Yeah, read that again and marvel at the stupidity of the sentence, and then shake your head in despair when I tell you that it is in no way factually inaccurate.
The official explanation for this stunning piece of legislative nonsense is that Terrorists(tm) may gather information / intelligence by photographing members of the Police. Really, that is it, I shit you not.
Now, the current government, and specifically the Ministry of Justice (doesn't that sound as though there should be stylised eagles on the floors and fat-wheeled motorcycles and multi-ammunition sidearms and helmets... I digress) would probably want to stress that the change in the law (specifically the Counter Terrorism Act 2008) does not automatically make it illegal in all cases to point a camera at an "on-duty" Police Officer, but there is more than enough ambiguity in the legislation for either over-zealous or (God forbid) corrupt Police Officers to leverage their discretion into an arrest in the light of the change.
There is certainly enough threat in the legislative change for even the most begnin of Officers to be able to 'suggest' to a Press Photographer (just as an example) that they ought not take photographs as of course they could be arrested if they refuse to voluntarily desist, under the powers of this new Act. Go on, read those two sentences again... Yes, that's right, if a Police Officer is prepared to say that they are suspicious of your motives for taking photographs in a public place, or specifically of themselves or other Officers, then they can legally arrest you and demand that you turn over your gear and photographs.
Now, of course, this power would never be subverted or mis-used. That could never happen; not in England! you may perhaps agree that even the most law-abiding amongst us, even those of us who have a real respect both for the law and the Police on the whole, would have to concede that not all Police Officers are to be trusted, and certainly that there have been and will continue to be cause for concern with regard to legal provisions that erode our Civil Liberties and increase the arbitrary powers that the Police can wield.
Not only that, but let's be clear, Terrorists are not going to actually let this law stop them from gathering information, so all that this law is actually going to achieve is to offer the Police the power to move on, harrass or even arrest and interfere with entirely law abiding members of the Press and the Public who have cameras in their hands, by waving the law in their faces.
Now some people, have started to make rather exaggerated claims about the state of Britain in the light of this legislation (and other bits and pieces), and the words "Police State" have started to be chucked around. I would have to agree that this is perhaps excessive - we in Britain are not living in Pinochet's Chilé, or Ceauşescu's Romania.
Nonetheless the climate of political and civic apathy that seems to be strangling British Society at the present moment, leads me to feel that there is perhaps room for hyperbole, that there is a need to shock people out of their comfortable ignorance and confront them with the frightening precedent that this change represents.
Civil Liberties are a thousand times easier to give away than they are to win, and as a country that has not really experienced extreme social control for decades, the UK seems to be unaware of the fact that there are no guarantees of free speech or free association in our country. There is an un-written constitution based on precedent and tradition that allows for social freedom and generally it is a social freedom that is predicated on a simple social contract - if you're not hurting anyone, then on you go - but it allows for laws to be created that solidify the boundaries of our freedoms. Once codified, powers of social control are hard to remove from the organs of the State that wield them, and we should not be so trusting or so keen to hand our freedoms to anyone in return for some kind of illusory security.
In the end, one can reasonably hope that the vast majority of Police Officers will not abuse or over-use this power; that they will see the inherent danger in over-indulging their discretion no matter how tempting, and see that harassing or curtailing the activities of photographers for the sake of expediency is as damaging to their own liberties as British Subjects as it is for anyone and everyone else. What I hope for is that this issue can be talked about widely and loudly enough that more and more people will realise that we need to actively and jealously defend the scope of our personal freedom, rather than make the state our gaolers, even if we might be tempted by a gilded cage.
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This post was essentially inspired by a 'good soldier' of the Labour Party calling into question the use of the term 'Police State' with regard to this issue. While I do respect his intellectual position vis à vis the label and his dis-taste for its mis-use, I do still feel that for all its downsides sometimes a little hyperbole is what is needed.
You can see the blog post in question here, and if you look further down the page you will see my comment on it (I hope).
