The police want powers to proscribe protest chants and slogans on placards, banners and headbands. Human rights experts say that such powers could also be used against protesters such as animal rights and anti-globalisation activists. The civil rights group Liberty said the powers would make the police "censors in chief".

Mr Ghaffur has previously advocated banning flag burning. But this document would take the police a lot further. Mr Ghaffur says there is a "growing national and international perception" that the police have been too soft on extremist protesters, which has led to rising anger across the country. "The result has been to create an imbalance in public perception that is manifesting itself in passionate responses from elements of the community not traditionally given to publicly protesting. What we are seeing in effect is a rise in the politicisation of middle England and the emergence of a significant challenge for capital city policing."

As well as the absence of a law banning the burning of a flag, there is no law banning the burning of a religious text.

The police want powers to tackle a "grey area" in the array of public order laws. At present, causing offence by itself is not a criminal offence.

"There must be a clear message that we will not allow any extremist group to display banners or make public statements that clearly cause offence within the existing law," the document says.

The document continues: "Is the sand shifting in our collective viewpoint around what constitutes 'causing offence'? Equally, we need to have a clearer determination of current community perceptions around what 'public offence' actually means. We also need to think more laterally around how we police public demonstrations where 'offence' could be caused, while still respecting the British position around freedom of speech."

The document, entitled "The widening agenda of public demonstrations and radicalisation", says Islamic extremists have learned how to cause offence without breaking the law. It also reveals that the government has yet to implement the bill outlawing religious hatred which received royal assent in February. It says that the law may prove useless against extremists: "Virtually all activity by protesters could constitute insulting or abusive language, behaviour or banners towards particular religions, but would fall outside the remit of inciting religious hatred."

The director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, said: "[The proposal] misunderstands the nature of law and free expression in a democracy and casts the police as censors in chief. It aims to protect people from 'offence' rather than harm, slates the CPS and muses wildly on 'public perceptions'."

After protests against the Danish cartoons in London, organised by a radical Muslim group, Scotland Yard received 100 complaints demanding action against the protesters.

A solicitor who has defended protesters, Mike Schwarz, said: "Causing offence, if there is no other ingredient, is not against the law." He said such proposed powers would clash with article 10 of the European convention on human rights which protects freedom of expression.

The secret document, prepared for police forces by the Home Office, reveal that families of suspects, and those with similar genes, are being targeted by investigators.

The guidelines show how people on the DNA database with similar genetic make-up to suspects are being approached by the police. They are then asked for the names and addresses of their relatives who will be swabbed for DNA.

Police sources said that using the DNA database to track down suspects through their families was a crucial policing tool. Around eight convictions for rapes and sexual assaults have been gained after a suspect was traced through a relative whose DNA was on the national database.

The confidential document admits there is "significant public concern" about the use of "familial searching" which involves testing people who have never come into contact with the law. It shows that people the police believe are related to criminals are being asked to give DNA samples - sometimes covertly. If they refuse, they could see their medical records released so that stored tissue samples, including blood, can be genetically tested by the police.

The guidance says officers can pretend they are doing a general DNA "sweep" when asking for swabs from people they believe are related to a suspect. And it says that people who refuse to give DNA samples should be regarded as suspicious.

Civil liberties campaigners said yesterday that obtaining medical records of relatives not suspected of committing a crime was an infringement of privacy.

Shami Chakrabati, director of Liberty, said: "Sloppy legislation and even sloppier ethics are creating a DNA free-for-all from which no one's intimate details are adequately protected. This is what happens when politicians and police decide that our rights and freedoms don't matter."

The Labour MP Ian Gibson said: "This technique is not precise. It's quite possible you could have a DNA match by accident. There is no evidence that criminal behaviour runs in families."

Watch out for this logo to start appearing around you soon.

While, initially, this might sound open to wide scale abuse, with robbers able to swipe the card and pay for things without challenge, the maximum transaction size of £10 will help to minimise the risk, and each card will come with built-in counters that will only allow a certain number of contactless payments to be made before a PIN must be entered.

This counter is also reset every time a standard Chip and PIN transaction (so anything over £10) is made, so the card providers believe that a PIN will only be required in practice every one out of 20 times the card is used.

Initial trials in Scotland, and elsewhere across the world, have shown very positive feedback from customers and merchants alike, with cardholders liking the ease-of-use and speed, and merchants the reduced hassle, especially having to haul less cash around at the end of the day.

The London roll out, itself, will be quite an ambitious affair, with over half a million new cards issued, and 4,000 updated chip and pin readers with built-in RFID sensor sent to over a thousand shops within the central city area and Docklands, starting from September 2007.

By the beginning of 2008 it will start to be rolled out across the whole of the UK, provided any bugs that have been shown up in the initial launch have been ironed out.

Fortunately, and unusually for a banking standard, cross-compatibility has been well thought out, and cards should be capable of being used across the world.

APACS expect that by 2011, 70% of debit cards and 45% of credit cards will have been converted to support contactless payments.

Of course, security is a rather major concern. Given that RFID enabled passports have already been compromised to release private data, one hopes that the credit cards will be slightly more secure. The banks, credit card companies and acquirers alike are all aware of what the stakes are, but initial signs are that around 30% of users do not trust the system, however this is before the marketing bombardment that we should all expect.

One thing is certain: the government and banks are serious, and see this as a war on cash. Official figures estimate that handling of physical cash is a £4 billion drain on the economy. We can only hope that it goes slightly better than their war on terror.

Traces of the substance have already been found at a sushi restaurant, hotel and Mr Litvinenko's north London home.

Three people who have either been to the venues or had contact with him are to undergo radiological tests.

Mr Litvinenko's friend Alex Goldfarb said the address in Down Street were the offices of Mr Berezovsky.

He said: "I have been to that office many times, Mr Litvinenko did and everyone who was friends with Mr Berezovsky because that's his principal place of business in London."

Erinys said that in the light of recent events the company had "immediately contacted" the police to tell them of a visit made by Mr Litvinenko to its offices.

The places where polonium-210 radiation has already been found are the Itsu sushi restaurant in Piccadilly, the Millennium Hotel in Grosvenor Square and Mr Litvinenko's home in Muswell Hill.

Emergency statement

The death of the 43-year-old former KGB colonel last Thursday has been linked to the discovery of polonium-210 in his body.

Home Secretary John Reid told MPs that Russia had been asked to co-operate in the inquiry into Mr Litvinenko's death.

In an emergency statement in the Commons on Monday, Mr Reid said the Russian ambassador had been called to the Foreign Office at the end of last week.

"He was asked to convey to the Russian authorities our expectation that they should be ready to offer all necessary co-operation to the investigation as it proceeds," said Mr Reid.

Mr Reid also chaired Monday's meeting of the special emergency "Cobra" committee, which brings together ministers, officials and experts, to assess the risk to the public.

The Health Protection Agency said more than 450 people had called a government hotline for advice and 18 had been followed up.

Three have been referred to a specialist clinic as a precautionary measure because they had symptoms which may indicate radiation poisoning.

It is thought they contacted the NHS helpline and answered detailed questions about their condition before being referred for a face-to-face consultation and possible urine test.

Results are expected later in the week.

Kremlin denial

An inquest into Mr Litvinenko's death will be opened and adjourned on Thursday at St Pancras Coroner's Court, said a Camden Council spokesman.

Mr Litvinenko, 43, became a British citizen after coming to live in the UK.

Friends have suggested Russian top-level involvement in his death because Mr Litvinenko was a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Itsu restaurant
Mr Litvinenko visited Itsu on 1 November

And on Sunday Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said "murky murders" had cast a shadow over Mr Putin's achievements.

But the Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed allegations of involvement in the death as "sheer nonsense".

Asked about Mr Hain's comments, Tony Blair's official spokesman said the prime minister had made clear his concerns about some aspects of human rights in Russia but it would be premature to draw conclusions in this case.

Mr Litvinenko had been investigating the murder of prominent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, another critic of the Putin government, before he fell ill.

On the day he was taken ill, he had had meetings at the restaurant and the hotel's Pine Bar.

The ASA said although the ad may be offensive to some "it was unlikely to be seen as making a serious comparison between Tony Blair and Hitler but instead as highlighting a lobbying group's opinion that ID cards should not be introduced because of the threat to civil liberty they posed".

NO2ID made clear they had worked hard to make Blair look like Hitler. The ASA statement said:

NO2ID said the photograph of Tony Blair was expertly retouched to make it look like a 1930s portrait and the layout was designed to recall the Nazi era.
They said the photograph did not portray Tony Blair as Hitler but was intended to be a comparison of Tony Blair with Hitler based on policy, not personality.

NO2ID asserted that the ad contained an implicit claim that identity cards were useful to the implementation of Nazi policies across Europe; they argued that that was beyond doubt. They asserted that identity cards themselves had been used to control populations in occupied Europe and were very closely associated with the process of sorting victims for the concentration camps.

They said the ad was intended to be insulting to Tony Blair but argued that insulting a politician was unlikely to offend.

Indeed.

The complaint was not upheld because: "The ASA noted the ad had been intended to encourage discussion on a sensitive political issue."

The whole ASA judgement, well worth a read, is available here.