to what his charges were. All these arrests and not one John Smith or Adam Jones? This makes it very apparent that the Terrorism Acts merely enable the racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims in order to search their property. No real evidence is necessary as long as there is “an Arab living in the house.”

(c) proceeds of acts carried out for the purposes of terrorism. (Terrorism Act 2000)

(b) proceeds of the commission of acts of terrorism, and

Since the enacted laws on terrorism there have been many arrests with very few convictions. It began with Sulayman Zainulabidin, the first man tried and found not guilty of terrorism, and continued in the following years. Here are just a few numbers for a couple of the years since 2000. In 2005, 266 were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 and the Terrorism Act 2006 with 11 more arrested under legislation other than the Terrorism Acts, but the investigation was considered a Terror Investigation. Of the 277 in 2005 only 30 were arrested on anything linked to terrorism or the terrorist act and 9 were turned over to immigration authorities. 8 of the 30 were convicted on Terrorist Act charges. 188 of the 277 were released without charge while the remaining are either being held in custody or were guilty of some crime unrelated to terrorism. (Kendall) The numbers for 2006 are nearly the same, with 159 arrests and 52 charged with something in the Terrorist Acts. Of those 83 were released without charge and there were 4 convictions at the time of the article. (Kendall) A BBC News report shows similar data immediately following 9/11 with 701 arrests between September 11, 2001 and December 31, 2004 with 119 charged under the legislation and only 17 convictions of terrorism. (Hundreds Arrested, Few Convicted) With statistics like these, how can one not question the effectiveness of the laws? Over sixty percent of those arrested were released with no charge. More than half of those arrested on charges of terrorism are innocent. If this isn’t an encroachment on civil liberties, I don’t know what is.

The next extension of power granted is the power to make “control orders.” According to the Prevention of Terroris

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