Met Police issue photographers' rights advice

Comments

• I'll bet no-one at Pocket-Lint carries identification. The upshot presumably being none of you are members of the media I guess? Posted by John, UK
• Total tosh, as usual, that improves very little as it still leaves the police an unacceptable degree of wiggle room to carry on business as usual. In 20 years as a pro photographer, I've never carried a press card. I do two or three press jobs a year, usually just filling in for overseas publications when they're short handed, and no having a card has never been a problem. Now it's being touted as a stamp of legitimacy of your professional status.
  
  There are many, many areas of photography which fall in between 'frontline' news work and amateur photography and which, from experience, seem to attract unwarranted police attention on a regular basis simply for standing out as not being 'ordinary' activity. The police now also seem to be taking it upon themselves to decide what is an isn't 'OK' to photograph. Photographing a building, for example, might lead to the usual anti terrorism caht, followed by a little lecture (invariably legally clueless) on photographing private property or individuals from a public place, often including odd statements like "you're not allowed to publish this on a website".
  
  When this stops being about easy, visible wins for the police while balancing over zealous ethnic stop and search figures by adding middle-class white blokes, some sanity might prevail. These guidlines do nothing beyond glossing over the rising tide of complaints. Posted by Mark, UK