A friend of mine works for an international human rights organisation. When she visited the US about 5 years ago, she was questioned about her visit:

Airport Security Guy: “What’s the purpose of your visit, ma’am?”

My Friend: “I’m attending an international conference on human rights.”

She was then taken into a side room, where she was held for two hours and interrogated. They asked her over and over again what she was doing in the country, who she worked for, where she was from…

Just thought you might like to hear that anecdote.

Although if this information becomes widely known, the Gestapo will hear about it too, and they’ll start confiscating memory cards. :( (though that might entail paperwork, i.e. accountability, so I guess that might be a good thing).

Since: “Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion” I have thought from the outset of the “war on terror” that the real terrorists are the governments who are trying to take advantage of people’s fears over 9/11 as a means to coerce us into accepting a greater degree of state control.

The citizens of Britain worked hard many centuries ago to win their current level of civil rights. These were not given to them willingly. I think they need to do the same sort of work now to require their rulers to write protection against this kind of abuse into law.

Not that I am saying Americans are any better than the Brits. We have the mechanisms already to get laws against this sort of abuse enacted but allow ourselves to be to easily manipulated into the erosion of our rights.

Delete what they ask you to delete.

As soon as they let you walk away, pull the memory card and stick it somewhere safe, and don’t use it for the rest of your trip. Use other memory cards…buy new ones if you must.

When you get home, download a file recovery program (there are plenty of free/inexpensive ones to choose from. In fact, many storage cards these days come with file recovery software).

Recover your “deleted” photos, post to the web for all (*cough*terrorists*cough) to enjoy.

I disagree. It is. I’ll wave to you both as you pass us on the way down. #61 OneAmp’s post about the NYPD order is really one huge step back though.

I have some suggestions to the police on how to make better progress.

1) Do not tell tourists to delete digital photos. Confiscate the memory cards. As #46 gmr2048 pointed out, there’s a ton of free software out there, who’s sole purpose is to help you recover deleted photos. Even if your middle-aged technophobe tourist cannot do this himself, you can be sure there’s a kid back home who’ll gladly do it for him.

Also note that some cameras stores images in internal memory on the camera itself. So removing the card may not be enough. Just to be safe, confiscate the camera as well.

2) Ban camera sales. What good reason could there be for private citizens to own cameras? If they really want their photos taken, they could go to a photo studio. Only terrorists and paedophiles takes photos.

And people who snap videos and photos of cops assaulting the citizenry for no good reason. When these photos and videos gets released, we have to convened expensive investigations before letting the cops go scot free. If there’s no video or photo, these would remain unsubstantiated rumours without evidence. We could just ignore then and save much expense on the entirely unnecessary investigation to white wash the whole thing.

3) Camera owners should be licensed like gun owners. People like professional event photographers, photo studios, TV stations, etc will still need to take still photos and videos. We need to record the serial number of each device they own. The devices will also have to embed these identifying numbers into each photo and video. We need to know who took which photo so that if inappropriate photos are released to the public, we can withdraw the culprit’s license.

4) We should establish a photo censor board. Every photo taken should be uploaded to this board’s website, and the original immediately deleted. The board will immediately review all photos submitted, and after removing objectional photos (photos that are indecent, violent, gross, or shows the authorities in bad light), sign them digitally and return them to the photographer. The digital signature also ensures that image and metadata in the photo is not modified.

Anyone found in possession of a photo older than 2 days, without this digital signature, should be thrown in jail.

5) There is no reason for anyone to leave their house and wander the streets aimlessly. Before they leave their homes, they should apply for a permit from the home ministry.

Technology has progressed to the point that this can be done efficiently and automatically. Applicants who has had a good record will have their applications approved automatically without human review. Those applications that are flagged as exceptional will be reviewed by humans. Automatically processed applications would be decided in a fraction of a second. Those reviewed by humans need not take more than a few minutes.

“Passes” could be issued for regular trips, to/from school/workplace so that you do not need to apply for permits each time.

6) Each person could be fitted with an RFID chip, and the entire country covered with readers. This will let us detect when someone makes an unauthorized trip, or deviates from the approved path. They could be punished with fines, and their record modified so that it will be harder for them to get permits in the future.

Disclosure: I work in a photo shop, that will suffer from the loss of camera sales and photo processing, but will benefit from the increase in studio portraits.

However, my two points were:

“There’s no evidence that terrorists use photos to plan their attacks …”

I’m skeptical of this. My common sense tells me that photographs of the target area would be pretty basic to planning a terrorist attack.

Second, if we’re to do anything about the erosion of civil liberties in the UK, sensationalist, knee-jerk headlines about “mugging” and “beating the shit” out of people don’t really help. We need to talk calmly and rationally about these things, or we just make it easy for others to dismiss our concerns.

For a country in which the legislation states you can’t photograph or film police officers, there’s been a HELL of a lot of footage of violent police action getting into the media this past fortnight.

Not the most effective legislation, thus far.

But of course this is a troubling development because it is training the police to engage in fascist tactics. First against tourists, who are pushovers: they are at the mercy of local officials, have a limited understanding of local rights, don’t want hassle, etc. Then once police are accustomed to taking these kind of actions extending it to the locals is just a little step further.

No one was ever corrupted all at once, it’s babysteps all the way. Oh, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Seriously.

In the US, our civil liberties have been undermined in many ways, but this is lunacy.

I just don’t get how ordinary Brits aren’t complaining about this kind of stuff? And DOING something about it?

It’s appalling.

I would be interested to hear from someone who is actually there what your perception is of how bad the police situation actually is there.

I know it is just as easy to get a very skewed view of what is happening in the U.S. based on the headlines:

The grandmother in Florida charged because she was taking photos of her grandkids; the substitute teacher charged because malware on the classroom computer was displaying porn; the 16 year old girl facing classification as a sex offender for posting risque photos of herself.

From what we see here, it seems like some of your police have become irrationally obsessed, seeing terrorist behind every lamppost. How does it look from where you stand?

Short term, we need to convince our fellow citizens that knee-jerk reactions to “terrorism” don’t work and only serve to diminish the benefits of our society.

Long term, we need to make sure that our children and young adults are taught critical thinking skills so they can think for themselves and logically work out when the government pushes things like this which don’t make sense.

There’s no legislation to prevent you from taking pictures of public buildings, unless perhaps they get you under something amazingly vague like possessing materials that are likely to be useful for terrorist purposes or something. I think it’s pretty clear there’s no real justification under UK law for this.

Cory, a helpful note, maybe, on so-called “scare quotes” and their (mis)use, from The Chicago Manual of Style:

Quotation marks are often used to alert readers that a term is used in a nonstandard, ironic, or other special sense…. They imply ‘This is not my term’ or ‘This is not how the term is usually applied.’ Like any such device, scare quotes lose their force and irritate readers if overused.

Italics mine.

You people have an incredible amount of surveillance cameras, and police with outrageous power over ordinary citizens. I know the process of Orwellizing a city is insidious, but honestly.

The police of New York City don’t pull the same stunts that your police do. Dare To Compare.

I, and many of my friends and coworkers, feel that the degree of surveillance we’re under is nuts. I’ve had people asking me about the government’s new law tracking the URLs you visit, and how to get around that. We know we’re constantly under watch, and we don’t like it. Nor do we think its justified, and we take every opportunity we can to make our opinions known.

A couple of things about this story and the comments really bug me. First off, Matkza says this never happened to him in communist countries. Well, he’s lucky then. I’ve had friends who had their film destroyed, and a professor in university had his full camera kit confiscated for taking pictures of government and public buildings. What happened to him is reprehensible, but to claim its worse than in communist countries is hyperbole.

Second, you Americans claiming you’ll never visit the UK because of this are really bugging me. My wife was screamed at by an American customs official for trying to take a Clementine on to a plane. He told her she could be fined or jailed for that. A Pakistani woman in my mothers church missions group was detained overnight twice while changing planes in the UK simple for being brown. And then there’s the scores of people who’ve enjoyed vacations abroad on your government’s dime through the extraordinary rendition programme. Have you even apologised to Maher Arar yet? Nope, you still claim he’s a terrorist.

Seriously, people. You have the moral high ground to tell us we need to do something to change this? You endured eight years of worse. Take the plank out of your own eye before you go banging on about the speck in ours.

I don’t want to give the impression that I’m some America-hater, or that I’m okay with what’s going on here (or back in Canada, either) but these comments, and the lack of self-awareness really bug me.

Rant over.

Since 7/7 there has ben 1 non-lethal set of explosions and 3 further sets of arrests over ‘credible’ teror plots, the latest just this month. After the recent arrests, BBC news explicitly stated those arrested had photographed sites in Manachester, including shopping malls and nightclubs.

There may be a deeper question as to whether there were any plots and whether the photography statement is true. But a very wide segment of government, policing, judiciary and the media is asserting there has recently been more than group bent on terrorist murder. While I may suspect that there is a deep and wide conspiracy by government to control and terrorise its citizens, it seems equally – no, more – likely there are terrorists. Maybe with cameras.

I have more than once had to return to school/work after an IRA bomb in the immediate vicinity: to me terrorism is not an abstract or something seen only on the news.

Ed Griffiths (non wishing to be anonymous, but incapable of remembering passwords/logins lately)

You might be surprised at how many Brits refuse to go to the U.S. for pretty much the same reasons you are refusing to go to London (perceived serious erosion of civil liberties, can’t walk down the street without being tasered,…)

Yes, we need to make a stand against this stuff before it DOES go down the shitter, but the fact is you only see the bad news.

Don’t base your opinions of London on the civlib category on BB. It’s not quite 1984 yet.

See, I agree with this to some extent. People should be careful when commenting on the state of other countries that their remarks not come off as smug, snide or superior. I’m sure the Americans here know what that’s like, given the significant amount of criticism sent their way in the last 8 years.

But at the same time, people should be allowed to criticise other countries, and it’s really important that such valid criticism not be deflected with a “Well, YOUR country did this awful thing…”. That’s a defense used by a lot of vile and corrupt governments and regimes, and it’s nothing more than a diversion tactic.

So while criticisms of the UK police and government are totally justified, try to avoid offending people, and make sure you do your research.

I had a very similar experience in Valencia (Spain) in 2007 in which I was hustled off to a security office by a VERY agitated police officer and made to delete all of the photos I had taken of the station (a beautiful Modernista structure) and the train I that had just gotten off of (the very kind of high-speed inter-city train that so many of us dream of here in the States). It was both an upsetting incident and a horrible entry into a city that I had been hoping to visit for so long.

I completely understand the nervousness that exists in countries (like Spain and the U.K.) that have experienced terrorist attacks focused on their public transport infrastructure. Prohibiting tourists (or locals, for that matter) from taking photographs of these often quite remarkable facilities, however, is a wholly irrational response in that these images simply do not reveal ANYTHING that isn’t already visible to the naked eye. The primary reason I document my surroundings photographically is that I find it complements my mental recollections of a particular place and time. Moreover, it allows for a later visual focus that is difficult – if not impossible – to achieve during my travels when I am already processing a near overwhelming quantity of new visual data (not to mention novel smells, sounds, etc.). I would suggest that the would-be criminal/terrorist – with his or her very specific agenda and extremely narrowed focus – has absolutely no need for such a mnemonic device. They will internalize what they see quite effectively without the need for a camera.

And as for treating curious visitors (curiosity is one of the primary reasons we travel, after all) as potentially deadly threats, it seems highly counter-productive in terms of encouraging tourism, with its concomitant goals of fostering economic development and greater inter-cultural understanding.

An especially delicious irony in this situation was that a temporary exhibit of photographs of trains and railway stations had been set up in the lobby of the station.

In short, I wholeheartedly empathize with my Austrian friends and hope that we soon adopt a more rational and less intrusive/abusive approach to public security.