A twitter update from BBC News (titled, interestingly, “BREAKING NEWS – PLEASE CLONE”), links to this sure-to-be-updated report:
Stop-and-search powers ruled illegal by European court
Police powers to use terror laws to stop and search people without grounds for suspicion are illegal, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled.
The Strasbourg court has been hearing a case involving two people stopped near an arms fair in London in 2003.
[. . .]
Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 allows the home secretary to authorise police to make random searches in certain circumstances.
But the European Court of Human Rights said the people’s rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights had been violated.
The court said the stop and search powers were “not sufficiently circumscribed” and there were not “adequate legal safeguards against abuse”.
