So a buddy of mine lives in London and was chatting with me on his BlackBerry at noon (my time) on his tube ride home. His answers stopped for quite a long period but that’s not unusual given that he’s on the tube. Anyways, finally I get a message saying: I just got searched by the cops as a suspected terrorist.

Gah?

Let me see… that guy is  typing on his BlackBerry during rush hour and [insert blank] he’s gotta be a terrorist.

At first I thought they had to have probable cause type laws in the UK but apparently it’s more police stateish than I thought: 

Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 allows the police to stop and search anyone in a specific area.   

Before Section 44, the police could only stop and search individuals if they had ‘reasonable grounds’ and certain criteria were met. That is no longer necessary, and we have seen Section 44 powers used against anti-war, anti-weapons and anti-capitalist protestors.  

Now there don’t appear to be any stats on how effective this is in actually stopping terrorists vs stopping protestors vs stopping BlackBerry users. Lets just hope that this law is actually effective and not just a way to anger me. I’m guessing it’s the latter though.