So what was wrong with 42-days?

The real issue with 42 days is that the Government has failed to make a convincing case for extending detention without charge by any number of days, let alone 42 – and its ‘arguments’, such as they are, are equally applicable to indefinite detention, which (strangely) isn’t on the table – yet it continues to press the issue.

Any proposal to extend this period smacks of an attempt to outflank the other parties. Opponents have been accused of “playing politics” and “trivial grandstanding” – well, six weeks detention isn’t trivial, and caring about the rights of suspects isn’t playing politics.

The argument that there are lots of mobile phones, computer disks, paperwork etc to examine seems a little specious: we know from computer analysts that the police aren’t particularly selective, that they seem to prefer fishing expeditions; also, we don’t need to hold someone while we examine their effects, and we don’t need to return this evidence after 28 or 42 days. This seems more of a question of man-hours and being more clever about searches. As for encryption, apparently you can forget about breaking decent encryption in a reasonable amount of time, so that’s equally an argument for 42 years as it is for 42 days.

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