Most people over 50 can remember a time when normal life stopped for a photograph. My father had an old box Brownie, the Model T Ford of photography, unchanged in its basics since the first one came out of the Kodak factory in 1901. When it appeared from the sideboard drawer, certain self-conscious postures were assumed; we were in the presence of a camera. Hold still! The shutter speed was one 25th of a second - more "swish" than "click" - and each roll of film held eight or 12 frames. Film was expensive. By a rough reckoning, I may have had my picture taken a couple of dozen times a year with the family camera. Add one or two for weddings, add another for the day when we were ranked by size on benches in the school playground. Perhaps, at a very generous estimate, a total of 40 images of myself set in chemicals every year.
Today, just by the act of leaving the house and travelling and shopping in London, I might be photographed 200 times in a few hours. Digitally, of course: darkrooms, fixing solutions, prints hung to dry - the old slow crafts of photography have largely vanished. This year, for the first time, a new American president had his official White House portrait taken by a digital camera.
The social impact of this revolution has still to be fully understood. Usually its consequences have been written about rather darkly, in terms of CCTV cameras and the surveillance state, but recent events in Britain offer a different verdict. The digital camera is an egalitarian piece of technology - cheap (most mobile phones have them), easy to use, convenient to carry and quick to produce images that can be spread throughout cyberspace in seconds. What we are witnessing, as any professional photojournalist will tell you, is the unstoppable rise of the citizen-photographer. Last Thursday, at the demonstration outside the G20 summit in east London, I saw them at work. A small war of cameras. Police were stopping, searching and photographing demonstrators at Canning Town tube station; the demonstrators photographed the police as they took their photographs; sometimes - a third viewpoint - a video maker turned up to get both sides in the same shot. It seemed to me then that the camera, so often accused of spreading violence by its fixation with physical aggression, could also be one of violent behaviour's great restraints.
There is nothing at all original about this thought. In 2007, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg declared that he wanted people to use their mobiles to record crimes in progress and to send the images directly to the police. And which of us hasn't speculated, however pointlessly, about the different course history might have taken if the first world war had been covered by live television broadcast from a Flanders trench? Or, better still, if every soldier advancing at the Somme had a mobile in his hand and sent home pictures of so many broken bodies in so many shell holes, until of course his phone went quiet and all his relatives could hear was the advice to leave a message. It would surely have been a shorter war.
In this way, it can be argued that the new cornucopia of visual information is a boon; to see more is to know more, and perhaps to understand, prevent and correct more. This week offered three outstanding instances of digital photography's effect on public knowledge, beginning with the video footage of a policeman knocking Ian Tomlinson to the ground and ending with Panorama's concealed-camera investigation into how visiting care workers look after the frail and old at home. The first was shot by an American fund manager, the second by a BBC team who went to the trouble and expense of actually training some carers (rather more than the care firms themselves managed to do) before equipping them with tiny cameras and sending them off to find jobs.
The first was accidental - the American just happened to be there - while the second involved complicated subterfuge. The result in each case was shocking. In this week's third example, however, the benefits of digital technology are not so clear-cut. Bob Quick, Scotland Yard's counterterrorism chief, enters Downing Street with a secret paper open to view. The information on it quickly finds a life in cyberspace, or that's the risk, and Quick resigns. In the old days all that would have happened was a D-Notice and the confiscation of several rolls of film.
One question arising from Quick's case is, do people have the right not to be photographed? Or do we demand the freedom to take and publish pictures of everything and anybody all the time? Japan and Korea have insisted that all mobiles give a warning bleep when their cameras go off, to alert possible subjects. French law prevents publication of portraits taken in a public space without their subjects' permission. As a consequence, the art of street photography - Brassaï and Cartier-Bresson among its famous former practitioners - has migrated to London and New York. And even New York has right-to-privacy laws that prohibit the "unauthorised use of a person's likeness for commercial purposes"; when Erno Nussenzweig, an orthodox Jew who didn't believe in graven images, discovered his picture in an exhibition and sued for $2m in 2006, it was the legal pleading that it was "art" that got the photographer off the hook.
These arguments are sure to grow because most of us in some incoherent but fundamental way believe we own the visual rights to ourselves. An even bigger argument, devolving from writers such as Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes, concerns our predisposition to think of photography as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It isn't. In 1968 in Saigon, Eddie Adams took one of the most famous pictures from the Vietnam war, of a general with a pistol shooting an unarmed man in the head. It won a Pulitzer. It seems incomprehensibly barbaric. General Nguyen Ngoc Loan was reviled ever after, unsuccessfully sought anonymity as pizza restaurateur in Virginia and died in 1998. The identity of the man he shot is less certain, but he is widely believed to be Nguyen Van Lem, a Vietcong partisan who that morning had killed several policemen and their families.
Adams later befriended the general and apologised for the damage his picture had caused him. "People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation," Adams wrote in Time magazine. "They are only half-truths ... What the photograph didn't say was, 'What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?'"
We've still to discover why a policeman knocked Tomlinson to the ground and why he died a few minutes later. If and when we do, it will be words and not pictures that tell us.
* Letters for publication should be sent to: letters ARROBA guardian.co.uk
* If you need help using the site: userhelp ARROBA guardian.co.uk
* Call the main Guardian and Observer switchboard:
+44 (0)20 3353 2000
* G20 police assault on Ian Tomlinson
Ian Jack: The unstoppable rise of the citizen cameraman
This article was first published on guardian.co.uk at 00.01 BST on Saturday 11 April 2009. It appeared in the Guardian on Saturday 11 April 2009 on p31 of the Saturday section. It was last updated at 00.10 BST on Saturday 11 April 2009.
Brollachain's profile picture Brollachain
And which of us hasn't speculated, however pointlessly, about the different course history might have taken if the first world war had been covered by live television broadcast from a Flanders trench?
Really? The tragedy of the First War was that it was fought with WW1 technology, which (in particular) did not include tactical communications more advanced than runners, which made it impossible to control an attack once launched, or call down effective artillery fire on enemy positions. If they'd had TV and mobile phones, the trench system would have been useless. If they'd had tactical nukes or even powerful modern conventional explosives, the trench system would have been worse than useless; more like a death trap, in fact.
Facts are sacred, indeed!
First of all,
"most of us in some incoherent but fundamental way believe we own the visual rights to ourselves"
No ! You reckon ? I certainly don't. What a strange idea. So we expect to be paid to be looked at ? Freaky.
Now that's out of the way, what I'd like to know is, where was the fourth estate while all this police brutality and illegal detention and these illegal identity checks were going on ?
Everyone's asking, 'who will guard the guards'. Isn't that partly your job ? Where were the news helicopters ? How hard can it be to co-ordinate with reporters on the ground using text messaging as a minimum ? "Come 2 Bank big trbl" ? Why does it fall to the coincidental presence of a conscientious member of the public ?
A bit spendy, maybe, for a single newspaper, I'll grant you, but the fourth estate's bigger than that, isn't it ? And controversial footage worth something, if you've the stomach for a bit of risk ?
Sorry, this Kettling's a lot of nonsense - because it involves unprovoked assault by the police. 'Pre-emptive strike', writ small ? Where is the law these days ?
Police are terrorising ....
I would advise all never to buy a camera or phone that films the moving image, like a film clip.
This is not because of the fierce rules of against camera use in the UK.
It is simply because 95% of people have not evolved to be able to use a simple camera.
Watch any 1000 clips from YouTube and with luck 50 of them will be watchable.
So all users cannot be stupid or uneducated, they will simply never be able to communicate the moving image.
So stay with communicating by voice or the written word.
This clip of the policeman assaulting the man was rare, as we could see what happened.
I have studied as to why we are incapable of filming the moving image.
Louise Broadbent, 27, environmental consultant, from London in the Guardian today :
I was sitting down in the climate camp with my boyfriend, we'd been there for two or three hours. We were laughing and joking with the police. About half an hour before it happened, they started saying, 'We've got a little surprise for you,' but they wouldn't say anything more.
Then, with no warning that I could hear, the police just steamed in. They were doing a lot of kicking and punching. Two police got hold of me, one on each side, and pulled me away. They had me in a wristlock on both sides, my arms pulled right up behind me, telling me they were going to break my wrists.
Once I was outside the cordon they were saying, 'What shall we do with her now?' and laughing. And one said, 'Let's chuck her back in.'
They shouted, 'Coming through!' and literally threw me into the air, head first, booting me in the back.
"To be governed is to be watched,inspected,spied upon, directed,law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at,controlled, checked,estimated, valued, censured, commanded,by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.To be governed is to be at every operation,at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured,numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented,forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility,and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution,drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from,squeezed,hoaxed, robbed; then at the slightest resistance,the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified,harassed,hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned,judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and to crown all,mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality." (P.-J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294.)
Until fairly recently, my understanding was that anyone filming you had to get your premission before publishing the images or video. Hence the blurred faces you sometimes see on TV. It seemed like a fairly sound premise.
When did we agree this principle does not apply to anyone posting on youtube? The Quick case seems astounding to me. In many countries, someone using a telephoto lens to publish secret goverment documents would be considered to be engaged in espionage - not journalism.
Filming someone is, in many cases, an extremely aggressive thing. I wonder how various of the posters on this forum would feel if, while they are enjoying a quiet pint in their local pub, I turned up and started filming them up close without explanation? I expect they would not respond kindly. What about if someone started photographing their daughers playing in the park?
There is no doubt that standing outside bedroom windows with a camera would not be considered a right. Nor would you be allowed to turn up in a court with filming equipment - try it today and see what happens.
Individuals, ,even when they are public servants, sometimes have the need to control how they are seen. If you stick a video camera in the face of a policeman while he is doing his job, there are cases when he would be justified as treating it as an aggressive and potentially threatening act. For all he knows, you plan to stick his face up on youtube in an attempt to whip up anti-police feeling, simply because he is doing the job society has asked him to do.
Of course, there are other moments when you might be filming a Rodney King incident, or indeed an Ian Tomlinson one. No one would argue that, in such a case, the circumstances totally legitimise your decision to film.
If people start agressively shoving cameras into a policeman's face every time he asks them to stay inside a crowd barrier, then they will only have themselves to blame when the police try to get all filming banned. Reserve the use of film for the real injustices, and it is unlikely anyone would try to impose a ban in the first place.
What is needed here is some balance. There can be no blanket right to film anyone at any time you choose - and it should remembered by the police, by Google, and by anyone with a mobile phone.
Individuals, ,even when they are public servants, sometimes have the need to control how they are seen.
If public servants have nothing to hide they have nothing to fear. One law for everybody friend.
One question arising from Quick's case is, do people have the right not to be photographed? Or do we demand the freedom to take and publish pictures of everything and anybody all the time?
People don't have a right to not be photographed.
Everybody has the freedom to publish pictures of everything and anybody all the time.
Everybody has the right to live with dignity, without necessitating the encumberance of privacy.
By increasing social capital, and teaching people the rules of political correctness, we can achieve dignity in the absence of privacy.
They are powerful, but one thing photographs and video can never do is give us the full picture
It's sad to say but the police have got too big for their jack-boots! and should not be rewarded with big salaries, big indexed-linked pensions (28% of our council tax) and free medical prescriptions.
When one is confronted with a force that is out of control cameras and a few honest witnesses can be the best friend a protester can have. Enough, I would suggest, for many settlements out of court. So therefore it's cost effective as well!
However, the government would prefer to protect the police (you can't photograph police officer laws) than the majority of decent citizens and that's another frightening aspect of these sorry days that we find ourselves in.
A few years ago I experience police brutality at close range. No! it was not at demonstration nor was it late on a Saturday night and it was not an early morning wake up call from the drug squad.
It was in a Town Council Chamber. My councilor colleague, who leans to the left in a right wing council area was challenging the minutes of the previous meeting. He took the view that many of the minutes were incorrect. As he continued to challenge the inexperience Mayor decided enough was enough and called the police in to remove him from the council Chamber. My councilor colleague, who does not suffer from subservience, stood firm and demanded his right to speak on behalf of the people who elected him. Keep in mind that I am referring to a Town Council.
As the Town Councilor continued to assert his right to speak he was then taken to the ground by two police officers, hands pulled behind his back handcuffed and cuffs ratcheted tight which cut into both wrists. He was taken to a police car and off to a police cell. Whilst the police were driving my councilor colleague to the police cell they thought the incident was very funny. Months later he was convicted of assault and had to pay £75 to one of the police officers.
If only my Town Councilor colleague had had the benefit of a camera in the Town Council chamber because I am sure events would be much different from those described above because I have no doubt that the police would have acted differently.
Suggestion:
As the police require notice of demonstrations should we not make it a requirement that police must ensure that there is adequate CCTV provision of cameras in and around the area where the demonstration takes place.
I am almost certain that this would change the behavior of many police officers particularly the ones who might be inclined to shoot people for carrying table legs under their arms.
Yes, the more cameras the better where plod is concerned. Well said, Ian Jack.
What are you talking about, heyhabib?
Ian Jack merely asks WHY the policeman hit Tomlinson- something only the cop concerned knows at the moment. The actuality of the event is beyond question.
This article smells to me like the leading edge of what will be an ongoing campaign to introduce doubt into the picture.
This is to be expected, and there will be more of it, much more, if history is any guide at all.
When the first "explanations" issued by the police didn't fly, as a result of the video images subsequently surfacing, the usual quick whitewash and cover up strategy failed. They tried it, naturally, but no dice. As more images emerged it became untenable for the police to pretend there was no mistreatment, so they switched to plan B, which is to suspend an officer, pending a "full investigation".
This buys some time, and is standard procedure in such cases.
I have posted relentlessly and intrusively on these threads already as to why this is the pattern, so will not regurgitate all that. Suffice it to say that it is a systemic symptom of the group psychology inherent in police and military units to reflexively protect their own members from facing the same consequences for individual acts that would be imposed upon ordinary people. It's a necessary component of the command and control dynamic.
The next step, since, for now, the condemnatory evidence is visual, and in the form of video, is to raise the very question introduced here, namely;
Can you believe your eyes?
It's not put quite like that, of course, it's cleverer;
An even bigger argument, devolving from writers such as Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes, concerns our predisposition to think of photography as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It isn't.
And it always helps to drag in some heavy hitter names to give credence. Sontag and Barthes are deeply thoughtful people, very smart, with a lot of important things to say. So the campaign is off to a good start. Bringing up the Eddie Adams Vietnam picture is clever too, especially when coupled to the story of Adams later apologizing to the subject of the photo.
This is exactly a clone of the strategy employed with the Rodney King beating here in the US, and many others. There are two components;
What you see happening is not what is happening. (here are the reasons)
What you see happening is not as heinous as you think it is due to mitigations. (and here are those reasons)
This will all drag on for a good long time, as long as possible, since time is the ally in this endeavor. Time permits memories to become less clear, introducing conflicts in witness testimony. Time allows for the public attention to be diverted by other matters. Time permits the introduction of more and more of these kinds of articles, simultaneously raising doubts as to the actual events, and exculpatory or mitigating factors. Time allows the strategists within the police forces to assemble their resources and evaluate, if it becomes clear that someone will have to take the hit, just who that someone will be.
I agree with most of what's said above (and the Louise Broadbent anecdote in particular is genuinely shocking), but since someone mentioned General Loan, it's only fair to point out what he apparently said when interviewed about the shooting which Adams captured on camera. "You have no idea what Tet (the Tet offensive) was like for me. The VC were everywhere."
I'm not saying I agree with his action, but it didn't happen in a vacuum.
Great post. Sontag and Barthes are well known for writing about photography, the still image - what did they have to day about digital video?
I think you have missed the point about human rights. They are not something you just make up when you feel like it.
"Everybody has the freedom to publish pictures of everything and anybody all the time."
This is simply random posturing. Clearly it is nonsense. There are all sorts of constraints on the capture and publication of pictures. You cannot publish images of naked children, you cannot take pictures of your neighbour in the bath, you cannot film inside a court of law, you cannot use flash photography inside certain galleries and museums, you may not photograph military installations without permission.
Are you happy then, for me to stand outside your house and film through your windows with a telephoto lens 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and to publish any embarrassing things I might spot you doing? I thought not.
Thanks again, gnosticmind.
PLEASE READ THE PROUDHON QUOTE posted earlier by gnostic mind- it's far better than anything in today's Guardian...
As you'll see from the link below, the police have already woken up to this danger and are abusing the powers given to them by the Labour Government to stop it.
It shouldn't be surprising that the police want to accumulate more powers but it should be the Government's job to stop them. Instead Labour have been completely craven and have given the police any powers they have asked for. This set of Labour politicians simply does not believe in the concept of civil liberties.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/apr/08/polic
Totally agree with Gunnison and with Jack about attitudes of the police - but there's plenty of other scandals to mention - one of them is on the front page of todays guardian -
The use of friendly pathologists
This has been an ongoing practice for many years in controversial cases. For the last 15 years or so the pathologists in these cases are almost always
immigrant pathologists who can be squeezed.
This practice is common in England USA and Australia by police forces facing internal investigation. The pathologist at Waco for instance was Indian and I could go back through my files and name another ten instances without too much trouble.
It used to be homosexuals prior to 1970 but immigrants with dodgy records or immigration problems are just as useful.
The filming of police will expose more of this sort of nonsense its endemic in the police as various posters have pointed out., As are lots of other dodgy practices.
Of course the squares and the quiescent will shake their head and call me a conspiracy theorist but well, Gobbles and his big lie theory aye - the bigger the lie the more people want to believe it - only learnt the truth of that myself in the last 10 years.
Its ugly and it ought to stop,.
In the original article are Mr Jack and mr Adams suggesting that cold blooded murder is somehow acceptable when the victim might have been a suspect in a crime? Or that innocent until proven guilty does not apply when Americans soldiers have been killed?
Well this is definitely a wake up call for all police officers. I suppose that is the positive to come out of this saga.
The traditional media are terrified.
Look at the Pravda BBC. Or the Guardian. Or The Times. All are in the same leaking boat that dutifully follows the establishment.
All are to one point or another mouthpieces for the system and they are struggling to adapt. Rather than waiting for the biased spin on a story people are able to gain access to a number of sources so that they can make there own mind up.
For example this week LabourHome circulated a story about Tory cuts. A low ranking paper shuffling MP was duly quoted with his outrage. This was posted in a number of newspapers. And yet the whole story was totally fabricated. No Tory announcement had been made and the figures had actually been dreamed up by some imbecile in Labour HQ.
Anyone see the problem?
The Guardian had a CIF article from some ginger twat that gave a glowing account of the "hard working" Met at the G20 protests and how they worked to keep the ordinary person (ie the apathetic conformist) "safe".
He clearly hadn't been at the G20 protest and was just spouting rubbish. Polly Toynbee has become a laughing stock because despite being a good writer she trots out any old Labour cobblers that is usually based on spin and half truth.
These Journalists have got away with it because the challenge to them has been small in the past. A mere fringe trying to "set the record straight" but allowing significant bias to cloud their judgement as well.
But things are changing. We can all take pictures of the police over reaction and provocation at protests. We can all tweet and blog our perspective on an event and people can draw from a countless pool of sources to come to a considered conclusion.
In other words we don't need biased media that's part of the "system" to tell us what "really" happened. That is a significant change and one that the media and politicians are petrified of.
The media need to understand how they are going to make a business from news and where they can provide the "value add" to justify it. Advertising alone is not going to be credible business model. The Guardian are losing money every time they print a newspaper if reports are to be believed. Can Polly Toynbee really justify her salary when many more thought provoking bloggers are out on the web?
Its a tricky one and this CIF article is really not even scratching the surface. The longer the media sticks it head in the sand the worse the outcome will be for them.
The first forty lines of this piece are unnecessary, boring and trite. I think its called filler.
My father had an old box Brownie.................
My eyes glaze, down memory lane we go for the millionth time led by someone with nothing new to say.
What Ian Jack fails to point out, is that witrhout the video taken by the Amercan fund manager, the ASSAULT on Ian Tomlinson would have been quietly buried under the avalanch of police and media, lies and spin.
Then there is of course, his attempt to put a moral argument for the public execution of the Vietnamese captive.
I'm sorry Ian...It did not just SEEM barbaric. It bloody well WAS barbaric, and no amount of lazy comment could make it otherwise.
The capturing of these events on film, as he points out, do not tell the whole story. But they sure as hell, tell the bits that NEED to be told!
It must be depressing to earn your living as a writer only to discover, thanks to GU's comments, that half of your readers find it difficult to understand what you're going on about.
I notice that the brave bobby perpetrating the violence was wearing what appears to be a balaclava underneath his protective visor.
Some questions;
1) Was it cold enough in London that day for the aforesaid officers to feel it necessary to wear this balaclava?
2) Is this standard Police issue/ advice to wear such items? If so, what protection does it give our brave bobbies in the face of the sort of "violent confrontation" they were expecting?
Perhaps it's to make them (i.e. the Police) appear more sinister or aggressive? Or perhaps just to obscure their faces thus allowing the bobbies to feel a little more secure in meting out their "justice".
We in the UK now have the evidence that the Police force (at least part of it) is used as a para-military unit to suppress/intimidate the populace. My opinion on the Police changed after the Countryside Alliance demo, where organised Police brutality was very evident....
They are becoming a Government tool.
I would advise all never to buy a camera or phone that films the moving image, like a film clip.
This is not because of the fierce rules of against camera use in the UK.
It is simply because 95% of people have not evolved to be able to use a simple camera.
Watch any 1000 clips from YouTube and with luck 50 of them will be watchable.
So all users cannot be stupid or uneducated, they will simply never be able to communicate the moving image.
Insulting, misanthropic garbage.
The more people who produce imges, the more people will acquire a higher level of visual literacy, and when a majority of people can read the images all around them, and understand how they are being manipulated, the less they will be manipulated, and those seeking to manipulate with imagery will have to think again - a lot.
You are not a superior species, anyone can take a photograph which tells a story, but not if they don't have a camera.
Jonah, the Territorial support group are only sent into public order events when the leadership feel the bobby on the beat can't cope, as such tgs (riot police) are issued with riot equipment that includes flame proof bavaclavas ,they are not allowed not to wear them as in situations were flammable materials are thrown at them ,whether they be on fire bottles of spirits or foilage that is on fire ie. burning bits of shops that are made of plastic, the tsg aren;t all of a sudden allowed to put flame proof materials on their faces then, think how many minutes it would take to take of their helmets with the neck braces ,their gloves ,then put the bavaclavas on before replacing /.gloves, helmets/ neck support
If riot police were scrapped, when the rioters in the 80's first tried to kill paramedics to lure police into their areas then tried to kill the police, there would be 3options 1, the polcie don't go in paramedics/firemen are killed the head of that department then faces a corporate manslaugher charge,
2 bobbies on the beat go in to help paramedics ,the boby on the beat is killed, the home secretary faces a corporate manslaughter cherge, and no one wants to be the home sec,
3 they send the army in and unlike Northern ireland the army are allowed to use force to protect said paramedics
PeterLoud's profile picture PeterLoud
Half-truths from a camera are better than lies from the police.
Great example of citizen photography, and related directly to the current scandals:
http://fitwatch.blogspot.com/
-
Police are terrorising ....
If you are the photographer who took the picture, you own the copyright. This is a basic rule, but if you want to sell your photos you have to check the copyright of the subject and the circumstances in which you took the picture.
If you take a photo of something from a public place, i.e. a public street, then you can sell that photo as long as you haven't broken any privacy laws. Taking a photo of someone sitting in their lounge watching telly even though you were in a public street is not a good idea and you would be violating that person's privacy. It's common sense.
Trespass
You cannot trespass or enter private property to get a photograph.
Prohibited places
UK National Trust, English Heritage and Royal Parks land and properties are private property and there are restrictions on the sales of these image subjects.
Taking photographs is usually prohibited in museums, stately homes, theatres, art galleries, and by most concert venues. This includes outdoor museums where there may be exhibits of buildings, transport, etc. Such exhibits are usually private property and on private land. Wide shots taken from a public road or space are acceptable.
There are rules against taking photographs for sale of Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square in London.
Harrassment
It's illegal to harass another person and you should not harass someone in trying to take a photograph of them.
National Security
It is an offence under the Official Secrets Act 1911 to take photographs in a 'prohibited place' where this 'might be useful to an enemy'. This can include:
All defence establishments
Factories, dockyards, mines, ships and aircraft belonging to the crown.
Any place where munitions are stored
Any place belonging to the Crown that has been declared a prohibited place for the time being by order of the Secretary of State
Any railway, road, or waterway, gas or electricity works that has been declared a prohibited place for the time being by the Secretary of State
Any place belonging to the Civil Aviation Authority
Any telecommunications office owned by a public telecommunications operator
You CAN legitimately take photographs in such prohibited places if they are for innocent purposes and not useful to an enemy. But you may find yourself having to prove it in court.
Prevention of Terrorism legislation may also come into play when taking photographs of potentially sensitive areas. The Terrorism Act 2000 gives the police wide powers to stop, search and detain anyone they reasonable suspect of an offence under the Act. The Act makes it an offence to take or possess a photograph containing information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism. In the present climate the police seem to be taking a fairly broad view of 'information likely to be useful'. It is in a photographer's best interests to co-operate with the police if they approach him or her when he or she is taking photos in an area that might be regarded as sensitive.
All from:
http://www.picturenation.co.uk/static/index/sell_copyright
Where cops who were present in the area of Ian Tomlinson's death have apparently been identified by a citizen group who exclusively monitor and photograph the police. |
