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A free and open society will make me feel safe
• LAST week I watched the film Goodnight and Good Luck about the challenge to Senator Joseph McCarthy and his fear-mongers in the USA in the 1950s.
One of the main criticisms of the senator’s actions was the way he and his colleagues attacked witnesses and accused them of their communist sympathies, without giving those witnesses a chance either to know the evidence against them, or to challenge that evidence at a similarly high profile hearing.
The decision by the judge at the Old Bailey to exclude the public and the press from part of the trial of Wang Yam (Murder trial evidence can be heard behind closed doors, judge decides, January 17) is an unprecedented application of the law of public interest immunity certificates to a murder trial.
Geoffrey Robertson says he is likely to appeal the decision. Although the defendant and his representatives will know the evidence, the public will not.
Public authorities are becoming increasingly preoccupied with ideas of privacy and protection.
New laws passed by the Labour government have led to unparalleled infringements of personal liberty.
For example, Maya Evans, convicted under section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, for reading out the names of those killed in Iraq in Parliament Square.
And Walter Wolfgang was threatened with prosecution under the Terrorism Act and thrown out of the Labour Party conference for shouting “nonsense” at Jack Straw during a debate on Iraq.
We are told that such measures make us safer.
What makes me feel safe is a free and open society, where evidence against an accused is heard in public, and where the government does not hide behind legislation aimed at terrorists to stop those who disagree with it from expressing their views.
It is also very difficult to trust this government’s claims about the security of our personal data when every week there is a new example of them being lost.
Jo Shaw
Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Spokesperson
Holborn and St Pancras
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