yet another blog

Yep! According to some proposed legislation currently “going through the process” apparently I could get up to ten years in jail for taking a photograph like the above and publishing it in future!

Read Terror Law and Photography on photojournalist Marc Vallee’s blog.

Worrying implications indeed!

As an article on Indymedia so succinctly puts it:

“If a police officer behaves badly and oppressively we [activists] have been known to criticise them on the internet. Furthermore it has always been commonsense to jot down police collar numbers on demos and take photos a) for legal reasons to identify police breaking the law, to identify police behaving well, to help clarify matters in both criminal and civil courts. Intelligence on police gathered by activists has helped to acquit innocent activists, enabled activists to sue police and correctly identify the culprits. None of this has ever been used in order to use violence against the police let alone terrorism but we can hazard a guess that they might use this proposed legislation against us. What if MI5 infiltrate a group and that agent is discovered? Will it become an offence to warn other activists? Will it be an offence to after having suspicions raised about a fellow activist to make a few enquiries if the “activist” is an undercover cop?”

And there’s some related info on Indymedia here.

At the very least this proposed legislation will constitute yet another encroachment on individual freedoms in this country whilst at the same time giving even greater power and freedom from accountability to the cops, thereby edging us one step closer to becoming a true Police State.

As well as making the job of the photojournalist that much more difficult than it already is.

Also posted at Adventures of an Idiot

Whilst I personally don’t have a particular problem with being stopped and questioned by the police regarding my identity and movements I firmly believe this is an extension of police powers that has to be rigorously opposed on principle.

Indeed, it seems to me that much of the anti-terrorist legislation that Blair and his government have introduced is politically motivated and deeply flawed.
Terrorism is a criminal act and, other than extending the powers of the police and the State to control and dictate to the population, I still fail to see how all the new anti-terrorist legislation is that much superior to existing criminal law in dealing with terrorists.

What it has achieved, unquestionably, is a further erosion of civil liberties and human rights and a reversal of many of the principles of Common Law that have been cherished for so long.

And now, with this new piece of proposed legislation, we will move another step closer to a world in which the people serve the State, rather than the State serving the people - serfdom in other words!

Moreover it will undoubtedly feed into the arrogance and authoritarianism that the police are only too willing to demonstrate nowadays.
That such increased powers will be abused by those who disingenuously claim they act by the “consent of the people” goes without saying. Even more worrying though is the virtual certainty that the principal victims of this new power will be those least able to defend or speak out for themselves - the young, the poor, the uneducated, the minority groups etc; and of course all those who stand in opposition to current political trends - the protestors, the demonstrators, the activists.

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AFP - Monday, May 28 04:11 am
uk.news.yahoo.com

LONDON (AFP) - Prime Minister Tony Blair Sunday accused courts and parliament of putting the rights of suspects before national security as it emerged that police may get powers to stop and question people in the street.

Writing in The Sunday Times, Blair argued that the disappearance last week of three terror suspects under control orders, a form of house arrest, was due to society’s mixed-up priorities rather than government mistakes.

“The fault is not with our services or, in this instance, with the Home Office (interior ministry). We have chosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first,” Blair wrote.

“I happen to believe this is misguided and wrong.”

A government proposal to grant police officers powers to stop and question people under anti-terror laws also emerged Sunday to a volley of criticism, with a member of Blair’s own cabinet joining the sceptics.

Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain, who is running for the Labour party deputy leadership, warned that the move could become “the domestic equivalent of Guantanamo Bay.”

The laws could not be passed before Blair leaves office and hands over to finance minister Gordon Brown at the end of next month.

Shami Chakrabarti, of civil rights campaigners Liberty, accused Blair of “political machismo, a legacy moment.”

“Stopping and questioning anyone you like will backfire because people will be being criminalised,” she said.

The Sunday Times said that anyone who refused to cooperate could be charged with obstructing the police and fined up to 5,000 pounds (7,371 euros, 9,923 dollars).

The measures are currently in place in Northern Ireland and Irish premier Bertie Ahern told Sky News television that it would be “a pity” if the powers, which had been due to be ditched there, were kept on.

Elsewhere, police currently have the power to stop and search individuals on “reasonable grounds for suspicion” that they have committed an offence but have no rights to ask for their identity and movements.

The proposal came after three men went on control orders went on the run Tuesday — Lamine and Ibrahim Adam, aged 26 and 20, and Cerie Bullivant, 24.

The Adams pair are the brothers of Anthony Garcia, 25, who was imprisoned last month for his role in a fertiliser bomb plot aimed at attacking targets in London and across Britain.

Blair’s government stepped up its approach to terrorism after the US attacks on September 11, 2001 and again after four British-born Islamist suicide bombers killed 52 commuters and injured hundreds of others in London on July 7, 2005.