yet another blog

Given that the UK is claimed to be one of the most surveilled countrys compared to other industrialised Western states, with upwards of 4.2m CCTV cameras (about one for every 14 people!) and almost certainly increasing daily, its quite bizarre that there should be such paranoia about folk innocently taking photographs in public places.

Yet there is. A paranoia, moreover, deliberately fostered by State agencies and the Police. (See this post)

What’s even more worrying is when the Police actively obstruct Press photographers, photojournalists and the like, from performing their legitimate and legal function of documenting newsworthy events.
And not just actively obstruct them, but treat them as though they are criminals or even terrorists!

Well, the British Journal of Photography has now decided to help in the fight back against this ridiculous and, it has to be said, sinister situation with the launch of its “Not a crime” campaign.

In their words…

Increasing concerns about terrorism, paedophilia, health and safety, personal privacy and plain old paranoia about pretty much anything Her Majesty’s subjects get up to has resulted in a deep mistrust of photographers.

Police routinely invoke anti-terror legislation to prevent photographers from carrying out their work, and photojournalists are constantly filmed at public gatherings and their details kept on an ever-growing database. Tourists, particularly foreign tourists, are also targeted by police, as was the case with an Austrian father and son recently who made the mistake of photographing a building of an extremely sensitive nature—Walthamstow bus station.
Put simply, Britain has become a no-photo zone, and so if you fail to comply, you may find yourself liable to attack, arrest or harassment. Recognising that Britain is not the only country where such a draconian anti-photographer culture is developing, the British Journal of Photography is beginning an international visual campaign to raise awareness.

Over the next year we hope to gather thousands of self-portraits of photographers – professional and amateur – from around the world, each holding up a white card with the words, “Not a crime” or “I am not a terrorist”.

Check it out now, before its too late and you have to forever mothball your cameras or risk incarceration.

P.S.: The banner heading this post is downloadable in two different sizes from the “Not a crime” campaign website. I’ve also created a new dedicated set on Flickr that I may well add to periodically!

This article’s also been posted on my photography blog

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Many years ago I used to be an avid reader of Private Eye. Not so much in recent times, admittedly (variety of reasons: availability, time, blah blah blah). But I’ve always held  a fondness for it in my heart, and it still ranks fairly high on my list of “worthwhile reading”. But I think its finally been nudged out of that position by a recent find… the Daily Mash!

One particular article in the latest offering from this… er… “journal” especially caught my eye:

POLICE TO TARGET HIPPIES WITH VIDEO CAMERAS

POLICE officers on crowd control duty have been ordered to give priority beatings to anyone holding a video camera.

going on to say, in a… hmm… “quote” from an “ACPO spokesman”…

The police have a very difficult job to do while at the same time preserving the democratic right to knock the absolute living shit out of communists and hippies without some bastard filming it on their phone.

In future officers will refrain from unprovoked and indiscriminate attacks and instead focus their violence very precisely on anyone holding a camera.

You can read the full article here.

Only problem is, I get this rather uncomfortable feeling that this spoof article could turn out to be all too prophetic.

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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

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Since I’ve got involved in this photography lark I’ve posted quite a few bits and pieces here about my escapades, which is not really what I’d intended for this blog in the beginning.

So, as it doesn’t appear that my photographic exploits are stopping anytime soon, and as its therefore likely that I’ll have more photo-related stuff to post, it seemed the most sensible thing would be to set up a dedicated photo-related blog.

Pinching a few of the posts from here just to get it off the ground, I’ve also borrowed one of this blog’s category labels as its name…

Adventures of an Idiot. Please do check it out if you have a few moments, you’re so inclined, and you fancy a bit of a giggle.

(However, the present intention is for it not to be all humour and self-deprecation… hoping to include a few kit reviews, think pieces, and stuff like that over time.)

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…to all my regular visitors (all three of them!) for the laggardley way in which I’ve completely failed to blog anything recently.

Reason (excuse) is, I’ve become increasingly preoccupied with all this photography lark.
Best of all possible motives of course. The theory being that the more pics I take the greater the likelihood that I may eventually get my head around how the whole photography thing works. So that when I’m on one of my “jaunts” (at a demo, protest, or whatever) I’m increasing the chances that I’ll return with more usable pics.

Well, that was the theory anyway. In practise, I’ve made the rather disturbing discovery that both taking pics and frequenting Flickr (where I upload most of my output) are actually quite addictive, hence the absence of posts here.

Sorry folks… try to do better in future.

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