This morn­ing I read an inter­est­ing BBC News arti­cle titled Inno­cent pho­tog­ra­pher or ter­ror­ist? that tack­les the issue of ille­gal stop and searches of pho­tog­ra­phers and the grow­ing inci­dence of this in the UK. A good accom­pa­ni­ment to my pre­vi­ous post, The Photo Police.

It reminded me of this handy lit­tle book­let on Pho­tog­ra­phers’ Rights in the UK pro­duced by Linda Macpher­son in con­junc­tion with The Cam­era Club of Lon­don.

Some years ago it was said in a judge­ment that there is “no law against tak­ing a pho­to­graph”. This implies a gen­eral free­dom to take pho­tographs that, sadly for pho­tog­ra­phers, does not really exist. There are, in fact, many legal restric­tions on the right to take a pho­to­graph, and it would be more cor­rect to say that one is free to take pho­tographs except when the law pro­vides otherwise.

So the ques­tion is, when does the law pro­vide oth­er­wise?