Privacy expert blasts net crackdown as policing ‘thought crime’
A MEDDLING United Nations boss last night claimed a government clampdown on terrorists using social media amounted to policing “thought crime.”
It comes after the UN declared Brexit was racist in May and the global watchdog of nations launched a probe into “extreme poverty” in the UK this week.
Now hand-wringing UN Special Rapporteur on Right to Privacy Prof Joseph Cannataci blasted a planned “three strikes rule” that will let the security services lock up anyone who repeatedly streams terrorist content online.
He described it as an “arbitrary” attack on personal freedom during his probe into Britain’s privacy rights.
The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill will make it illegal to watch terrorist material online on three or more occasions.
But the lefty academic said: “It would seem to me to be slightly arbitrary. It seems to be pushing a bit too much towards thought crime”.
Speaking in central London as part of his two week visit to study UK laws, he went on: “The difference between having the intention or forming the intention to do something and then actually carrying out the act is still fundamental to criminal law.
“Whereas here, you’re saying: ‘You’ve read it three times so you must be doing something wrong’.”
It came as another the UN also launched a probe into “extreme poverty” in Britain yesterday.
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The agency’s top poverty expert - who usually investigates poor countries in Africa and Asia - is visiting the UK to probe the impact of austerity.
Australian professor Philip Alston, the “special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights”, says he’ll investigate whether spending cuts have “gone too far”.
But Tory MPs insisted the plans were a waste of time and money because the UK is one of the richest countries in the world.
Jacob Rees-Mogg told The Sun: “Surely the UN has better ways of wasting money.”