The End of Section 44

As a serving police officer, I am duty bound to abstain from politics in public. This blog is about photography - and occasionally my job - but some things I can't help but offer a little comment on.

Section 44 of the Terrorism Act drew a great deal of criticism - much of it perfectly justified - because it was disproportionately used to target photographers in public. There have been numerous horror stories of security guards, PCSOs and Police Officers all getting things horribly wrong - deleting photos, confiscating cameras, moving people on - all over the country.

I argued a while back that we needed to refine our use of s44 - now its use has been suspended altogether. Partly, this is due to an ECHR ruling stating that it is against a person's human rights to be stopped & searched when no real grounds exist for doing so. Personally, I think it is a great deal more to do with the active campaign of http://photographernotaterrorist.org/

s44 was never intended to become a tool for harassing photographers, but that's ultimately what it became associated with, and now we've paid the price. I don't mourn its passing. However, the next - and much harder - battle will be in convincing average Joe Public that not every photographer is a paedophile.

Can we expect to see "Photographer Not A Paedophile" T-Shirts cropping up in the near future?