Tomorrow I’ll be at Parliament giving evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, who are considering a request from the police to be able to hold terrorism suspects for ninety days without charge, so as to be able to examine seized computers properly. My written evidence to them is here.

The police are short of forensic capability, sure; and that’s going to get worse until they get their act together. But they’re also short of interpreters. I don’t think they’d dream of asking for increased detention powers just because not enough coppers speak Somali. Parliament would just tell them to hire interpreters from commercial agencies. Why do people get away with such poor policy arguments when computers are involved?

Clause 35 of the new Police and Justice Bill will amend the Computer Misuse Act to make it an offence to make or adapt any article –

(a) knowing that it is designed or adapted for use in the course of or in connection with an offence … ; or

(b) intending it to be used to commit, or to assist in the commission of, an offence …

This would be OK if the “or” at the end of (a) were replaced with “and”. As it stands, it looks like criminalising much of what we do here. Time to write to your MP?