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The only differences appear to be that the October SI 2657 is aimed at Designated Persons i.e. terrorist finance suspects where:

(a) he is identified in the Council Decision, or

(b) he is identified in a direction.

whist the November SI 2952 says

(a) Usama bin Laden,

(b) any person designated by the Sanctions Committee, and

(c) any person identified in a direction,

is a designated person.

and the North Korea (United Nations Measures) Order 2006 applies to anyone blacklisted by the

(i) by the Security Council; or

(ii) by the Sanctions Committee; and

(b) any person identified in a direction,

is a designated person.

A "Council Decision" is one where the European Union decides to declare someone or some organisation to be involved with terrorism or worthy of economic sanctions.

A "Sanctions Committee" decision is one where the United Nations Security Council does the same.

Why is it necessary to to mention only one specific version of the anglicised spelling of "Usama bin Laden" ?

Surely both the United Nations Security Council and the European Union have "Usama bin Laden" and North Korea on their economic sanctions blacklists ?

"any person identified in a direction" refers to any individual person or any company or charity etc. which Her Majesty's Treasury decides to "designate", on a whim, irrespective of whether or not they are on a United Nations Security Council or European Union blacklist

So now there are three separate, virtually identical, sets of overlapping regulations and new criminal offences, which give the Treasury infinite powers to snoop on innocent people's financial records, simply by vaguely muttering the mantra "terrorist finance investigation", not simply in the UK, but anywhere in the world.

All of these sets of overlapping regulations have criminal penalties for breaking the Confidentiality provisions, and allow the Treasury to out-source its legal powers to even less publicly accountable third parties.

All three sets of identical powers also seem to override the existing, albeit inadequate, safeguards, in legislation such as the Data Protection Act and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

Why have they created three sets of identical criminal offences, when just the one would have done ?

None of these sets of regulations have any Statutory Codes of Practice, which have been publicly consulted on, to limit these bureaucratic powers.

What safeguards are there to prevent one section of the the Kafakauesque bureaucracy from demanding financial information, under threat of criminal sanctions, from a person or company under one set of regulations, which. to do so, would put that person at risk of a committing a criminal offence, under the other set of regulations, because of a different investigation by another set of officials or their sub-contractors ?

Suppose that there is an investigation into possible attempts to purchase nuclear or missile technology or other weapons from North Korea, by people who may or may not be actually be Al Queada operatives, which of the three overlapping sets of regulations apply ?

Where is the Statutory Code of Practice which would prevent abuse of these immense powers, by petty officials and their sub-contractors and foreign agencies and other third parties ?

We note that the "The Al-Qaida and Taliban (United Nations Measures) Order 2006", and the virtually identical North Korea Order, also each have a note at the end claiming that

"A partial regulatory impact assessment of the effect that this instrument will have on the costs of business may be obtained from the Asset Freezing Unit of the Financial Crime Team, HM Treasury, 1 Horse Guards Road, London SW1A 2HQ and is also available on HM Treasury's website (www.hm-treasury.gov.uk). A copy of the regulatory impact assessment has been placed in the libraries of both Houses of Parliament."

At least they used the word "obtained" rather than "attained" as they did in the October "Terrorism (United Nations Measures) Order 2006".

However, these two partial regulatory impact assessments do not appear to be available on the Treasury website - deja vu !

We have been trying since October to see a copy of the October Partial RIA, and we suspect that, despite the Orders signed on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen, by the Privy Council, with no scrutiny by Parliament, that there is no such document.

We also suspect that there is no partial RIA for the two November Orders either, because there has not been any actual public consultation about any of these sets of overlapping, duplicate or triplicate regulations.

There has still been no proper answer from Gordon Brown about how he is protecting the privacy and security of our innocent financial transactions, from excessive snooping either by his own officials or those of other countries involved in the SWIFT scandal.

Are these complicated regulations meant to provide a legal excuse for this sort of abuse of our financial privacy and security to continue in secret ?

How many innocent people are going to become "collateral damage" victims of Gordon Brown's Kafkaesque bureaucratic red tape approach to "combating terrorism" ?

All of these regulations should be repealed and, after a public consultation, should be re-introduced as part of a full Bill presented before Parliament, to be properly scrutinised and debated.