I like how under the guise of protecting us from terrorism they're now protecting us from the most evil of evil crimes. There was a mild outrage about 5 years ago in the UK when a few councils were caught using RIPA laws (what GCHQ is currently claiming to be protected by) for all sorts of fun things. Like dog poop [1], ice lolly bribes [2] and so on. I feel 100% safer knowing that surveillance is used to tackle all these huge crimes.
Add to that UK police using terrorist powers to harass... sorry, stop and search kids who dare to be out in public. Oh, I also believe the police can use the terror excuse to search homes with out a proper warrant. Most people who are treated like this don't even know why. They just get quoted the act section number. Something like, "we are searching you / your home under section xyz." No mention of the terror laws.
This is exactly why we should be very careful about giving sweeping powers to authorities under the guise of "terror".
The UK did away with S44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 precisely because there was backlash against the mass use of groundless searches.
What was especially galling is that the UK has pretty broad search powers anyway based on reasonable suspicion, so anyone choosing a S44 search was basically admitting they didn't expect to find anything.
I fully agree with the dog poop. I don't care what measures the authorities take to hunt down and hopefully exterminate owners that leave dog shit all over the place. Utterly abhorrent, selfish, irresponsible and dangerous. These owners are a menace.
[1]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7369543.stm [2]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1053039/Council-use-...