New terror powers facing fresh legal threat were crucial in identifying Westminster attacker Khalid Masood as lone wolf
NEW terror powers facing a fresh legal threat have been crucial to identify Khalid Masood as a lone wolf without accomplices, it can be revealed.
MI5 and police have moved at lightning speed since Wednesday by combing data gleaned from the Westminster attacker’s mobile phone, social media and email accounts.
Within 72 hours, cops had made 11 arrests and were able to establish the twisted 52-year-old was not part of a wider cell.
The Sun has also learned that Masood’s precise movements in the hours and days before the attack were swiftly pieced together by Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras that picked up his hire car’s plate.
Under the Investigatory Powers Act that was finally passed in November last year, internet companies must store all users’ communications data for a year.
From late Wednesday afternoon, MI5 applied for warrants to start pouring through Masood’s digital accounts to piece together a detailed picture of his life and contacts.
But as The Sun revealed last week, the Home Office faces a double court challenge as civil rights campaigners try to strike it down.
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Government lawyers are battling a shock judgement from the European Court of Justice in December that deemed many of the new eavesdropping powers illegal.
And last month campaign group Liberty mounted a fresh High Court bid to torpedo the new internet access, branding it “a mass surveillance regime”.
A senior Whitehall source this evening likened asking the police to investigate terrorism without access to communications data equivalent to “investigating burglaries without using fingerprints”.
The source added: “Last week’s terrible events show just how vital modern technological investigations are in tackling terrorism.
“The pace of the police investigation into Masood has been hugely impressive, but it just wouldn’t have been possible without access to information from communications data and number plate recognition.
“This is what the civil liberties campaigners don’t seem to understand – we don’t give police surveillance powers to spy on innocent citizens.
"We give them surveillance powers to track down terrorists who want to kill British citizens and destroy our way of life.”
Speaking on ITV’s Peston On Sunday, Security Minister Ben Wallace added: “It’s really important that the powers we have are allowed to stay on the statute.
“Liberty only last week went to the High Court trying to strike down that Act, even though it went through Parliament, and even though it had all-party support.”
One 58 year old man arrested in Birmingham on Thursday is still being held under counter terror powers.
The remaining 10 have been released, with a handful still on police bail.