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UK photographers: the law and your rights: discussion

More photography laws?

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Photography in public places -- confronting the jobsworths

Quite funny little video of what happened when some traffic wardens told a group of photographers to stop taking pictures



The group was taking part in the

"CCTV Camera Appreciation Outing, Worthing town centre. An invitation to bring your own camera to point at the lenses that have been pointing at us since 1996. Celebration of Big Brother's Birthday, combining 12th anniversary of Worthing's CCTV and George Orwell's birthday."
 
Actually, slight correction, they are not traffic wardens but Worthing's

"new Town Centre Wardens were launched in the Town Centre on June 2nd 2008"

who knows what their powers are?!
 
Stanley Edwards said:
Much as I hate to link to....


e2a; Yay! Link didn't even work. The angels are looking after me :)


http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=801977

Booh!
Click to expand...

"However, the Home Secretary adds that local restrictions might be enforced. 'Decisions may be made locally to restrict or monitor photography in reasonable circumstances. That is an operational decision for the officers involved based on the individual circumstances of each situation.

'It is for the local Chief Constable, in the case of your letter the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Force, to decide how his or her Officers and employees should best balance the rights to freedom of the press, freedom of expression and the need for public protection.'

i.e. local Chief Constables can make up some laws if they feel like it.
 
editor said:
Delightful pwnage of the jobsworth, but the BJP article is very worrying.
Click to expand...

Possibly. But, Chief Constables are being given far more jurisdiction over such things.


I'm currently trying to dig up the original press release for my 321 Spaces project. Doesn't seem that long ago, but much has changed legally.


e2a; Should ad that the fact that the question came down to the local chief constable was the deal back then. Always has been. Lots of other stuff has changed mind.
 
Paul Russell said:
"However, the Home Secretary adds that local restrictions might be enforced. 'Decisions may be made locally to restrict or monitor photography in reasonable circumstances. That is an operational decision for the officers involved based on the individual circumstances of each situation.

'It is for the local Chief Constable, in the case of your letter the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Force, to decide how his or her Officers and employees should best balance the rights to freedom of the press, freedom of expression and the need for public protection.'

i.e. local Chief Constables can make up some laws if they feel like it.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure whether that is some sort of discretionary-power-granting, or whether it's basically saying "you're on your own when it comes to interpreting the law, we're not going to give you any guidelines, if you get it wrong don't look at us". Both of which are bad but clearly the first is a lot worse.
 
I was photographing some semi trucks parked near a truck stop in Chilliwack. A rotund young lady yells, 'is that your truck?'

'No'.

'Why are you taking pictures?'

'I like to take pictures'

[Silence, she keeps walking with two cups of coffee]

[Profferring camera to woman]: 'Here, do you want to see some'

'Grunt'

'Is it okay, like: taking pictures?'

'Grunt'


[She disappeared into the store where she was a clerk, and then proceeded to try and overcharge me for a deck of playing cards]

The pictures were nothing to write home about, as it turns out.
 
Yes I am worried about the statement in the BJP article that said
While Jacqui Smith reaffirmed that there are no legal restrictions, she added that local Chief Constables were allowed to restrict or monitor photography in certain circumstances.
Click to expand...

This means that any police officer can on the spot, say that the local Chief Constable has put a restriction on photographing whatever it is you point your camera at. The Chief constable is not going to cause problems for his officers by denying this, so the decision can be made up on the spot by some bored officer who wants to exercise power that he doesn't really have but he can rely on getting on demand from his superiors

Even if police constables did not do this, and the authority to restrict or monitor photography was done with advanced notice in certain circumstances, you can be sure that political demonstrations or other places where police were active, would have restrictions placed on them in advance.

What is the point of having a camera it you cannot take pictures where and when you want to?

Tourist towns like London and seaside towns are the very places where most photographs are taken. In fact most of the UK is a valid place to take tourist pictures. If tourists are allowed to take pictures (and it is to be hoped that they are) then I demand the right to also take pictures wherever I want.

I also demand the right to take pictures of the police and other officials going about their work iin public places. They work for us, we pay their salaries.

I have to admit that once the issue of the right to take photographs was publicised by MP Austin Mitchell among others then I feared that the government would move to clarify the matter in their own restrictive favour.
 
Assault on photography.

This is becoming a recurring theme. :hmm:

Carroll had been visiting relatives in the area. A keen photographer, he had taken his camera with him on a Saturday morning shopping trip to take some shots of the high street. He was in Boots with his brother and sister-in-law when he was confronted by the police, who told him they had received a complaint from a member of the public that he had been taking pictures of 'sensitive buildings'. 'I was marched out of the shop, stood against the wall and made to empty my pockets,' he says. 'I was scared and intimidated. I mean, I'm one of the most law-abiding citizens you could meet. I don't even drop litter! I shouldn't really have handed over the film but, at the time, I was afraid of being arrested.'

The police had the film developed and returned the pictures to him later that day, acknowledging that they were entirely innocuous. They also admitted that there had been no complaint from the public; they had stopped Carroll because they thought he was taking pictures of children. Carroll lodged a complaint with the local station. 'The superintendent at Humberside police got in touch and was very sympathetic. But he still claimed that his officers had behaved correctly and at times of heightened security we have to accept less freedom for our own good.'
Click to expand...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/08/17/sv_photographers.xml&page=1


Are orders coming down from seniors, ignorant beat cops just being cops or is it paranoid people spurred on by news stories?
Can we expect this to continue until people accept it and laws are made.

On the other hand there's no need to have people running around making photographs which could help terrorists or annoy ordinary people going about their business. A license or a register of photographers and their whereabouts would help bring some accountability where it's needed and verify them when buying specialist equipment or being questioned by the police.
 
On our guided walk of the murals of Brixton we were stopped from taking photos of one of them because it was a the back of an adventure playground. A friend also forbade me from posting a pic on the internet of me and her 9 month old baby! I just don't get it.

Perhaps someone on here can explain what harm there is in taking photos that have children in them, or point me to a case where someone has found a picture of a child on the internet and then found a way to harm that child.
 
XR75 said:
This is becoming a recurring theme. :hmm:



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/08/17/sv_photographers.xml&page=1


Are orders coming down from seniors, ignorant beat cops just being cops or is it paranoid people spurred on by news stories?
Can we expect this to continue until people accept it and laws are made.

On the other hand there's no need to have people running around making photographs which could help terrorists or annoy ordinary people going about their business. A license or a register of photographers and their whereabouts would help bring some accountability where it's needed and verify them when buying specialist equipment or being questioned by the police.
Click to expand...

What is really telling about that case is that the cops admitted they stopped him because they thought he was photographing children, then used the 'in times of heightened security line...'. What the hell kind of justification is that? You can't just reel out a completely unrelated crime to justify a wrongful arrest. Time and time again we see these 'reduced freedoms' abused, quite apart from anything else it leads to complete mistrust of the police.
 
XR75 said:
Are orders coming down from seniors, ignorant beat cops just being cops or is it paranoid people spurred on by news stories?
Click to expand...
Bit of each. It is known that terrorists have taken photographs of potential targets, etc. (they have been found when searches have been carried out and they have formed part of the evidence in some cases). So people taking photographs of potential targets is, quite properly, identified as a potential weak spot which could be the break necessary to identify potential attackers carrying out reconnaissance.

However, the problem comes when that "keep 'em peeled" advice gets pumped out to all officers and to the public (it's been on a number of publicity campaigns). Unfortunately sometimes (and I would very strongly suspect it is a tiny minority of times) officers overreact and we get stories like this. In the vast majority of cases sensible officers either watch for a while and dispel their suspicions without even approaching the people concerned or, at worst, go and have a brief chat and resolve things without any need to take things any further, seize cameras or whatever.

I would also suspect some incidents arise when an officer wants to go down the quic word route but, instead of having a pleasant chat, the "suspect" gets arsey and refuses to speak or whatever. In such situations, as the initial suspicions, however slight, cannot be dispelled, more intervention will be needed.
 
XR75 said:
This is becoming a recurring theme. :hmm:

A license or a register of photographers and their whereabouts would help bring some accountability where it's needed and verify them when buying specialist equipment or being questioned by the police.
Click to expand...


Yes. Have you really missed all the other threads on the subject? Including a considerable amount of good legal/practical advice.

Fuck-no! :eek: :mad:
 
quimcunx said:
On our guided walk of the murals of Brixton we were stopped from taking photos of one of them because it was a the back of an adventure playground. A friend also forbade me from posting a pic on the internet of me and her 9 month old baby! I just don't get it.

Perhaps someone on here can explain what harm there is in taking photos that have children in them, or point me to a case where someone has found a picture of a child on the internet and then found a way to harm that child.
Click to expand...

It's not really the same thing, but on R4 tonight there was a piece about an internet paedophile site who posted up normal, innocent pictures of kids for its members to wank over (sorry :(), so apparently it goes on. Maybe that's what your friend was worried about?
 
One of the jobs my mate does in the Met is to go around 'sensitive targets' in London in plain clothes looking for people taking pictures of non obvious tourist things - CCTV, doorways, security patrols etc.

Then he follows them/calls a uniformed team to stop them etc.

Terrorists do to research and dry runs etc, it would be remiss of the Met etc to not consider this, imo.
 
XR75 said:
On the other hand there's no need to have people running around making photographs which could help terrorists or annoy ordinary people going about their business. A license or a register of photographers and their whereabouts would help bring some accountability where it's needed and verify them when buying specialist equipment or being questioned by the police.
Click to expand...

Are you fucking serious? Also, do you realise how incredibly easy it is nowadays to take a photograph of just about anything? The number of cameras around has increased massively. The easiest way is jsut to pretend to be texting someone.
 
detective-boy said:
Bit of each. It is known that terrorists have taken photographs of potential targets, etc. (they have been found when searches have been carried out and they have formed part of the evidence in some cases). So people taking photographs of potential targets is, quite properly, identified as a potential weak spot which could be the break necessary to identify potential attackers carrying out reconnaissance.
Click to expand...

That makes a lot more sense than actually trying to prevent "terrorists" or whoever from taking photographs of their targets, which is completely futile.
 
Enid Laundromat said:
It's not really the same thing, but on R4 tonight there was a piece about an internet paedophile site who posted up normal, innocent pictures of kids for its members to wank over (sorry :(), so apparently it goes on. Maybe that's what your friend was worried about?
Click to expand...

No it wasn't... It was a forum in which people exchanged photos 'innocently' to test integrity etc, then met up outside the forum itself in order to exchange more explicit images.
 
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