CyberLaw Blog

Archive for October 6th, 2008

Nobody is safe from the long arm of EU law – Telegraph

By Philip Johnston, Last Updated: 12:01am BST 06/10/2008

Here is something the Government told us would never happen. When Britain signed up to the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) six years ago, critics pointed out that an individual could be extradited to another EU state to face prosecution for something that is not a crime in Britain and had not even been committed in the requesting country. Ministers dismissed such concerns as fanciful, but it has come to pass.

An Australian teacher is currently in jail in London, following his arrest at Heathrow airport by British police acting on a warrant issued by the German authorities.

Gerald Töben, 64, is wanted in Germany for the offence of “Holocaust denial”. It used to be a fundamental protection in British law that no one would be sent for trial in another jurisdiction for something that is not an offence here. It was called the principle of dual criminality. However, when the EAW was drawn up this principle was removed for a list of 32 offences, which include the crimes of “racism and xenophobia”.

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MELANIE PHILLIPS: We must never let Brussels turn Holocaust denial into a crime | Mail Online

Holocaust-denial law and the attempted extradition of a man for publishing antisemitic material

Last updated at 12:06 PM on 06th October 2008

Later this week, a London magistrates’ court will hear a bail application in an extradition case which should be ringing alarm bells.

A German-born Australian citizen, Fredrick Toben, was arrested as he passed through Heathrow by British police acting under an EU arrest warrant issued by the German authorities.

The Germans have accused him of publishing antisemitic Holocaust-denial material on his Australian website.

There is no doubt that the views expressed by Toben, a notorious falsifier of history who was previously sentenced to nine months’ jail in Germany for breaching its Holocaust- denial law, are vile. He says, for example, that there is no proof that Hitler systematically exterminated the Jews and that Auschwitz was merely a ‘transit camp’.
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Average privacy policy takes 10 minutes to read, research finds: “Website privacy policies take on average 10 minutes to read and sometimes run into thousands of words, researchers have found. While some are short, others would take over half an hour to read, researchers said.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

Identity fraud: Plan to release death records to credit agencies: “Death records are to be released in a bid to stop fraudsters stealing the identity of the deceased”

(Via Latest news, sport, business, comment and reviews from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk.)