My 15 Minutes as a Terror Suspect
I've just got back from being stopped and searched under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Which was an interesting experience.

I was returning home from the Youth Hostel where my friend G was staying. She's catching a plane to leave the country, and had more stuff than the luggage allowance. So she gave me some stuff to alternatively give away, dump, and post on. Two and a half bags full.

Then the bus I was taking stopped for five minutes at its penultimate stop, so I decided to walk on myself. In the City of London. After 11pm at night. Carrying three heavy bags. Hesitating over which bus stop to go to next.

You really can't blame the copper, can you?

So there's me, going through all three bags with this police officer. Which included, amongst an awful lot of other stuff:
* The old press cuttings about me my mother had given me on Saturday, including the story about me selling a computer game aged 13 and, more worrylingly, the one headlined "Bomb Escape for Democrat".
* Camping cutlery, swiss army knife, and lightstick.
* G's many photos of London landmarks.

Obviously, none of this is a smoking gun, but it probably helped to hold his attention through three very full bags. He seemed slightly amused that I was from Leeds, but he didn't really comment on the fact that I was going to the area of the failed bus bombing.

The constable was friendly and considerate throughout. We had an interesting chat about the powers; Charles Clarke has granted special powers to police in some parts of London to stop and search without needing suspicion; there were another two people he might have stopped if he wasn't busy in the first few minutes of talking to me. It's more worrying as a symptom of the current state of threat than as an inconvenience. But it's also more worrying to realise the full extent of police powers under the Terrorism Act than to experience a constable who simply using them as intended.