Liberty's Shami Chakrabarti gave Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, and the Lord High Chancellor, as Jack Straw is now officially known, a warm welcome to what she called the "bleeding heart's den" for a polite but incisive exchange over the government's new counterterrorism legislation.
For Ms Smith, the fringe meeting was an opportunity to prove that she was willing to engage with even her sternest critics in her attempt to find "consensus" over the government's plans to extend the legal limit on detention without charge of terror suspects beyond 28 days.
Ms Smith remained publicly coy on the new upper limit by ruling out 90 days but saying it was for parliament to decide on the new limit - but her audience was well aware that ministers have privately made clear that they want it doubled to 56 days.
She was prepared to concede that the move will have a negative impact in Muslim communities but said that "disbenefit" was outweighed by that advantages of preventing further terrorist attacks.
She argued that a further terrorist attack would be "the biggest cause of conflict" for Britain's Muslims, and revealed that a Home Office "roadshow" is currently touring Muslim communities trying to convince them of the nature of the threat and the need for a new "proportionate" response.
In what was taken as a bit of sideswipe at her predecessor, John Reid, she said that, this time, the debate over pre-charge detention was taking place in a much calmer atmosphere than 2005's divisive exercise that led to one of Tony Blair's few parliamentary defeats.
She claimed that Liberty's position - that, if the government was serious, it should use its emergency-powers legislation to declare a state of emergency and justify that to parliament before extending detention without charge - meant that they implicitly accepted that more than 28 days was necessary.
Ms Chakrabarti was not impressed. She told the home secretary that no less a figure than the former RUC chief constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, had earlier this week said that internment had proved counterproductive in Northern Ireland and of the dangers of going down the road of believing Britain now lived in a "permanent state of emergency".
But perhaps the most striking argument against the extension of pre-charge detention came from a member of the Egyptian human rights council who said that they had successfully argued to reduce the period of detention without charge in Egypt from 90 days to 14.
"The police are now saying that liberal, free countries, particularly Britain, are going to raise their periods of detention without charge. What kind of impact do you think that has on democratic reform in other countries?"
