The Terrorism Act 2000 was so broadly drafted that under Section 43, people have been victimized by police officers just for taking photographs in public spaces in the past.
Schedule 7 of the Act last gained major notoriety because it was part of the basis why Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda was detained in transit through Heathrow back in 2013, but as Vice pointed out at the time (and so did I in online forums, against quite a bit of pushback, where there was much hysteria that Miranda had been singled out, which is when I really researched it), it had been a cause of concern ever since it was enacted:
Border Officers Were Abusing Schedule 7 Way Before David Miranda
The UK Terrorism Act of 2000 was a real kick in the dick for fans of civil liberties. As well as giving police stop and search powers that were so arbitrary and invasive they were banned by the European Court of Human Rights in 2010, they birthed Schedule 7, which gives port or border authorities the right to detain anyone they want for up to nine hours and question them about terrorism. An added perk for those authorities: If you don't answer their questions, you could be prosecuted and face three months in jail.
Schedule 7 made the headlines earlier this month when David Miranda – the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has been publishing information leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – was held at Heathrow airport in an apparent abuse of the legislation. However, while Miranda's case was the first to draw a large amount of press attention, the misuse of Schedule 7 has been going on for a while.
Given the government's preoccupation with Islamic terrorism, it won't shock you to learn that, typically, those detained aren't white. Fifty-six percent of those who've been stopped are from black and minority ethnic communities, a figure that climbs to 77 percent when you take into account those who've been held for more than an hour. Anarchists have also been detained, as have a pair of researchers from Corporate Watch, who've been investigating organisations in Israel that profit from the occupation of Palestine.
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/pp874z/border-officers-were-misusing-schedule-7-way-before-david-miranda
Lat year, the UK Court of Appeal found in this case that
Schedule 7 is incompatible with the ECHR.
It's a shame that it takes a celebrity's relative being affected before the whole scandal erupts all over again. As with Miranda, there was at least a shred of pretext for exercising the powers under the Act in Owen Jones's sister's case (in Miranda's case, a bit more than a shred given the nature of what he was carrying), but blameless people are still detained under the Act just because of racial profiling.
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