UK Police Threaten Teenage Photojournalist 344
IonOtter writes "In what seems to be a common occurrence, and now a costly one, Metropolitan Police in the UK still don't seem to be getting the message that assaulting photographers is a bad idea. UK press photographer Jules Matteson details the event in his blog, titled The Romford Incident. The incident has already been picked up by The Register, The Independent, and the British Journal of Photography, which contains an official statement from the Metropolitan Police."
it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly (Score:4, Insightful)
The Independent may be less, well, un-Independent than most of the mainstream rags, but no-one pays much attention to it. And The Register is read by as many people who count as the scrawlings on the average 6th Form toilet wall.
It's not to say that the laws aren't being abused. It's that pompous claims like
The Independent forced senior officers to admit that the controversial legislation is being widely misused.
are more "haha I stuck it to the Man!" exaggeration than evidence of the Met receiving a genuine reprimand from those who represent us.
Re:it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly (Score:5, Insightful)
/., why must you engage in so much mutual masturbation? Liberals (in the classical "defender of liberty" sense, not in the US "not conservative" sense) are being downtrodden precisely because they think small.
Yes, it's great that senior officers have issued a memo to junior officers - not even a slap on the wrist - but the problems are:
Remember: in any reasonable state, it's not the policeman's job to write or interpret the law, and the police should never have the power of a law so vague as the Terrorism Acts. Are you not paying attention? The public aren't even allowed to know where certain Laws apply. This might protect a few people on the ground being harassed, but it's the worst way of sweeping the problem under the carpet.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
3500 pounds is chump change.
The policeman 'made something up' - a complete disgrace - then 'enforced it' - unforgivable.
Personal accountability should see at least triple that amount personally be deducted from constable plod + damages - loss of story is their job.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
>>the intentional vagary of the law
Absolutely. Causing "alarm and distress to a member of the public" is an offense in the UK.
In this case, though, you had a photographer that sounded like a total prat, ranting on about his rights and refusing to answer reasonable questions by a police officer (listen to the audio). In no surprising development, the person who antagonized the police got in trouble, whereas the other people in the area doing the same thing (http://julesmattsson.wordpress.com/2010/06/28
"antagonising the police" isn't a crime (Score:4, Insightful)
"antagonising the police" isn't a crime. And, since they are not a member of the public because they are a Police Officer, that "Causing alarm and distress to a member of the public" doesn't apply to him (though it DOES apply to the total prat, therefore the officer broke the law you're asserting the pratt did.
I propose to you that the police officer was the pratt and not only that abused power and position to break the law.
Re:"antagonising the police" isn't a crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of genuine civil liberty is the ability to be as big of a dick to the cops as you want and not get arrested.
Re:"antagonising the police" isn't a crime (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of being an adult is realizing that your actions have consequences.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"antagonising the police" isn't a crime (Score:4, Interesting)
Absolutely right. Last week I returned to my hometown of London with my American wife, and within minutes of stepping off the Tube saw a guy waving his finger in the face of a policeman shouting words along the lines of "You're out of order. Do your f'ing job properly."
I turned to my wife and said "It's good to be home".
I have no idea what the situation was, and who was in the right, but we both agreed that in the US this kind of reprimanding of a public servant would be cut short with use of force.
Re:"antagonising the police" isn't a crime (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, it is [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not if the officer's actions are unlawful to begin with. It's hooligans in uniform that undermine respect for the law more than anything else.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd have a pretty fucking short fuse too.
Then policeman's not the job for you. Just as you'd not be a paramedic if you broke down crying at every bloody body.
So people are rude and they lie. Imagine you're a computer, processing streams of sound and observed movement. The computer doesn't care if you speak angrily or wave your hands at it all day, and it doesn't react any better if you shower it with rosepetals - it's just processing. Now add human intelligence to enable your processing to excel, but avoid adding human emotion. Don't take it perso
Re:"antagonising the police" isn't a crime (Score:4, Insightful)
Antagonising a police officer and being a dick to them will get you slapped with a 'Intentional harassment, alarm or distress' or a 'breach of the peace' charge which will result in you being arrested and probably fined or cautioned.
It seems to me that if the video going around is representative, it was not the 16-year-old freelance photographer who was being antagonistic. In fact, for a 16-year-old under those circumstances, I think he was impressively calm and polite. Rather, it appears to have been the police officers, including at least one senior officer, who were the trouble-makers. They appear to have been preventing the photographer from working legally, threatening in their behaviour, and physically abusive on several separate occasions, all the while failing to provide information that they are required by law to give while demanding information that they have no legal right to obtain.
Police officers are granted legal powers that most of us are not, and they must be held to a higher standard accordingly. If the video is representative then the senior officer who was throwing his weight around should be bust back down to walking the beat, outright fired, and/or subject to criminal prosecution, depending on how much of the abuse was actually due to him and how much just happened on his watch. I don't care how long he's been in the force or how senior he is: this wasn't an isolated slip, it was a senior officer and several of his subordinates openly and persistently abusing their position of authority. There is absolutely no excuse for that.
Likewise, every other officer who can be identified as supporting this behaviour should be disciplined and/or criminally prosecuted as appropriate. People like that need to be made into examples, and the video posted in every police station in the country.
Oh, and for bonus points, they trotted out some absurd line about terrorism towards the end of the incident. If a senior police officer really considered that boy to be a terrorist threat, I think I would rather take my chances with the terrorists than trust a police service with such poor judgement to protect me! In any case, if ever there was proof that so-called anti-terrorism laws are far too broad and subject to abuse by front-line officers, this is it. Either those laws need repealing, or a mandatory 10 year prison sentence for anyone who abuses them needs to be introduced.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In this case, though, you had a photographer that sounded like a total prat, ranting on about his rights and refusing to answer reasonable questions by a police officer
Fuck you.
The guy became "a total prat" after he was rouged up for taking a picture and had the police outright lie to him about what his rights were.
Pull your head out of the government's ass for a minute, your brain is starving for oxygen.
Re:it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly (Score:4, Funny)
The guy became "a total prat" after he was rouged up for taking a picture
They rouged [timesonline.co.uk] him up? Okay, that's cruel and unusual punishment right there.
Re:it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, though, you had a photographer that sounded like a total prat, ranting on about his rights and refusing to answer reasonable questions by a police officer (listen to the audio).
Isn't it odd how different people can hear different things. For example, I heard the kid asking why he was being detained (consistently throughout the audio) and the Police trying to find some valid reason ... and failing!
The problem here was the intervention from the first police person (a cadet IIRC). Had the next (real!) copper who rocked up listened to the cadet's reason for intervention and then put him/her? straight and apologised to the kid photographer all would have been well, but he decided to back up the cadet instead! And why? Because Police always (ALWAYS ALWAYS!) stick together!
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But it is clear that the kid brought about his own downfall.
He hasn't been convicted of anything, and it smells like the Met will be having to get its chequebook out again. Then he will not have brought about his own downfall, but skillfully enacted Operation Just-Enough-Rope.
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Being polite may be a good idea tactically, but that doesn't justify the original problem of harrassing people taking photos and telling them they shouldn't be doing so. It's not just about whether we have sympathy for this individual person, it's what happens to everyone who might be in that situation of taking photos in public.
Meanwhile, it's okay for London to be covered in CCTV - if that adult cadet officer was so worried about parental permission, perhaps he could show me the parental permission that w
Re:it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly (Score:5, Interesting)
Even when you're polite, it doesn't mean you'll get good treatment. I encountered Homeland Security while driving from California to Texas, and even though I smiled and submitted to the Armed Soldiers, they still made me stand-around in the hot sun for two hours. Why? I refused to pop my trunk. I politely told them if they get a search warrant from a judge, then I'll open the car, but I will not submit to an warrantless search. So they punished me.
And then there's the guy who was flying from St Louis to Washington DC (his home), and the TSA forced him to an interrogation. He too was polite but it didn't stop the Armed Idiots from harassing him and making him miss his flight. Oh yeah - his crime? He had about $5000 in his wallet. Oh noes! OMG! A fucking american who has money! He must be a criminal!
Fuckign a. Freedom? More like serfdom.
AUDIO OF TSA INTERROGATION of innocent traveler: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWcUFB92S2o#t=1m15s [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You, and other Americans, need to learn the following few phrases:
"Is this a consensual search?" followed by "Sorry, but I don't consent to searches."
"Am I being detained?" followed by "Am I free to go?"
"I am calling my lawyer," followed by "If I am not free to go, are you denying me my right to counsel?"
In your case, the second line above would have started the ball rolling.
Don't say anything else, don't get mouthy, don't try to demonstrate your incomplete knowledge of the law.
Re:it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't get a search warrant. They didn't do jack shit. They just made me stand behind my car for two hours, while they stopped and questioned other drivers...... then I guess they decided I'd been "punished" enough (I was turning red) and let me back in my car. I then continued by vacation.
My trunk was empty other than the mini-spare tire.
The point is that I will not submit to unconstitutional, warrantless searches. I will not voluntarily give up my rights as a liberated person. You ever heard that story about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the 1940s? I probably would have been part of it. Better to die free, than die licking some soldier's boots begging for mercy. Better to be an Individual than to be a lowly serf.
Re:it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>Or were you just being a pain in the ass for the sake of it?
You know what? You're right. I shouldn't be a pain in the ass. Nobody should. We should just voluntarily march into the gas chambers like polite little nobodies. The government is only looking out for us - why should we question their authority, or protect the Bill of Rights??? /end sarcasm
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Obviously illegal search of a trunk is far less harmful than gassing. So is the search ok? Just let that one slide? Ok, how about entering your home? If searching your trunk is ok, then entering your house is only a small step further. And if that's ok, then how about searching your home? How about detaining you without a warrant or cause? How about detention indefinately?
If you're going to selectively enforce your rights, which ones do you enforce?
Re:it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly (Score:4, Insightful)
How long do you think it takes to get a search warrant? Two hours doesn't seem unreasonable if that's what you asked them to do.
That's not what he did. He asserted his rights and educated them on the law. Asshat. Illegal detainment is - illegal! Asserting your rights does not make your a criminal. No matter how much police want you to believe otherwise.
Or were you just being a pain in the ass for the sake of it?
What an asshat. YOU and people like YOU are the reason the world is turning into a shit hole. Obviously you LOVE fascism! And if you don't, stop acting you do and persecuting those who don't.
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Responsibilities are just as important as rights. One of those responsibilities is to treat public servants with respect. If you don't you shouldn't be surprised when they are awkward right back at you.
You just proved my point. Being rude is not carte blanche to break the law. And yet that's exactly what you justified. The fact you believe this is about being rude or polite, only further proves I'm right.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
He was being "rude" by refusing to submit to an unauthorized search, but they were merely "awkward" by making him stand in the sun for 2 hours?
I am polite to police officers and agree one should be, but you are still full of it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
One of those responsibilities is to treat public servants with respect.
Assuming this, it does not follow that there is a legal requirement to treat public servants with respect. IOW, it may be immoral to mouth off to a police officer, or to mouth off to your neighbour, or to sleep with your neighbour, or to pray/not pray for the soul of your temptress neighbour, but that doesn't mean it should be illegal.
If I annoy the police officer (e.g. with a snarky remark) then the police officer might be reasonable to annoy me back as any citizen legally can (e.g. with another snarky rem
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If you have a light out on your car, the officer could give you a ticket, or he could give you a warning. If youre polite, you'll probably get a warning. If you're rude, you'll likely get a ticket. This seems perfectly reasonable.
While it feels seductively comfortable, I'm not sure it's at all reasonable in a nation of laws. It's as objective as letting off the busty blonde or being harsh on the dusky bearded gent.
IOW, what law did only the impolite person break? Why is it OK for people who are good at showing themselves polite to get away with breaking more laws? The police force is a tool for helping to enforce the law, not a tool to change people's behaviour toward the police.
Perhaps one problem is giving officers apparent powers
Re:it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly (Score:4, Insightful)
What did you have in your trunk by the way? Something you didn't want them to see, Or were you just being a pain in the ass for the sake of it?
People like you are the reason this world sucks so very badly and is only getting worse. Do you really believe that if he had, say, 20 pounds of heroin in his trunk he would have thought that just refusing the search would save him? Would he now be posting about it on slashdot? The problem with stupid people is not only that they don't know they are stupid, but that they assume everyone else is just the same as they are. It was obviously a matter of principle (look it up) to him. Duh squared.
Re:it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly (Score:4, Interesting)
Remember: in any reasonable state, it's not the policeman's job to write or interpret the law
It is part of their job to interpret the law since you have to interpret it to apply it, but that interpretation can be challenged and corrected by the courts. The sad thing is that this has happened, more than once, and yet the message still does not seem to be getting through to them. While I can certainly understand that the journalist in question was being aggressive and extremely annoying he was within his rights and if you can't handle people like that you should not be a police officer.
A far better way to have handled this would have been to just stand in front of the guy blocking his pictures all the while asking him politely if he would please wait until the start of the parade. That way you achieve most of your aims, get your message across loud and clear and annoy the journalist.
Re:it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly (Score:5, Insightful)
But the biggest point is that to make police behave in society you MUST embarrass the specific officer.
All this generalized crap is bullcrap.
the headline should be "Officer Freeman of 1234 West East street" was a complete dick to a journalist today. How often is OFFICER FREEMAN a complete disgrace to the city?"
You need to out the officer, publically humiliate them. It's the only weapon we have against the police.
When it's generalized and hidden it empowers the bad cops to continue to be bad and corrupt cops.
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It is part of their job to interpret the law since you have to interpret it to apply it, but that interpretation can be challenged and corrected by the courts.
Is this perhaps one of the weak points of the current UK Common Law variant? There is the potential to write broad laws under the assumption that
Consider the police, instead of having become heavily politicsed and t
Re:it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a lot of these situations are caused by a mismatch between the respect police officers think they deserve and what they actually get.
Listening to the clip, it sounded like the police officer thought making the annoying kid stop photographing would be as simple as telling him to stop, because police are the authority and everyone should just do what they say, but instead the annoying kid asked which law was being used to prevent a legal activity. At that point they should have simply said their is no law, but please just wait until the parade starts. He probably wouldn't have, but since there is no law to stop him, that's all they could do. Instead they make up a cock and bull story which he immediately sees through and it's down hill from there.
From that point on the police keep upping the ante, hoping he's going to back down, which frankly was ridiculous given that they knew he was recording them making up these stupid reasons why he should stop. They got themselves painted into a corner by a 16 year old who played the situation very well, they couldn't just let him carry on because it would have dented their authority but at the same time there really was nothing they could do legally to stop him since nothing he was doing was illegal.
The Disturbing The Peace thing they actually arrested him on at the end was the only reasonable law they quoted and the only disturbance was caused after the police got involved.
Re:it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong wrong wrong wrong and wrong.
A lawful order is directive given by a police officer in the execution of his duties AS DEFINED BY LAW. For instance, if an officer tells you to drop your pants and cluck like a chicken because he's bored, that is NOT a lawful order, and therefore you can not be prosecuted for failure to comply with it. If an officer tells you to get on the ground after he chases you through three backyards while he's investigating a robbery and you don't, or if he tells you to turn down the giant stereo on your back porch because you're violating the local noise ordinence and you don't, you have failed to comply with a lawful order. Big difference.
In this case, had the photographer been in the U.S., he would not have been guilty of failure to follow a lawful order, as the officer had no basis or authority to tell him to stop photographing.
True, but you just said it yourself, it's ABUSED. When an officer cites failure to follow a lawful order, when he had no authority to issue the order, the officer is in the wrong. The solution is to lower our tolerance to abuse of the system, and increase punishment for those abuses.
Re:it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, no.
Failure to comply with a lawful order is only applicable in situations where the police legally can make you do something, it doesn't give the police any authority to order things in the first place.
Police can require people to do things in a few, specific circumstances. The main ones:
When the person is breaking the law, they can order them to stop (obviously).
They can demand people identify themselves.
Both those are covered under the specific laws, though. Failure to comply with a lawful order is complicated, but here are some examples where it can be used:
Refusing to allow yourself to be arrested via passive resistance. Aka, refusing to hold out your hands to be handcuffed, or to come out of a locked car. (This is not resisting arrest, which requires violence on your part. And this is where the whole concept of locking yourself to things and not having the key came from...the police can't charge you for failure to obey orders you cannot physically obey.)
When there are breaches of the peace, even if that specific person is not committing a criminal act (Aka, ordering a crowd that is unpeacable assembled to disperse. If they do not, they can start arresting random people for that.)
Likewise, if there's been a fight, the police officer can order the two participates to stay away from each other, or even for one of them to leave.
When they have a reasonable suspicion of someone's behavior including lawbreaking, but do not have enough evidence to, or just do not feel like, arresting them. Aka, someone keeps looking inside the car window of a car they admit don't own, and the police officer believes they are going to steal it or break into it....he can order them to leave that car the hell alone.
But they cannot just randomly give orders and demand they be followed. There has to a legally justified reason for the order. And something like 90% of 'Failure to comply with a lawful order' is probably an additional charge to other lawbreaking when the person wouldn't stop breaking the law, like someone who was trespassing and refused to leave even after the police ordered him to.Or, as is listed above, 'loitering'. This is exactly how loitering laws are designed to be used...not to wander up and charge with, but, for the police to have the ability, when they see suspicious behavior, to make the people stop. The police see you loitering, tell you to leave, you don't, they arrest you for refusing to do something they can lawfully do.
This does not mean, of course, that the law is not abused, or even that it's a good idea. But it doesn't let them order whatever they want.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It is part of their job to interpret the law since you have to interpret it to apply it,
You're right. It is their job. The problem is, in the US, it has become their mantra to say its NOT their job to interpret the law, that's a judge's job. As such, they arrest and harass for anything and everything. And this is done because that's the PD's policy.
You see, the more people you can get into the system, the easier it is to track and control the public. If the public fears the PD for anything and everything, the public effectively becomes steeple; and that's the intent.
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Bahhhh....
It's better to have the warm comfy blanket of fake security than the silly freedom thing that I never use...
Now shut up, the next show on the telly is starting....
Bahhhhhh...... Bahhhhhhh!
Transparency (Score:5, Interesting)
This journalist will be alright. Nothing gets the government scared like a big steam of bad press (which the internet is more than willing to provide).
Now is a great time to be living. Despite all of the bad news about orwellian government in the UK, not even they can get away with harassing citizens in the age of the internet.
Yup, can't stop the signal and all that.
Re:Transparency (Score:4, Funny)
Until Obama installs his kill switch.
Re:Transparency (Score:5, Funny)
Does anyone seriously think that is a realistic option?
Aside from the difficulty in getting the rest of the world to shut down their systems as well it would be economic suicide. Apart from the web and email, which are pretty essential these days anyway, mobile phone networks and VOIP would stop working, utilities would not be able to monitor remote stations, even ATMs and card payment machines in shops would not work.
It would be a bit like seeing incoming ICBMs and then trying to nuke yourself first.
Re:Transparency (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as I want to agree there is a thin line between the right to freedom becoming a privilege [of those who know their laws and can effectively challenge law enforcement] or disappearing completely to intimidating tactics we've all witnessed in recent weeks (G20 [youtube.com], Toronto [facebook.com])
Now, unless one wants their country joining the likes of Russia, where journalist homicide has become normal practice, with six having been killed this year alone (9 the previous year), giving them as much bad press as possible should be the least we can do stand up for our rights (especially if you don't know them!).
As my grandfather tends to say (quoting somebody famous probably) - "there is just one step from comedy to tragedy". Adapt it as you will to the context, but the UK seems to have taken two steps too many in that direction in recent history. And that's just what made it to the press!
Re:Transparency (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing gets the government scared like a big steam of bad press (which the internet is more than willing to provide).
There was this one hour TV show that I used to watch in the 1970s, it was an era when nobody could get any more than about 12 channels, and only 3 channels had anything anybody seriously wanted to watch, so this show had quite a following. It exposed governments, politicians and corporations that did evil and malicious things. The show was called 60 Minutes [wikipedia.org], and I figured that with all these big time, bad characters being exposed every week, then in a few years their should be absolutely no corruption whatsoever in government or industry, because these investigative reporters were exposing everything. Now it's a few decades later and this show is STILL exposing corruption in government and industry.
I find it ironic that the article claims the police made "a costly" mistake, because this huge multimillion dollar organization was fined 3,500 pounds. And no police officers were fired, jailed, or otherwise punished. In the mean time a chilling effect has been felt by photographers everywhere because they know they can get harassed by police officers anytime and anywhere; and have to spend time and money and energy filing a complaint and going to court with a good possibility that they will lose the case unless somebody happens to have HIDDEN camera evidence.
officers were advised that Section 44 powers [anti-terror laws] should not be used unnecessarily against photographers.
Ref: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/police-uturn-on-photographers-and-antiterror-laws-1834626.html [independent.co.uk] The bolding was mine. It's all very pathetic that this case is somehow framed to make it look like a victory for freedom.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I find it ironic that the article claims the police made "a costly" mistake, because this huge multimillion dollar organization was fined 3,500 pounds. And no police officers were fired, jailed, or otherwise punished. In the mean time a chilling effect has been felt by photographers everywhere because they know they can get harassed by police officers anytime and anywhere; and have to spend time and money and energy filing a complaint and going to court with a good possibility that they will lose the case unless somebody happens to have HIDDEN camera evidence.
At least it hasn't reached US levels yet. In the US police commonly murder, destroy evidence, manufacturer evidence, steal, destroy property, illegally detain, falsely arrest, sexually assault, gang rape, so on and so on, and are almost never prosecuted or punished; unless you consider paid leave punishment.
I'm sure some moderator can't wait to troll moderate because they are ignorant of the world around them [youtube.com]. Or, perhaps they never pick up a news paper. The reality is, in the US, police have steadily been
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
FYI the Orwellian government in the UK was overthrown in elections in May.
The new regime isn't perfect, but it's a whole lot better, and has done more for civil liberties in the last month than the old government did in 13 years.
What they'll do about things like this is yet to be seen, but sadly these things take time, although some people will cry on about things like this as examples of their failure, the reality is it takes more than a month to change these things. The real test will be in a year or two,
Re:Transparency (Score:5, Insightful)
BS. There will be no change in Orwellianism in either the UK or the US unless and until the entire system is reformed. Witness the total farce that is the "change" Obama brought in.
Shut down Gitmo? Bring the troops home? Curtailing the free pass that the corporate sector gets on the taxpayer's dollar?
Nothing changed. Nothing meaningful to US foreign and long term policy anyway. The UK will be the same. This is because the policy makers and power brokers are not the figureheads that you vote for.
Here in Australia, our prime minister Kevin Rudd just got ousted by, and I quote from most of the major news outlets, "power brokers behind the scenes", among whom is her de-facto partner. I don't know about anyone else, but that to me indicates just how much is controlled by the electorate, and how much is controlled by powerful lobbyists who the public do not vote for and never even see.
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"BS. There will be no change in Orwellianism in either the UK or the US unless and until the entire system is reformed. Witness the total farce that is the "change" Obama brought in."
You're generalising. The new British government has already improved the situation, ID cards for example are already out the window.
We're not talking about Obama's form of change, here we have actual change. Whilst as I said in my previous post there is no way they could do everything they wanted in a month, the fact that they
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Here in Australia, our prime minister Kevin Rudd just got ousted by, and I quote from most of the major news outlets, "power brokers behind the scenes"
Almost certainly that major news outlet belongs to the Murdoch press who, along with the mining industry have run a virrulent campaign against the Rudd govenment for the last 9 months. They were almost certainly parroting the Liberal oppositions line of attack.
If you are looking for lobbists THAT is who to look at-dont just repeat the propaganda of a despera
This (Score:3, Interesting)
This more than anything else is why the days of the True Internet are numbered - to be replaced by an electonic version of the Panopticon. I used to think the most precious commodity in the future would be potable water. I was wrong; it will be true privacy and anonymity.
Re:Transparency (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe in 25 years, the government will really care what happens online. For now, they're all nicely isolated from that in their ivory towers of rich upbringings, knowing the right people, their party "firewalls" of support and funds, etc. To the current generation of MPs, the Internet (including all of us) might as well be some weird, barely relevant subculture, like Goths or Emos.
Anti-Terror laws abused? Really?? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just photographers who are at the receiving end of this absolute abomination of a law. Does anyone remember Damien Green whose house was raided by Anti-Terror police for basically selling tittle-tattle to the press?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damian_Green [wikipedia.org]
Makes me sick.
Re:Anti-Terror laws abused? Really?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Damien Green was arrested by members of SO15. What used to be called Special Branch. Special Branch has always been the department concerned with political matters. They are the police department that play a part in the protection of VIPs - politicans, and foreign dignitaries. They are the group that arrest spies. etc.
If there was a Watergate Affair in Britain, then Special Branch would be the department that would arrest those involved and investigate. That was true back in the 1970s, it's still true now.
The Damien Green affair most certainly comes into that remit, and always would have done. It's the arrest of a politician for misconduct in public office, and involves a spy in goverment offices. It's very clearly Special Branch business, and would have been so had it happened at any time over the past 40 years and more.
But the bigger question is why does it matter which particular officers were used for the arrest? It's an irelevent operational matter. What's important is what law is the basis of the arrest. And that was not terror law. He was arrested for misconduct in public office.
The real scandal here is that he should have been prosecuted. There was ample evidence. But MPs stuck together rather than let one of their own face prosecution. One law for MPs another for everyone else. A bit like the way the smoking ban law and British licensing hours for serving alcohol don't apply in the palace of Westminster. MPs believe they are special and inconvenient laws that they create shouldn't apply to them.
Re:Anti-Terror laws abused? Really?? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a horrendously biased account that misses some extremely important facts, and you are outright incorrect in most areas.
Starting with SO15, it's not just a rebadged special branch at all, and your suggestion of special branches role is rather narrow so as to be utterly misleading. No, SO15's official name is "Counter Terrorism Command", see here for a list of their roles:
http://www.met.police.uk/so/counter_terrorism.htm [police.uk]
Note how they're entirely terrorism focussed nowadays, and have been since well before Damien Green's arrest?
Moving on from the role of SO15, the issue isn't the branch of police involved, the issue is the way they were involved, and to some degree, the fact they were involved at all.
If you agree that they should have been involved, then the question arises as to why due process wasn't followed, why despite initial denial that there appeared to have been contact between the police and the opposing (then ruling) party or at least some members of it, and why the police investigation involved searching for things clearly unrelated to the leaks but which are extremely suggestive of political motivation.
But there's a valid question as to whether the police should've been involved at all, because there was a clear public interest defence and the CPS would've hence never been able to pursue a case anyway, this adds further evidence towards the idea that the raid was entirely politically motivated- clearly no real prospect of a conviction, searches for and through unrelated data, then why bother? This is ultimately why the case was dropped, your theory about MPs standing together makes no sense, because the vast majority of Labour were very much interested in a prosecution and they held the majority of seats in parliament.
Realistically it was almost certainly another one of Jacqui Smiths grossly authoritarian moves, and it failed miserably. It's not a case of one rule for them, one rule for everyone else- the public interest defence which would've defeated any charges with ease in this particular case (you're right there was plenty of evidence he did it, that wasn't in dispute, there was just no evidence is wasn't in the public interest) applies to anyone. In fact, to prove this point this is also why the people involved in the MP expenses leak last year avoided any charges or prosecution too, because despite pressure from MPs to act, the police also dropped that investigation because there was no way they could defeat a public interest defence against that act of leaking those documents. The evidence they did it was there, the evidence it wasn't in public interest simply didn't exist. The people responsible for that leak weren't politicians or anything of the like, they were normal citizens yet contrary to your point, public interest prevailed in their favour.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What you say is true, as is what I say. I was't trying to give a comprehensive list of the department's responsibilities, I was describing the reason why they are the correct department to do the arrest. That reason goes back to the fact that it has always b
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...and you don't think moving special branch into a counter terrorism unit and still using that unit to carry out arrest of politicians is a bad idea? Seriously?
It doesn't matter how you cut it, use of a counter terrorism unit to arrest MPs is heavy handed and a bad idea, just as using anti-terrorism laws to freeze the assets of a foreign sovereign nation (Iceland) was a bad idea.
I'm not sure why you're jumping to accusations of spying now, because that's even more obscure. Certainly there was no suggestion
Re:Anti-Terror laws abused? Really?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Or Iceland whose major banks had their assets frozen using anti-terror laws.
I'm British and even I think that move was absolutely shocking. It's not that I disagree with freezing the assets of the banks necessarily although I do believe it was a rushed decision that wasn't thought through in the slightest, it's the fact we were willing to effectively brand an entire nation as terrorists just because we didn't want their banks to take our cash with them when they went under.
Local councils under the last government were also using anti-terror legislation to spy on families who registered their kids outside their catchment areas, to perform surveillance on people whose dogs had fouled on public property and not been picked up.
Anti-terror legislation has a long history of abuse under the old government, I just sincerely hope that under our new government this is merely a remaining trace element that will be delt with, but we'll see I guess.
Still, Damian Green's party hold the majority of power in the coalition government right now, so hopefully having been victims first hand they know the importance of fixing bad anti-terror legislation.
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Lucky it was not FIT (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KRgmn-n5ls [youtube.com]
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That was sickening to watch...
I can't really afford a big camera (Score:5, Funny)
...but now's the right time to buy a nice Nikon DSLR and some decent glass on a credit card, then walk around central London taking photographs. When you get illegally stopped on trumped up charges it's just one quick trip to the lawyers and that thing's paid for itself.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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I read about this yesterday on El Reg, and watched the video. The kid was polite yet firm, and remarkably well informed for a teenager (he's 16). I hope he gets a few of these idiots fired.
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If anything, the circumstances of Jules' Stop with its made up legislation and rough handling is a more severe breach of The Human Rights Act than that of Marc Vallee and Jason Parkinson, so a payout is entirely possible, given the closing line of the article:
It's "THE Metropolitan Police" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Police tend to adapt to their environment just like everyone else. If an area has a history of a particular type of incident or a particular type of people, they will begin to see everything as if it were similar. While there may well be corruption in the police department (having been a Dallas, TX resident, I know about corrupt police -- google "Terrell Bolton" to see) I tend to think that problems as large as this are more likely motivated by a fear of being accused of "not doing enough" to stop whateve
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Animal rights activists and other rights activists such as "pro-lifers" and green peace are well known to engage in extreme activities including vandalism, sabotage and violent acts. I can't say what the case was in the Netherlands, but it wouldn't be surprising if this were the case there as well. What would surprise me is if people who were known for sitting in circles singing protest songs were charged with terrorism.
Qualifications (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets simplify it. When push comes to shove and they are chasing a theft suspect, the ability to run, react, tackle, and subdue are at the top of the list. The police officer could not be like Richard Stallman for example. The mere presence of some intellectual brilliance, probably removes any ability to "do the grunt work".
Re:Qualifications (Score:4, Insightful)
Lets simplify it. When push comes to shove and they are chasing a theft suspect, the ability to run, react, tackle, and subdue are at the top of the list. The police officer could not be like Richard Stallman for example. The mere presence of some intellectual brilliance, probably removes any ability to "do the grunt work".
Not just that, I've heard rumours (take them with as much salt as you think such a rumour from someone you've never met babbling on /. deserves) that at least one police force actively discriminates against people who are too smart because such people might start to think for themselves.
Re:Qualifications (Score:5, Funny)
Old joke:
Why do the Met go round in threes?
One who can read, one who can write, and one to keep an eye on the two other dangerous intellectual subversives...
Re:Qualifications (Score:5, Funny)
Not just that, I've heard rumours that at least one police force actively discriminates against people who are too smart because such people might start to think for themselves.
That's nothing, last week I heard from my neighbour whose dogsitter has a cousin who's married to a policemans dog that they actually lobotomize people when they sign the contract. They don't even use any surgical equipment, just the pen the applicant signed in with and a rusty spoon. They do get the option of a sedative though, but from what I've heard from my housemates sister that has a plumber who's married to a policewoman, the sedative involves applying a hammer to someone's forehead.
Google before making fun of it (Score:3, Informative)
Here's the actual evidence [nytimes.com]
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It's a bit like the army, sure you can go in as a private with virtually no qualifications, but to be an officer is a different thing altogether.
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But wait; if they had katanas instead of guns, they might be less casual about using lethal force. (Then again, maybe not.)
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To be fair, you just mentioned them in the same sentence. Your point is moot.
Civil Rights (Score:2, Insightful)
It seems the UK is slowly but surely slipping away and turning into a police state. A human rights report a while ago called the UK an endemic surveillance society and the situation keeps getting worse. Unfortunately the problems around photography are not unique to the UK, I have personally been bothered in The Netherlands by security personnel on two occassions and have been asked to delete a photograph by two plainclothes policemen after taking a photo which had one of them in it. All three of these inci
Re:Civil Rights (Score:5, Informative)
I explained a bit more about the change of government here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1702892&cid=32742270 [slashdot.org]
It's simply not the case that the UK is seeing civil liberties eroded more since the change of government last month, already we've had firm action to reverse some of the policies of the previous government, and we've promises of much more to come- if even some of them are followed it puts the UK in a much better state.
I'm not naive enough to believe things will be perfect, but currently the situation in the UK is certainly that civil liberties situation in general is actually improving from where it was, not getting worse, for now at least.
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One of the promises is the re-introduction of the sus law. If you don't remember that, it was the power that the police had to stop and search anyone at will. It was used disproportionally against black people, and was the primary cause of the early 80s inner city
Lions and Donkeys (Score:5, Informative)
I have just resigned from a county force after serving 4 years and this doesn't really surprise me at all. Most cops just don't know the law and certainly aren't kept abreast of developments. This isn't aimed at the officers, as there is simply no time for this. My normal working week was around 55 hours consistently working 12 hour day / late / night shifts. When on duty you are writing an hour for every hour you are out doing your job, and have around 15 fairly complex investigations ongoing at any one time... all the time being expected to respond to 999 calls... Not that we were flush for cover; at least once a month there were periods of several hours where only one or two officers covered a large suburban area of around 100,000 people, it was a wonder no-one is seriously hurt during such times.
As a result.. officers don't keep up on the law, they aren't trained in it and expected 99% of the time to generally do what they think is right and then look it up afterwards. 20 years ago there was a "spare" shift every fortnight used to learn updates to legislation and practise self defence skills; this is seen as a wasteful excess in the modern police service.
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Re:Lions and Donkeys (Score:4, Insightful)
but this isn't about keeping abreast of the latest developments in the law. this is about something really fundamental, which you'd hope coppers would learn really early on in their job, and would be reinforced by a pervasive culture:
1) "people don't have to do what I say just because I'm a copper. they have to do what I say insofar as I enforce the law"
2) "if someone's doing something legal and I don't want them to do it any more, I can't make it illegal just by telling them to stop"
3) "I'm not the parent of the members of the public I meet. I don't get to win every battle of wills because I am an officer of the law"
Re:Lions and Donkeys (Score:5, Insightful)
Not being up to date with legislation is no excuse for making up imaginary laws.
If they do not know something to be illegal, they should do nothing.
the met (Score:5, Funny)
Some things never change: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO8EpfyCG2Y [youtube.com]
Just a hunch (Score:5, Insightful)
but I think he failed the initial attitude test and they were trying to goad him into failing it even harder.
Not because of something he said, but the tone in which he said it and the fact he never let the officers get a word in edgeways.
(There is the other, orthogonal issue that nobody ever likes to admit that they're wrong - particularly not when they're in a position of authority - and as soon as something like that happens it's vanishingly unlikely to end nicely for the photographer because the only way it could end nicely is if the police officer could be persuaded to double-check that they were in the right, get told that they weren't, apologise and let the photographer go about their business, which gets less and less likely the longer it goes on because the longer it goes on, the bigger the cock-up the occifer has to admit to.)
The run-up to this... (Score:5, Informative)
Britain has recently elected a new government, one which (on a few issues) is less authoritarian than the previous Labour government. Thirteen years of Labour led to some unwarranted laws coming into being, ranging from making it illegal to photograph a police officer - technically a video filmed by an American at a G8 summits' protests in London is illegal and should not have been shown...despite the fact it showed an officer shoving a man to the ground having not even been provoked; the assaulted man died minutes later of a heart attack.
So yeah, Labour (a right-wing party whose swing towards that direction began in the Thatcher years) brought all sorts of unpleasent socially restrictive policy, implemented gradually to the point where - ironically for those who saw it once as a permissive, left-wing outfit - they became more authoritarian than our traditiional right-wing party (Conservatives) ever have been. One of the early Labour architects, Lord Mandelson, has among the most poignent views on Internet restriction; ranging from prosecuting people with cartoons for 'possession of child porn' to much tougher sentencing for those who infringe copyright.
But to stay on topic; two things are probably most disturbing (yet predictably New Labour) about laws like forbidding photographing police is that they are justified as 'stopping terrorism'. Ridiculous as photographs of British plod are all over the Net. The other disturbing point is how easily most of the population rolls over and takes this like some apathetic whore. Two people close to me, a friend and a family member, both have no qualms with providing samples for the proposed 'DNA database' that our government pondered bringing in, and I know even more individuals with absolutely no qualms with the (now scrapped) identity cards. Want to encrypt your hard drive but get charged of a crime that requires computer access for the police? Not giving up your password can get you years in jail; and no freedom-loving geek has yet set a precedent against this.
Yes we're the most watched people in the world, yes you can be detained and not charged for weeks if suspected of 'terror offences', and yes our local governments have enthusiastically used some of New Labour's reforms to enforce their own supposed justice (think monitoring people suspected of avoiding tax or claiming welfare wrongly etc). What's worst is that much of Labour's work along these lines won't even be done away with by the imcumbent coalition; which has our most liberal major party as a component.
Congratulations, Mr Mattsson (Score:2)
Carte Blanche for terrorists. (Score:3, Interesting)
All the terrorists need now is to get police uniforms now, and they can do pretty much anything they desire. Kidnap people, tell people to move out of their operation area, forbid people from taking photos of them, essentially operate unrestricted and unhindered in broad daylight in plain sight of city monitoring. And anyone who asks them questions will get "detained" into a black bag on the back of their van.
Surprise, surprise (Score:3, Insightful)
All police are authoritarian jerks.
Yes, all not some.
Any individual police officer who has never done such a thing has ignored another officer doing so, covered up for another officer doing so, and so on. And hence is just as bad if not worse.
Identification (Score:3, Interesting)
I am surprised that he didn't ask the police officer for identification.
Once the encounter went from the stage of being just a chat to the stage the police officer physically tries to stop you and/or tells you that you must do something and/or asks for your identification then the natural step is to ask the officer to ascertain that he is indeed a police officer (not just somebody dressed as one).
While the ID itself would be pretty damn useless (this being the UK and the Met police which never had an officer convicted of abuse of power even when do so and people die) the act of getting the officer's ID should change the dynamic of the discussion from the "Copper trying to get somebody to do what he wants" to the "Properly identified Police officer enforcing the law" which in this specific case, given that the law was in the side of the freelance photographer, would actually constraint the officer's actions.
That said, in the UK and given the anti-terrorist laws that we have in the books, the only real restriction by law that Police officers have is that at most they can only fuck-up somebody's life for 28 days by keeping them in jail without charge for that length of time.
Streets of England (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
The Ontario Public Works Protection Act http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100625/national/g8_g20_civil_liberties [yahoo.com]
Using a camera on pubic property is not a conscious provocation.
Re:Journalist seems like a raging asshole. (Score:5, Insightful)
He sounds hysterical in the video and has an attitude problem from the very beginning.
No, he doesn't. Unless by attitude problem you mean he informs the cops that what he's doing is legal when they claim it isn't.
The police demonstrate, in the face of an aggressive asshole, a supreme amount of calm and reason.
lol -- the police demonstrate a supreme lack of reason, actually.
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what the *fuck* are you on about? what, specifically, did he say or do that could justify you calling him a "smartarse"? what specifically are you referring to when you say "whiney teenage defensive thing"? what words, what tone of voice? if you're going to carp from the sidelines, you might at least supply some concrete evidence to back up your assertions.
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The cops tried to goad him...
You're not suggesting the police were agitating the situation are you? (~4:15 in audio recording in the independent link) ;)
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Judging someone by the tone or pitch of their voice is idiotic. It is the content that matters.
Re:Journalist seems like a raging asshole. (Score:5, Insightful)
"it is however a conscious provocation" So what? Should the fact that it is a conscious provocation alter the police officer's behaviour in any way? also, note that speeding is a criminal offence. taking pictures of a public parade is not.
"an internal NUJ event on public property". wtf? what kind of "internal" event would take place on "public property"?? and what has that analogy got to do with filming a *public event* on public property and then subsequently filming *public servants* going about their *public duties*??
these copper twunts were irritated because this guy wouldn't do what they asked him to. but he wouldn't do what they asked him to, because he was *doing nothing wrong*.
"he sounds hysterical in the video" Of course he does! He's a 16-year old kid and these big burly twats keep on grabbing him and his camera for no reason other than that they've decided they don't want him to do what he's perfectly entitled to do.
hint: just because they wear a uniform doesn't make them automatically right.
It may be illegal to record the police (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, you might embarrass them, or catch them doing something they shouldn't. Since they automatically have the advantage in any "he says, she says" kind of encounter, the solution from their perspective is obvious. Many places are making it illegal to photograph or record police [gizmodo.com].
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmmm
It is not conscious provocation, it is merely recording the events as and when they happen. I found it interesting that the spokesperson for the Met Police questioned why the journalist had recorded the incident.
The reason for recording said events is that without some form of recording, or without extensive independent witness corroboration, the courts almost always side with the police's version of what happened. regardless of how absurd the police version is.
In this instance we quite clearly hear th
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He may well be a terrorist !! What would you say then ?? Hm ??
I would say that the world needs many more of that sort of terrorist.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd say that any terrorist that plans his act of terrorism by filming in a public street and attracting huge attention is probably an idiot. Are they not able to use, say, maps, local knowledge, a quick stroll down the road in question and/or their brain to "plan" something "terrorist-y"?
Terrorists tend, on the whole, not to be very bright. That's why the "shocking" terrorist acts are things like - smuggling a weapon on board an international flight with valid ID, driving a gas-laden car into an airport s