UK to urge Terror asset seizure
Addressing the EU finance ministers, Chancellor Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom will ask for new plans put into place to seize the assets of terrorist groups and companies that finance them. This extensive proposal will most likely involve extremely hazardous interference with civil rights. To determine whom exactly is a terrorist or who is funding terrorism is to walk a thin line towards racial profiling and invasion of privacy that the United States is well familiar with.
One of Brown’s proposals involve asking telecommunications companies to keep permanent records on all calls, emails, and text messages ever made. This way when counter-terrorism teams need information they can access this. Resembling the American Patriot Act on a international scale this task will inevitably prove tasking for even small companies with limited data storage and time.
The key to Chancellor Brown’s advocacy therefore is in convincing the EU, especially in the wake of the horrific London bombings, that terrorism is an international concern that will inevitably affect all civilized nations that attempt to partake in the modern world. This will not be easy as traditionally pacifist nations such as France and Spain will find little reason to interfere with civil rights especially since they, unlike the United States and Great Britain, have not witnessed the extent of homeland terrorism and the massive loss of soldiers overseas.
Another problem that quite possibly exists is the fact that terrorists are often sleepers that import materials directly from their homelands without making purchases in the European markets. This will be difficult to trace and difficult to determine. Unfortunately for a world that is confronted with Islamic extremism, the diffusion of terrorism without edging over racial and political lines is a tender task without many alternative routes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4673975.stm