Mastermind and the road to Damascus

[ken]

Roland Perry wrote:
> In article 
> <a9f4d96f0902241312l5ba85c67n485dd11dd32b1dd3@mail.gmail.com>, John 
> Wilson <tugwilson@gmail.com> writes
>> To be clear - I know of nobody who is a serious amateur or
>> professional photographer who believes that anybody is going to be
>> charged under this section of the act. There is, however, real concern
>> that people are going to be harassed using it (think suss laws).
> 
> So that community needs to be vigilant if/when such things happen.

Yes but the point (and a pretty obvious one I think) is that 
people very often do what they are told by a police officer and 
think about it afterwards. Maybe from habit, or a respect for 
authority, or because they feel themselves to be generally on 
the same side, or because they are afraid of being arrested or 
attacked in some way.  The "community vigilance you so correctly 
desire gets a little bit harder  each time the law is seen to 
give the police a little bit more power.

It doesn't even really matter what the law actually says as long 
as either police or public believe that it gives them some right 
to stop photography. If they say "don't do that" it takes some 
presence of mind and some face to say "why not?" and carry on 
doing it anyway.


As others have said the worry is not of being charged and 
imprisoned, or even of having the camera confiscated (though I 
am sure that happens sometimes) - it is of not being able to 
take the picture you were about to take. It doesn't really make 
any difference if the police apologise for their mistake next 
week,. Or even next minute. The opportunity might be gone.

If someone does say "why not?" the answer used to be, more or 
less, "because I say so" (maybe dressed up in jargon about 
security or safety). The worry is that now the answer is going 
to be "because of the wibble-wobble Terrorism Act of 200x" - 
whether or not that or any other law is at all relevant.

And I do have a specific incident in mind. Some years ago I was 
in a bar near Trafalgar Square having a drink after working on a 
Saturday. There was a political demonstration on. There was a 
police line right outside the window of the bar, and police were 
physically preventing people leaving the demonstration and 
moving the line forward towards Square. Including young children 
and even babies in arms or pushchairs.  Someone was trying to 
take photos of the police from *outside* the lines and other 
police tried to stop him. Not a very unusual occurrence, I 
remember it because he climbed a lamppost and they were trying 
to grab his legs. It was rather funny.

That sort of behaviour is much harder for the police to get away 
with unobserved now that there are so many mobile phones and so 
much wireless coms. Which is I think a good thing for "community 
vigilance" and democracy in general.