The government has suspended the use of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act against pedestrians.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/10555430.stm

Good thing. Far too many people were stopped and none were actually charged with terrorism charges. It was used to harass photographers and protestors.

Section 43 more likely to be used though. It depends how a policeman is allowed to define a terrorist, and whether plot and his PCSO chums actually pay attention to briefings on the subject.

There are also private security guards to deal with, and they are generally hired thugs in uniforms who won’t feel bound by this judgement.

They will have to comply as well. The last thing a shopping mall wants is to be charged with Human Rights violations.

A shopping mall would just tell you that it was private property and that no photography was allowed on the premises.

Mark

Indeed - but if you were in a public space photographing the shopping mall (as is your entitlement), you start to enter the murky waters of explaining your actions to the intellectually challenged security guard.

Well yes, I'll give you that one, but you'll be the one in the right, not them.
And if the police get called and you get questioned under S43? Then take the police to court and sue them as breach of your civil liberties.
I reckon the first case of this kind to get to court will win. Then the police will sit up and take notice.

Mark

To be fair, the Police implement the Laws that the Government give to them.

What they have responsibility for is knowing how and when to enforce them, which they obviously don't always get right. At all.

You are completely ignoring the fact that the police asked for these powers and many others beside.

People ask for a lot of things, it doesn't mean they should get them. That's what the term 'govern' means in 'Government'. That's all theory anyway.

The top brass of the police have been acknowledging the problems encountered by the public - particularly photographers - regarding the use of S44 for some considerable time.
The messages and memos have been reproduced in various media but the stupid bobbies on the beat just haven't been getting the message - or have been wantonly ignoring it.
I'm not sure if that backs up your assertion or not, sorry about that, but the police asked for these powers to be granted to them, once they got them they seemingly ran amok with them.
The repeal of S44 was/is a good thing. The rules governing S43 are tighter than those that were governing 44 but the phrase "suspicion threshold" has now been introduced, and this, to my thinking, is a backdoor to reintroduce the more lax rules of S44 in to grant the use of S43.

Mark

PS - I went off on a tangent here and I think I lost my original train of thought. Sorry.

A bit of both, there are some who will ignore it and many who won't have had it explained to them thoroughly enough which is worrying in itself.


My assertion was only that the Police do not make Laws, nor do they decide on who goes to court for that matter, they merely implement those from on high. I don't think there can be any disagreement on that matter. The Law itself was a bad one so I'm not surprised in the slightest that it's been implemented incorrectly because even when implemented correctly it's still a bad Law.


And that's why Governments shouldn't give in to eveything the Police ask for. Thankfully they don't, different Forces ask for things all the time, the Government should always decide on Law making. In the past it seems they pay too much heed to requests purely because they can't think of a better option themselves which would give them the same policital advance, in the short term. 'Terrorists, oh look at us, we have now told the Police that they can search anybody willy-nilly'.


Quite.