Landmark decision clears the way for restoration of privacy, right to protest, photograph unhindered
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Tuesday, Jan 12, 2010
The use of “counter-terrorism” stop and search laws by the police in the UK has been ruled illegal by the European Court of Human Rights,
a decision that paves the way for protesters, photographers and
everyday citizens to fight back against such gross invasions of privacy.
Under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, police can stop and search anyone without reasonable suspicion.
The court in Strasbourg has referred to that power as not in
“accordance with the law”, and a violation of article eight
– the right to respect for private and family life.
Judges noted that there is no grounds for considering the powers
“necessary”, and that they are only
“expedient”, adding that there is a “clear risk of
arbitrariness in granting such broad discretion” to a police
officer.
They also stated that the searching clothing and belongings
interferes with the right to privacy as it involves an element of
humiliation and embarrassment.
The use of the powers and their authorisation is “neither
sufficiently circumscribed, nor subject to adequate legal safeguards
against abuse”, according to the court.
The court also highlighted a lack of judicial oversight, stating
“The absence of any obligation on the part of the officer to show
a reasonable suspicion made it almost impossible to prove that the
power had been improperly exercised”.
The full judgment is online here.
The freedom stripping powers, which were initially conceived only to
be used in emergency situations, have come under intense scrutiny
recently following the publication of multiple sets of figures
highlighting huge increases in stops with a relatively miniscule
success rate.
In May 2009, data released to the BBC
revealed that the Metropolitan Police in London used section 44 of the
Terrorism Act more than 170,000 times in 2008 to stop people in the
capital. That figure equated to stopping and searching a member of the
public every three minutes under terrorism laws.
The figures represented a more than 140% increase on 2007 numbers.
Of all the stops in 2008, only 65 led to arrests for terror
offences, a success rate of just 0.035%. Furthermore, when you take
into account how many of those arrests have translated into
convictions, according to the Home Office, you come up with a round
figure of 0.0%.
A separate Freedom of Information Act request in 2009 also revealed
that the use of the stop and search power has increased exponentially
by over ten times in less than ten years.
Furthermore, Ministry of Justice statistics,
published in mid 2008, revealed that from 2006-2007 police used their
powers to stop (but not search) nearly two million members of the
public and demand they account for their behavior or actions, a rise of
one third from the previous year.
This meant that in just one year around 3.5% of the entire British
population was stopped in the street by the police under suspicion of
terror related offences.
While not resulting in the prevention of any terrorism,
the section 44 powers have been most notably used against the
82-year-old Walter Wolfgang for heckling Jack Straw at the Labour Conference; Sally Cameron for walking on a cycle-path in Dundee; the 80-year-old John Catt for being caught on CCTV passing a demonstration in Brighton; the 11-year-old Isabelle Ellis-Cockcroft for accompanying her parents to an anti-nuclear protest; and a cricketer on his way to a match over his possession of a bat.
More recently, Scotland Yard admitted
that its officers have been photographing children who are stopped and
searched, even after they have been found to be innocent, and keeping
the pictures on a database for “intelligence-gathering
purposes”.
In the past we have reported on instances where police have admitted stop and search records are permanently retained.
The Home Office guide to stop and search states that “if they don’t find anything, your details will be recorded for monitoring purposes, and you’ll be allowed to go.”
The government has continued to push for greater stop and search powers for police.
Section 44 of the Terrorism Act bestows exceptional
powers on the police to stop and search at random, once a particular
geographical area has been designated by a chief officer as one that
might be targeted by terrorists and authorised as such by the Home
Secretary. The government has since extended this power
to stop and search WITHOUT REASONABLE SUSPICION to include
“troubled areas”, which since 2001 has included the whole
of Greater London.
As of February 17 2009, Section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act
also prohibits photographing police and permits the arrest of anyone
found “eliciting, publishing or communicating information”
relating to members of the armed forces, intelligence services and
police officers, which is “likely to be useful to a person
committing or preparing an act of terrorism”.
Essentially, under anti-terror laws, anyone caught photographing
police could face a fine or a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
As we have recently reported,
this section of the act is being used primarily to target journalists
covering protests, who say they are being targeted by police
surveillance officers more so than the actual protesters. The law has
also been used against tourists snapping pictures of landmarks and
members of the public documenting police misconduct.
A recent report by the Joint Select Committee on Human Rights confirmed that journalists and protesters were the primary targets of increased police misuse of anti-terror laws.
This week’s ruling from the Human Rights Court
refers to the case of Kevin Gillan and Pennie Quinton who were detained
for attending a protest outside Europe’s biggest arms fair in London in September 2003.
Having finally achieved justice after more than six
years of pursuing the matter, the pair were awarded €33,850
(£30,400) in costs and expenses. Gillan and Quinton, who like
many others could have just walked away, should be commended as heroes
for their efforts to defend freedom in the UK.
Anti-terror laws are intended for use on the general
public, they always have been, and now we are seeing the rotten fruits
of continued blind acceptance contaminate every section of society in
this country.
Gillan and Quinton have paved the way for others who
have been the victims of the misuse of these draconian terrorism laws
to fight back and help push for a complete rejection of such abuses of
power.
