We Rage, Europeans Yawn, Over Domestic Counterterrorism Ops

We Rage, Europeans Yawn, Over Domestic Counterterrorism Ops
By Jeff Stein, CQ Staff


Ever since I attended a conference on homeland security in Paris four years ago, I’ve been fascinated by how little the French, Italians, Germans and other continentals worry about violations of their civil rights by their spy agencies.

In fact, outside the United Kingdom, which invented civil liberties with the Magna Carta 993 years ago last Sunday, ordinary Europeans couldn’t care less about wiretapping, national ID cards, preventive detention and police spies in mosques, all of which have millions of Americans, not to mention the ACLU and libertarian Rep. Ron Paul , R-Texas, up in arms.

And even in London, only the newspapers and a few liberal politicians made a fuss over the Labour government’s decision, ratified by the House of Commons on June 11, to extend to 42 days the police’s authority to hold terrorism suspects without charge.

“British liberties have been eroded under Labour. Few seem to mind much,” the Economist headlined one story on the row this week.

“Liberals have long lamented that, despite much stirring rhetoric about the mother of parliaments and Magna Carta, modern Britons have little real interest in their hard-won liberties,” the magazine maintained. “On June 17th, as Gordon Brown gave a speech on the subject, that pessimism seemed confirmed when one rapt listener fell asleep in the middle of the prime minister’s oration.”

That goes double on the continent.

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