Hooray! We have a new set of protectors! The police have joined forces with the immigration service and HMRC (formerly HM Customs and Excise) to form a new all powerful force that will ensure state power crushes all: SOCA!
According to the SOCA website FAQ (a good read by the way), they have the power of all three of the previous organisations combined. Unless things have changed in the past few years this means that they, like the good old Customs and Excise, are answerable to nobody and have supreme power! Makes me feel safer already. Especially as they are exempt from the recently introduced, meddlesome, Freedom of Information legislation.
However, playing devils advocate, I feel I should raise the ugly question of corruption: how can we be sure that corrupt forces, for example the organised crime agencies that SOCA was established to investigate, don’t infiltrate it and abuse the limitless power ?
Well, we have nothing to fear because the FAQ explains that existing safeguards, such as the terrifyingly effective Independent Police Complaints Commission, will still be in place! So that’s alright then.
Hooray for state power!
In the same week as SOCA launched, the police have also been granted powers to drug test all arrestees even if they are never charged. With any luck they will misuse this power and arrest everyone. Thus they will discover that over half the population in Britain take hard drugs on a very regular basis indeed. They think they’ve got an overcrowding problem in the jails now!
Keep an eye on the Spy Blog for more information on how safe we should all feel.
