...a new law - Section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act - which has come into force...permits the arrest of anyone found "eliciting, publishing or communicating information" relating to members of the armed forces, intelligence services and police officers, which is "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". That means anyone taking a picture of one of those people could face a fine or a prison sentence of up to 10 years...
tbscope
ignacio
Why does it seem to me that the UK is slowly descending into abject madness...
Rob
It doesn't say anything of the kind. It says you can't publish information about the police and others. It says nothing about not photographing them.
Agree with tbscope.
sil
Rob: it absolutely does not say that. See http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2008/ukpga_20080028_en_9#pt7-pb3-l1g76. "A person commits an offence who (a) elicits or attempts to elicit information about [a police officer]", *or* "(b) publishes or communicates any such information". Taking a photograph is clearly eliciting such information. Attempting to take a photograph is attempting to elicit such information. Number 10 have already said that ""So there may be situations in which the taking of photographs may cause or lead to public order situations [or] inflame an already tense situation". How does taking photos of something cause a public order situation? The only reason anyone ever stops photos being taken is because they don't want the subject of the photograph made visible to others that weren't there at the time.
tbscope: you're missing the point. If the police beat someone up and they're in the right when doing it, then the fact that there are photographs of the act won't make any difference. The fact that there is a photo of it doesn't guarantee guilt!
Matthew
This debate will be of interest: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/whall/?id=2009-04-01a.262.0 especially the government's response: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/whall/?gid=2009-04-01a.267.8 "I want to be clear about this: the offence does not capture an innocent tourist taking a photograph of a police officer, or a journalist photographing police officers as part of his or her job. It does not criminalise the normal taking of photographs of the police."
Matthew
And here's the BJP on that debate: http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=850305 I think the real issue is what individual police do/believe, as with that deletion of tourist photos of Vauxhall Bus Station, which was clearly in the wrong.
sil
Matthew: precisely the point. The police don't know this, and there have already been cases of innocent photographers being hassled and photos forcibly deleted. No copper will give you shit for, e.g., eating a burger while on the Embankment, because there's clearly not a problem with that. With a law which says "sometimes it's illegal to take a picture of a copper, and it's up to *that copper's* discretion", there are going to be rather a few demands for photography deletion which wouldn't stand up in court if you ever got that far.
I also ought to note that if you are shouted at by a policeman, taken back to the station, shouted at some more, put in a cell, told to delete your photos, and finally let out without any charge six hours later, the law says, well, he wasn't charged, which is precisely what the legal standing is, so no harm no foul. The police have an ability to terrorise subjects in a way that subjects do not have w.r.t. the police.
sil
Matthew: the quoted answer from Shahid Malik says "There are no legal restrictions on photography in a public place except where the picture is taken with the intent of committing a crime or terrorist act", which is clearly not what the law says! It says nothing about intent to commit a crime; eliciting information about a police officer is in itself criminal.
Matthew
It is what the law says. Here it is in full, from the same link you gave: "(a) elicits or attempts to elicit information about an individual who is or has been [3 types of person] which is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, or (b) publishes or communicates any such information." - so eliciting information is *not* in itself criminal. There is, I believe, case law on "useful" information, I'll try and write it up later if I get a chance.
Matthew
If a copper did think your photo was illegal, asking you to delete it would be destroying evidence. ;-) I completely agree with you wrt ability of police to hassle people, but that's a separate point from the headline/content of your blog post.
sil
Matthew: I stand corrected on the "useful" point. I thought one of the things I read suggested that merely having a photograph of a policeman in itself qualified as useful to a terrorist (there was language which made me think "but surely they could just walk past the cop shop at shift change and get the same information!"), but I can't find it so perhaps the man living in my tin foil hat made it up.
Slightly concerned about another bit from Malik's answer, though: "the person taking or providing the photograph would have to have no reasonable excuse, such as responsible journalism, for taking [a photograph]", which sounds a lot to me like "well, no, we won't stop people who work for newspapers because that'd be terrible PR, never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, etc, etc, but we can stop *you* taking photos, you greasy little poor person, because you don't have a good way to tell three million people that we did it". Perhaps this is an overreaction. Is "I'm going to post it on my blog" a definition of "responsible journalism"?
yop
@ tbscope
here is why the police needs to be under citizen control (which implies cameras and internet broadcasting).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyvrqcxNIFs
or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XQ6mE3EYdM
Oh, and I don't care if you think these two guys are retarded leftists. That's not the point.
Matthew
Here are some more links. Firstly, some actual legal opinion on section 58A: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/feb/20/police-photography
Next, the Bill's explanatory note (it was called clause 83 at the time): http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldbills/065/en/08065x-d.htm and then a government response http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page18162 which both mention the case law of section 58.
Lastly, you can then read about the case law at http://www.wikicrimeline.co.uk/index.php?title=Possession_for_terrorist_purposes and http://www.wikicrimeline.co.uk/index.php?title=Terrorism_Act_2000#Sections_57-58:_Possession_offences
Matthew
Yes, the reasonable excuse thing is interesting - one of the case laws mentioned in the links above includes that "neither his desire to wind up prison officers nor his mental illness could amount to a reasonable excuse." (quote from http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/reports/article5847707.ece which is the Times court reporting on the case). But the KvR case law - "Here the court considered that the possession or act must raise a reasonable suspicion that it was intended to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism." - seems to me a strong safeguard.
tretle
I'm not that surprised, A few years ago in secondary school the police in Shannon, Ireland used to hassle teenagers because its a quiet town and they usually have nothing to do.
Some of the older police are nice and tell the recruits to find something better to do but allot of the time when the older ones weren't around the recruits would search peoples mobiles, photos, text messages etc without permission(usually forcefully).
Its a shame but technology related laws and procedures are getting out of hand.
Bryan
I'd start by going after all these people: http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=buckingham+palace+guards&m=text
sil
Matthew: I concur that it seems a strong safeguard, although that doesn't much alleviate the concern above (which you rightly note is a separate one) that if I get hassled in the street by a copper, quoting chapter and verse about how what I'm doing doesn't raise a reasonable expectation that I'll use it for terrorism is not likely to be a brilliantly successful strategy. But I'll let you know how that goes down when it happens. :)
I don’t really understand what is happening in the UK - Notes
[...] Photographing the police now illegal [...]
Giacomo
tbscope, what the police did in London was "their job"? Like beating a bystander who then died from internal bleeding resulting from the inflicted injuries? Or beating unarmed, non-threatening members of the public?
In both cases, policemen did not act professionally, and when challenged they *tried to cover it up* and failed only because member of the public managed to caught them on camera. This new law WILL help unprofessional cops to escape due punishment, and it's a shame that it was introduced by (of all people) a Labour government.
Ten Dollars » Keine Bilder von gewalttätigen Polizisten mehr in England
[...] Kryogenix & [...]
Keine Bilder von gewalttätigen Polizisten mehr in England | Jeder darf Bloggen
[...] Kryogenix & [...]
Micheil
This is totally unrelated to your article (which I read earlier and couldn't believe), but your site seems to have a few issues in it's alignment on screens of 1024x768px resolution.
It's one of those passing comments, just thought I'd let you know. :)
sil
Micheil: really? Can you drop me a mail with some more details or a screenshot? I can't replicate that...
Keine Bilder von gewalttätigen Polizisten mehr in England « startafire
[...] Kryogenix & QDH Tags: Fotografie, Gesetz, Politik, Polizei, Terror, Vereintes Königreich, Zensur keine [...]
mark
I'm not sure about the photography/filming of Police being illegal, as they post very worrying material onto the public web all the time. Take this classic from the Metropolitan Police. (apparently currently under investigation)
VIDEO 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbks-FvSFVs
VIDEO 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbxEDx5KIC4
VIDEO 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shVtaCOdSAQ
VIDEO 4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DapyrzsHmMs
These videos have recently been reported on BBC and SKYNEWS. 'youtube police shooting probed'
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Well, photographs do not have context.
What if the person that's being beaten up is kidnapping one of your kids? And somebody takes a picture of that. Does that police office need to go to jail?
Perfect. By that tempo, you have no one left to defend you.
Ok, the above situation doesn't happen that much.
But you need to understand something very good.
If police officers are afraid that they get in jail for doing their job when somebody takes a photo, then you can be dead sure that the next time you need the police you're left on your own.
Again:
I DO NOT want to say that what some of the police officers did is good. Far from it. But if you do not want a police state, don't create it.
What you're doing right now is monitoring the police and if someone's hair is on the wrong side he gets fired!
Get out on the street and demand a reform of your police in stead of being in shock that you can't photograph a police officer again (which of course, you still can, but it can't be used as evidence, and rightly so because there's no context).