Will heckling at a party conference turn you into the new Walter Wolfgang? Can the police stop and search your iPod? Allow the New Statesman's legal expert to solve your civil liberties dilemmas

This column is reluctant to lend aid and comfort to Conservative supporters - contrary to the perception of some readers! - and your first line had me worried. The Tory disdain for civil liberties, from Peterloo to the poll tax, is hardly a historical irrelevance. But your concerns turn out to be impeccably liberal ones, and remain as pertinent as ever.

Heckling inside the conference centre would in effect revoke your permission to be present, make you a trespasser, and entitle stewards to use "reasonable force" to remove you. The meaning of "reasonable" is best illustrated, paradoxically enough, by the well-known fate at last year's Labour conference of Walter Wolfgang - thrown out for interrupting the foreign secretary's account of the Iraq war's successes with a cry of "Nonsense". His remark, made when other delegates were content to absorb the speech in silence, was enough to render the 82-year-old persona non grata. Bundling him out without warning was, therefore, "reasonable" - indeed, imperative.

You also risk prosecution under section five of the Public Order Act 1986, which forbids behaviour that is "threatening", "abusive" or "insulting". Those words are interpreted broadly, but all require proof that someone present was actually likely to suffer "harassment, alarm or distress". As a result, protests at political events are always best directed towards the hard-bitten, thick-skinned and cynical, if any such people can be found.

Your peaceful intentions notwithstanding, please bear in mind that the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 also potentially applies if you put anyone in genuine fear. It requires at least two separate acts, however, and one fearsome outburst per meeting would be relatively unobjectionable. A single word, no matter how dreadful, would be safest of all.

It is hard to tell. In theory, the stop-and-search provisions of the Terrorism Act 2000 are rigorously controlled - they are available only in areas specifically designated by a senior police officer or the Home Secretary, who can authorise their use "if expedient for the prevention of acts of terrorism" for a maximum of 28 days.

In practice, the limits barely exist. Greater London has been subject to constantly renewed authorisations since 19 February 2001. The act allows an officer to search for terrorism-related articles "whether or not [he] has grounds for suspecting [their] presence".

As a result, it is legally irrelevant whether the policeman was motivated by a suspicion of your sister's iPod or scepticism about her musical tastes. As the House of Lords confirmed last January, unreasonable searches are perfectly lawful. That may explain the power's growing popularity with the police. It was used 32,062 times during 2004/2005 - a 375 per cent increase in three years.

Introducing the bill outlining the new stop-and-search regime in 1999, Jack Straw told MPs that "the police have no interest in using [it] in circumstances in which the normal criminal law will suffice". That assurance reads as equivocally as ever, but one thing at least is clear: although trawling through an iPod playlist would once have required a reason, a whim is sufficient today.

Sadakat Kadri is a barrister and author of "The Trial: a history from Socrates to O J Simpson" (Harper Perennial, 2006). Send your civil liberties and human-rights dilemmas to: Changing the Rules, New Statesman, 52 Grosvenor Gardens, London SW1W 0AU. This column appears fortnightly

*"The rules of the game have changed" Tony Blair, August 2005

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