Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 - Photographs of Police Officers in Public Places

Photographs of Police Officers in Public Places

Further information: Legality of recording by civilians Further information: Photography and the law

Section 76 (Offences relating to information about members of armed forces etc.) came into force on 15 February 2009 making it an offence to elicit, attempt to elicit, or publish information "of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism" about:

• a member of Her Majesty's Armed Forces,
• a constable,
• the Security Service,
• the Secret Intelligence Service, or
• Government Communications Headquarters.

Any person found guilty faces 10 years imprisonment and an unlimited fine. It is a defence for a person charged with this offence to prove that they had a reasonable excuse for their action (for example, a newspaper feature on police brutality or corruption).

There are exemptions for communications service providers, web caches and web hosting services.

Journalists who feared that this law would be abused by the police to threaten the taking of photographs of their activities staged a mass protest outside Scotland Yard in February 2009. Gordon Brown reaffirmed that the police have a legal right to restrict photography in public places, and stated "the law applies to photographers as it does to anybody else in a public place". The act however does not lay out restrictions for the photography of Community Support Officers as they do not hold the office of Constable.

The Parliamentary debate on this law was limited because in earlier versions of the Bill the offence of eliciting or publishing information "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism" only applied to people who were or had been members of Her Majesty’s Forces, and not to the police. This was also the case throughout the debate in the Standing Committee.

(An opposition amendment changing the phrase "of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism" with the words "with the intention that it is useful..." was withdrawn after the Minister explained that the clause merely restated earlier laws applying to the armed forces on which there was already case law that made it more reasonable than it appeared.)

The law against eliciting or publishing information "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism" was extended to encompass police constables in a raft of unscrutinized amendments that passed into the Bill at the end of the debate when the Parliamentary timetable (which had been voted on earlier in the day) expired.

When this clause was scrutinized in the House of Lords, and in all subsequent debates, no reference was made to the extension of the law to include police constables.

A Parliamentary written question about the policy regarding police preventing members of the public from taking photographs in public places hasn't been answered. But the Home Office issued a circular to the police in 2009 which reminds them that 'Legitimate journalistic activity (such as covering a demonstration for a newspaper) is likely to constitute such an excuse. Similarly an innocent tourist or other sight-seer taking a photograph of a police officer is likely to have a reasonable excuse.'