The British Home Office has rejected a Freedom of Information request filed by the British Journal of Photography seeking the list of all areas where police officers are authorised to stop-and-search photographers under the Terrorism Act (2000).
The controversial Act of Parliament, put into force in 2001, allows Chief Constables to request authorisation from the Home Secretary to define an area in which any constable in uniform is able to stop and search any person or vehicle for the prevention of acts of terrorism. The authorisation, which can be given orally, must be renewed every 28 days and only covers the areas specified in the Chief Constables’ requests.
Believe it or not, a genuine official poster displayed in London c. 2003
While it is common knowledge that the entire City of London, at the behest of the Metropolitan Police, is covered by the legislation, it remains unclear which other areas in England and Wales have requested the stop-and-search powers.After growing concerns from BJP readers, some of whom say they have been abusively stopped from taking pictures around the country, news editor Olivier Laurent filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the Home Office on 24 April. The request asked for a ‘full list of all areas – in England, Wales and Northern Ireland – subject to Section 44 Terrorism Act 2000 authorisations, which the Home Office has a statutory duty to be aware of.’
The request was rejected in late May on grounds of national security. ‘In relation to authorisations for England and Wales, I can confirm that the Home Office holds the information that you requested. I am, however, not obliged to disclose it to you,’ writes J Fanshaw of the Direct Communications Unit at the Home Office.
The bottom line is that while the British State can now arrange for many parts of the country to be ‘photography free zones’, it won’t say where. Photographers, presumably, will find that out if and when they are stopped, searched and/or arrested. That’s if they’re lucky. The unlucky may get the news via the blunt end of a truncheon.
The British Government’s squeamishness over private photography is is sharp contrast to its own enthusiasm for photographing the population, 24×7.
CCTV cameras surrounding Orwell's Islington home in 2007 (not 1984)
The Surveillance Studies Network, a group of concerned academics, conducted an international survey in 2006 which placed Britain at the bottom of the privacy league amoung western countries. The absurd proliferation of CCTV was one reason for the UK’s dismal score. Each year, notwithstanding a paucity of hard data that CCTVs actually deter crime, the extraordinary reach of Britain’s camera-happy surveillance State expands into new aspects of the public’s lives.
In March 2007, the London Evening Standard reported on the propagation of closed circuit TV cameras surrounding George Orwell’s old home in Canonbury Square, Islington, which are now more common than rose beds: see George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house. The novelist’s distopic nightmare of an emergent Big Brother State has apparently come to pass, just a quarter century later than suggested in his fictional classic.
Oddly enough (or perhaps not?), just when one might like these infernal and ubiquitous devices to actually yield copious quantities of confirmatory photographs, they don’t. Following the London Tube and Bus Bombings of 7th July, 2005, very few photos of the alleged bombers that should have been captured on CCTV were released to the public.
Camera shy?
A cynic might speculate that the ban on private photography is less about protecting the public from ‘terrorists’ – and more about protecting State-sponsored terror.
Perhaps it’s also about making sure no-one gets a snap of police agent provocateurs?
Their repeated use at demonstrations in London is becoming an open joke throughout the civilized world – even if the British press are too discrete to mention it?
