Cheshire Cat Photo Blog(...said the Cat: 'we're all mad here....')

We may shoot people, but we’re not terrorists.

And police hate a camera, unless it’s THEIR camera…. (A lesson that I learned watching Columbus police officers and folks at [The] Ohio State University in 1970….)

Awhile ago, I wrote about the the British Government’s desire to capture all of the exchanges on social networks, and perhaps the desire to do “deep packet inspection” of every data packet that flows over networks in the UK and to store them in a centralized database. I also said, “Who knows? Maybe we already do this in the U.S….. “)

Photographers gathered in London, England to protest being stopped and searched by British police under the country’s terrorism laws. Placards carried the message, “I am a photographer, not a terrorist.” The slogan is also the name of a group campaigning against certain sections of Britain’s Terrorism Act 2000 (sound like the “Patriot Act” to you?), which was designed to give police greater powers to fight terrorism. Photographers object to the implementation of Section 44 of the Act, which allows the police to stop and search folks regardless of whether or not they have a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled last week that stop-and-search powers under Section 44 of the Act are a breach of human rights. (It took a COURT to decide this! ) The ruling, which found that the “coercive powers” of the anti-terrorism law are a clear interference with the right to respect for human life, resulted from a lengthy legal battle by two people who were stopped and searched en route to a London demonstration.

The British Government is appealing the decision, arguing that the powers are an important tool in fighting terrorism. (Which looks a bit like “end-justifies-means thinking” to me….) Perhaps a review of the Magna Carta and hundreds of years of British law is in order.

According to CNN, one of the founders of the organization, freelance photographer Jess Hurd, said:

“I was stopped last year for 45 minutes covering a travel wedding,”

“Everyone, if they haven’t been stopped already, knows someone who has been. This is becoming a problem. People stopped over sunsets at St. Paul’s, chip shops, roundabouts — it’s getting a bit crazy.”

“I would personally like a repeal of this law,” Hurd said.

I can understand where she is “coming from.”

-Bill at

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