The Counter Terrorism Act 2008 includes the provision:

76. Offences relating to information about members of armed forces etc

(1) After section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (collection of information) insert:
“58A Eliciting, publishing or communicating information about members of armed forces etc

(1) A person commits an offence who:

(a) elicits or attempts to elicit information about an individual who is or has been:

(i) a member of Her Majesty’s forces,

(ii) a member of any of the intelligence services, or

(iii) a constable,

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.”

This is in addition to a prior claim in December 2008 where the Home Secretary informed the National Union of Journalists that photography in public places may be restricted when it “may cause or lead to public order situations or inflame an already tense situation or raise security considerations”.

As we have seen with other powers supposedly aimed at preventing terrorism (stop and search powers, RIPA surveillance authority) any power given with a blanket “preventing terrorism” justification in actuality can be used, abused, misused and overused in a wider variety of circumstances than ever accepted by legislators when passing the law under government assurances that such powers will only be used in exceptional circumstances.

There are numerous stories from both professional and amateur photographers taking pictures of everything from normal street scenes (including famous buildings, particularly in London which is well blessed with many buildings worth photographing) to major civil events such as the G20 protests in London on 1st April 2009. The wording of the Home Secretary’s comments regarding “cause … public order situations” could well be interpreted to mean that the Rodney King incident in California in 1991 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King) should not have been filmed – leading as it did to riots when the police officers concerned were found innocent of any crime.

The case of the death of Ian Tomlinson, by all accounts really just a man going about lawful business and passing through a protest zone, should be a wake-up call for the need not to restrict photography in public places of police officers going about their business. Without the (apparently amateur) video footage the internal investigation of the police action would quite possibly have concluded that there was no significant evidence of police malfeasance contributing to his death. Only once the amateur video evidence came out was the wall of silence of the police over this incident broken and a full IPCC investigation commenced.
(The Telegraph)

There is good evidence from academic studies that the police often use their knowledge of, and power over, the focus of CCTV cameras to remove their activities from the CCTV that they, and politicians, claim is there for the protection of the public. There is also evidence that when police activities are subject to surveillance that they are far more rigorous about following their own rules and procedures (which are there to protect the public from the abuse of the necessary powers of the police to help protect us, but which by their nature are open to abuse). See Goold’s “CCTV and Policing” and Norris and Armstrong’s “The Maximum Surveillance Society” for detailed explanations. In my own work on the EuropCop project I proposed that wearable video capture devices proposed for police, and already trialled for both police officers  (The Guardian) and police dogs (The Times) should not be under the control of the officers themselves, that the material captured should be encrypted and held securely after shifts, and that “convenient” failures of the equipment should be treated with immense suspicion by the IPCC and the public.

There is a legitimate concern over constant surveillance by both large corporate entities and the state, particularly when that is systematic and approaches global coverage, and/or invades very private spaces (public toilets in some of Tokyo’s metro stations have signs outside warning that there are cameras inside – e.g. Higashi-Shinjuku Toei Oedo line station). The attacks by the current UK government on the right of individuals to take photographs of public buildings, public servants and the like, is far more dangerous than any possible use that terrorists might have for using public photographs for planning attacks. At best estimate there are only a few hundred or a couple of thousand people in the UK contemplating potential terror attacks. There are 40,000 police officers interacting with the public on a daily basis and far more incidents of dispute about police action than there are terrorist incidents. Finally, there are hundreds of thousands of professional and amateur photographers out there creating art, and exercising their freedom of speech by taking photographs day-in/day-out. This is a precious right that we must reclaim.

Edit: Update 16 April 2009: Another Incident.

On the day after Mr Tomlinson’s death, there was another incident, at a vigil mourning his death. It looks like the woman assaulted by a police officer was actingin a very provocative manner verbally, but again it seems that complaints were not dealt with properly until video footage of the incident was produced.

Edit: Update 17 April 2009: The War on Tourism

The War on Tourism continues with people overstepping their authority again. This time it wasn’t in attacking an innocent bystander at a demo, or even the use of unnecessary force against a verbally abusive protester. This time it was the irony of a British bobby (or, more likely in my opinion – but so far only in my opinion – of a plastic policeman [Community Support Officer] with a little Hitler complex) telling an Austrian tourist that they was a ban on any photography of transport-related items including buses, and train and bus stations, and insisting that the innocent tourist in question delete the photos on their camera of such devices. Tourism into London is a major industry and in an economic downturn we can ill afford anything that discourages overseas visitors. Jenny Jones, a Green member of the Greater London Assembly and the Police Authority, like me, links this all together.