On the 21 May the Court of Appeal ruled the retention of pictures of innocent people by the police illegal under the European Convention on Human Rights. These pictures are taken by the so-called Forward Intelligence Teams, who -for example- have the right to photograph peaceful demonstrators and to store those pictures in a criminal database along with those of convicted criminals.
In the case last May, the judges said the Metropolitan Police had no reason to retain the pictures of Andrew Woods, an arms trade campaigner. The Met had taken pictures of Mr Woods back in 2005 after he lawfully attended the annual meeting of Reed Elsevier, a company that organised an arm fair exhibition. Mr Woods had become a shareholder to be able to attend the meeting.
The Court did not ban the taking of pictures nor it forced the Met to delete the thousands it already has. But from now on the police will have to decide case-by-case which pictures to retain, and will have to remove after a few days all those of innocent people the police are no suspicious of.
The London File talks to the Met and to experts to find the actual consequences of the Court’s decision.
- Will the Met delete the thousands of pictures of peaceful demonstrators they currently hold?
A spokesman for the Met said they will not just delete the pictures but that they “regularly review and delete the photographs held on our intelligence system as a matter of course”. He could not specify the grounds on which they decide which pictures to keep and which to delete.
Human rights lawyer Anna Mazzola, of Hickman & Rose, explains that “the Court did not actually order the deletion of any images. Nor did they say that the practice as a whole was unlawful. Indeed, the police seem to have interpreted the judgment to mean that they can continue as usual.”
However, Ms Mazzola is confident about a more general court decision coming soon. “I think we can expect a case fairly soon regarding the general policy of taking and retaining photographs of people who are not even suspected of any kind of criminal activity.”
- Will the police stop having the "specialist police cameramen" taking pictures of demonstrators?
No, the Met will go on taking any pictures they think they have the right to. The spokesman for the Met defended this practice as it “allows officers to build up a clear picture of who is involved in planning and organising any criminal behaviour or disorder at demonstrations”.
Ms Mazzola admits the Court did not actually ban this practice but explains that “it does make clear that from now on the police must have a clear justification for retaining photograph for a long period of time. Therefore the police will have to be very careful about how they take pictures and how they are held”.
- How are those pictures stored?
The pictures are the stored for up to seven years in the Crimint database, which as of 2005 contained 7 million information reports and 250,000 intelligence records.
- Do the people have access to those pictures?
In theory we do, under both the Data Protection and the Freedom of Information acts, but in practice the police always deny it on the grounds of national security. As Ms Mazzola explains, “the individual just gets a letter saying that the police are not obliged to disclose any information on them. I assume this means that the police are relying on one of the exemptions under the Data Protection Act, either crime or national security.”
The same day of the Court decision, chief superintendent Ian Thomas, in charge of the Met Public Order Branch, defended this way of doing things: “There is nothing secretive or covert about the way we do this, and this practice is very well known and understood in protester circles. The Metropolitan Police Service will continue to do everything necessary to maintain order on London's streets.”
In conclusion, the Met still has the right to take and store pictures of any individual who is lawfully attending a public event. However, now the police will have to study every picture on a case-by-case basis and will have to delete those of people who have not committed any offence and are not suspected to do so.
The story is not finished yet, and as Ms Mazzola puts it, the Met will have to be very careful not to break any privacy rights in name of crime prevention. “The prevention or detection of crime can in many circumstances be a legitimate aim. However, storing personal information where the person concerned is not actually suspected of any crime but is just suspected of consorting with someone the police think is a potential trouble-maker cannot be a justifiable breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.”
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