There is an amendment to the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 buried deep within a Schedule (see pages 85 and 86 out of 150 pages) of the Serious Crime Act 2007 (.pdf version, the HTML one is not yet online), which has now received its Royal Assent and is now the law, although it has not just yet been brought into force.
This is a further tightening of the screws on dissent and protests against the unpopular Labour government in the far too large Designated Area around Parliament.
The equally unpopular Opposition parties have failed in their duty of holding the Government to account, by not bothering to scrutinise this amendment in detail, let alone to reject it entirely, as they should have done.
Who exactly are the Labour political appartachiki hoping to catch under this amended legislation, who they have not been able to legally threaten, harass and intimidate under the previous version of this unpopular and repressive law ?
We fear that this catch all amendment seeks to criminalise websites like this one, and other internet based supporters of the the right to peaceful protest around Parliament and beyond,
We have never advocated breaking the law, evil as it is, but this "catch all" amendment will easily be enough to threaten us or our internet service providers etc. with arrest, DNA sampling, fingerprinting, seizure of computers etc, even if no actual charges are brought.
When this Schedule comes into force, we may have to suspend this ParliamentProtest.org.uk website.
The amendment:
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