Photographs of Police Officers in Public Places
Further information: Legality of recording by civilians Further information: Photography and the lawSection 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 was withdrawn after the Minister explained that the clause merely restated earlier laws applying to the armed forces on which there was already case law that made it more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.'
Read more about this topic: Counter-Terrorism Act 2008
Famous quotes containing the words photographs of, photographs, police, officers, public and/or places:
“No one lives in this room
without confronting the whiteness of the wall
behind the poems, planks of books,
photographs of dead heroines.
Without contemplating last and late
the true nature of poetry. The drive
to connect. The dream of a common language.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this—as in other ways—they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“Now, honestly: if a large group of ... demonstrators blocked the entrances to St. Patrick’s Cathedral every Sunday for years, making it impossible for worshipers to get inside the church without someone escorting them through screaming crowds, wouldn’t some judge rule that those protesters could keep protesting, but behind police lines and out of the doorways?”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1953)
“No officer should be required or permitted to take part in the management of political organizations, caucuses, conventions, or election campaigns. Their right to vote and to express their views on public questions, either orally or through the press, is not denied, provided it does not interfere with the discharge of their official duties. No assessment for political purposes on officers or subordinates should be allowed.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Like those before it, this decade takes on the marketable subtleties of a private phenomenon: parenthood. Mothers are being teased out of the home and into the agora for a public trial. Are we doing it right? Do we have the right touch? The right toys? The right lights? Is our child going to grow up tall, thin and bright? Something private, and precious, has become public, vulgarized—and scored by impersonal judges.”
—Sonia Taitz (20th century)
“The places we have known do not only belong to the world of space in which we situate them for the sake of simplicity. They were but a thin slice between contiguous impression which formed our lives back then; the memory of a certain image is but the regret of a certain instant; and the houses, the roads, the avenues are fleeting, alas! as the years.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)