terrorism
Not a terrorist? – doesn’t matter
Via Old Holborn on Facebook and already picked up on by LegIron and Obnoxio it seems that the plastic plod still haven’t got the message about not harassing photographers. Taking photographs of Christmas festivities in that well known security hotspot of Accrington is “Suspicious” behaviour and if you don’t “volunteer” your details when stopped under Section 44 they’ll just get you arrested for anti-social behaviour instead.
Given how many public statements there have been concerning both the police and the plastics abusing their powers in this way, and despite the repeated reminders that “no laws prevent people from photographing buildings” the message just isn’t getting across. It’s almost enough to make you start to wonder if the public message we hear is actually the same one that is being given to the people in uniforms. Also Section 44 applies in designated areas only – so is a shopping centre in Accrington really a designated area or where they just making things up and is there an on-line list of all the designated areas anywhere?
UK Threat level RSS
Given the recent change to our required fear level, I was some what surprised to discover that there’s no easy way to be notified as to when we should increase, or even decrease, our level of fear and underlying anxiety. It seems that by some terrible over sight our glorious Government and security forces haven’t made it easy to get notified of when the “current terrorism threat level” changes. As , and I was surprised at this, no one seems to have done so already I put together a little script that monitors the Home Office web site and publishes changes to the “current terrorism threat level” to an RSS feed. Which can then be pulled into all sorts of useful things, such as a blog side bar or anything else for that matter. The feed is deliberately very simple to make it more useful for feeding into other things.
I’ve just discovered the official historical record so I’ll back fill that data, and for future changes I’ll also grab the RSS feed from the BBC news site so we can know at least what was in the headlines at the time.
Anyway for more details either click on the link in the side bar or go here:
http://www.anonymong.org/alert/
or just subscribe to the feed here:
http://www.anonymong.org/alert/alert.rss
Monday morning papers
Having foolishly made the mistake of reading the metro today, there were a few articles that tie in rather too well with my last post.
There’s a half page article about Megan Ward who’s invented a “smoking kills” key ring which is being ordered by “anti-smoking consultancy”* GASP, and she’s also produced possibly more useful strong sun indicators. In smaller news the Scots it seems are drinking a shocking one and a half pints a day (Of course these numbers will get increasingly inaccurate as people home brew or buy abroad) . The really impressive article though is the call from Dr Shyam Kolvekar to ban butter it seems just advising people to use less is no longer enough. Once he’s done with butter though he’s already got a few other foods in his sights:
To round off the mornings madness the Independent is reporting on a man arrested for a twitter post threatening to blow up Robin Hood airport. Yes it probably warranted someone going round for a quiet chat, but the arrest and life time ban from the airport? I hope that he wasn’t reported by someone following his tweets.
* What on earth is an “anti-smoking consultancy” anyway?
Photography in public places the battle continues
You can tell that the problem with the police harassing photographers for taking pictures in public places is getting serious when 365 establishment photographer write a letter to the Telegraph (hat tip Samizdata). If things get much worse they’ll write to the editor of the Times and use green ink. Now I’m not convinced this will do much good as the disconnect appears to be between the 646 that sit and make laws and those that implement them on the streets as they see fit.
The letter quite reasonably points out that if you were up to no good, you’d probably just use google street view, a camera phone or at most a small compact of some sort and not a hulking great SLR on a tripod. They even make the radical claim that the presensce of such a visible camera might make people thing twice about doing no good in case the very visible human operator took thier photo. Which if you think about it would explain why the police (and news agencies) appeal to the public for any photo’s after major incidents. Though as various commenatators have observed the letter does smell rather of special pleading – that the police shouldn’t pick on “proper” photographers with expensive equipment but feel free to infringe the rights and liberties of those scruffy plebs with the cheap nasty cameras.
Since the anti-terrorism laws have come into force making it allowable to stop and search people, and making it an offence to take photographs “liable to be of use to terrorists”. The police, PCSO and various security gaurds have been using it as an excuse to harrass or beat photographers that have been taking pictures in public of pretty much anything. Just taking photo’s of the outside of iconic landmarks can make you a terror suspect if the local security goons take against you. Of course this has been going on for a while now and has even been debated in parliament back in April 2009 by MP’s who’ve been stopped themselves. There have also been numerous blogs and articles written about it and public demonstrations organised. The home office issued a circular in August 2009 clarifying the situation and restating that it’s not illegal to take photogrpahs in public places, nor is taking photographs on it’s own grounds (if they really think you’re a terrorist they need to use section 43 not section 44). The Met office also updated their guidelines in September also stating that generally people shouldn’t be stopped from taking photographs. Yet despite this ongoing restating of the fact that normal people are in fact allowed to take photographs in public of retty much whatever they like, photographers are still getting routinely stopped. So really I’m expecting this letter to have about as much imapct as the facebook group.
What will probably also have no effect is another demo on 23rd Jan 2010 but still we must keep trying.
Of course on the flip side of this the police are using traffic cameras to harass and limit movement of peaceful protesters as well as building up a photographic data base of people at protests, but they really hate being filmed
News for photographers
This just in via FitWatch, the Met have updated their guidelines for stopping and searching terrorists photographers, to clarify that they can only see your photographs if they suspect you of being a terrorist and also that they have no right to delete digital photographs or destroy film. They actually state that twice, with regards to two different sections.
There is also a Home office circular giving clarification. The hesdline of which is:
Important: Section 43 does not prohibit the taking of photographs, film or digital images in a public place and members of the public and the press should not be prevented from doing so in exercise of the powers conferred by section 43.
A police officer can only stop and search a person they reasonably suspect to be a terrorist under this power.
Both the circular and the Met guidelines are quite short so do take the time to read them, then save a copy in case it changes/vanishes and then make sure to tell other people.
Update: The people over at “I’m a photographer not a terrorist” are putting together a rather dandy map of “authorised” areas.
Germs the new terrorists?
So far it seems as though swine flu isn’t co-operating with the governments/media’s plan to turn into a pandemic. So far behaving no differently from any other seasonal flu. Of course the more cynical among us might wonder if the rapidly approaching end of shelf life for all those tamiflu capsules the government bought for bird flu back in 2005 has any relevance, it’s certainly hasn’t done Roche’s share price any harm in the past. According to the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation the shelf life of Tamiflu capsules is 5 years in capsule form but with 2 million doses stock piled from 2005 at about £100 a dose that’s a bit of change about to expire.
Meanwhile whilst the rest of us are being suitably afraid or not, perhaps it’s British pig farmers who have most to fear. With Egypt already using swine flu as an excuse to kill off it’s pig farms can DEFRA be far behind? Private eye and others have long documented DEFRAs apparent dislike of British farming, especially it seems small farms, so if this initial out break doesn’t give them an excuse for a cull they can always repeat the same trick as they used for foot and mouth and release the virus again from their own labs.
Across the pond, and remember this all started in America Fox are wondering what impact swine flu might have on civil liberties (hat tip Towards Mutual Benefit). For the record I’m still fairly convinced that it’s far more likely that it will be some out break of disease that triggers the civil contingencies act and not terrorists (unless of course no obliging disease happens along).
Mind I still haven’t got my leaflet from the government telling me what to worry about.
Data retention starts today
For those of you that may not have been paying attention the EU directive on data retention comes into force today. This means that from today your ISP will be required by law (The Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009) to retain data regarding your use of “internet access, internet e-mail or internet telephony” for a year and make it available to the government on request. Technically the regulations use the wonderfully imprecise phrase:
(a) in specific cases, and
(b) in circumstances in which disclosure of the data is permitted or required by law.
so I think on request is probably a fair interpretation.
Ignoring the much simpler aspects regarding telephone calls where all telephone companies must record, who you called, when and for how long as well as in the case of mobile providers your location at the time. From the internet side of things they’ll be recording:
- your IP address
- Access time and duration of access (This to my mind shows up pre-broadband thinking, the longer your connection is online the less useful this data).
- Who you’ve sent email to and when
- Who you called via internet telephony (skype etc.) and how (Unless they snoop all your traffic which isn’t required I suspect this one applies to the internet telephony provider rather than your ISP
Of course this only applies to “public communications provider” run your own servers in conjunction with some friends and then you won’t be logged, use email providers outside of the EU and you won’t be logged (well not under this law at least). If you have a broadband connection log of as little as possible to reduce the utility of the logs and don’t use your ISP for email, as at the very least you can make it harder for them to join the dots. Also of course it’s worth noting that the original directive states
“This Directive relates only to data generated or processed as a consequence of a communication or a communication service”
so if you use services configured not to generate logs then nothing has to be kept.
Before we blame the EU however it’s worth remembering that it was our Government that asked them to create this rule see this Telegraph article for more background. Though the directive doesn’t contrary to that article seem to actually require that they record the websites you visit. The good news is that the ISPs and Telco’s shouldn’t put up their prices because of this, the bad news is that’s because the government our using our taxes to pay them to spy on us.
Further note despite what Anna Raccoon says and the Various comments (Same article posted to two locations), there doesn’t seem to be any requirement for usage of websites to be logged, it does seem to be “only” VOIP, email and connection to the internet that is to be logged. However if you fancy some spook baiting even though it’s probably not needed or useful then the Landed underclass has some good tips. Some Tory Lords at least are concerned about how this came into effect and where it’s going.
Will update this with further commentary as I stumble upon it, and will correct my interpretation of what is to be logged if I find an explanation of why my interpretation is wrong.
Update Further commentary:
A rather poor interpretation and udnerstanding of the directive from Himmelgarten cafe (hat tip: Charlotte Gore
Update 2
In response to the article from Himmelgarten cafe linked to above it occurred to me that it might be of interest to show people what the logs being retained typically show:
2009-04-06 17:46:02 Message-id <= sendinguser@address H=sending-hostname P=esmtp S=3115
2009-04-06 17:46:02 Message-id => <receiving-user@address> R=userforward T=address_file
2009-04-06 17:46:02 Message-id Completed
The interesting bits are the time stamps and the bits in blue, the bit in red is very trivial to forge. Also when he states that “No help is being offered on paying for the additional storage space.” that would appear to be at odds with what is stated in the directive, but for small email providers it isn’t a huge burden if you only consider the disk space and not back up facilities as each message only takes in the region of 0.5 kb to log.
Photography – a further followup
Just came across these two articles which I thought needed sharing. For anyone that thinks that the counter terrorism and other acts won’t be used to harass photographers and prevent them from carrying out their legitimate work, I’d suggest reading this little list of incidents where that has happened, and the number of commentators complaining about the same sort of thing in response to this article about a photographer lodging a complaint against the police for such behavior.
UK terror threat status
- Severe 2010/01/25