THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN REWRITTEN TO CORRECT ERRORS OF FACT.

The 2008 Counter Terrorism Bill has seldom been out of the headlines in recent months for its controversial proposal to detain suspects for up to 42 days without charge.

There is another provision buried within this bill that seems to have attracted little attention and even less comment. The new Bill will allow police performing a S43 search under the Terrorism Act 2000, to seize and retain for examination any 'document' found. A document is defined at S9 of the new bill as "any record and, in particular, includes information stored in electronic form'.

That means memory cards, cameras and mobile phones, PDA's, laptops - anything containing digital information, as well as letters, notebooks etc. will be able to be removed and kept by police for up to 4 days even though no offence has been committed.

The BJP today carries a report headlined 'Home Secretary green lights restrictions on photography'

From Media Guardian:

The court of appeal today reversed an earlier high court judgment against the author, ruling that a case could be made that her son's right to privacy had been infringed.

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/ipm/ipm_20080426-1932.mp3

Includes discussion of the Middlesbrough incident, interviews with Mark Whitaker of Flickr's Manchester group, Austin Mitchell MP, and Peter Smythe, chair of the Metropolitan Police Federation. Worth a listen, if only to hear Smythe advise people how

Austin Mitchell's Early Day Motion presents a unique window of opportunity for getting photography access problems and interference by police and PCSO's brought to the attention of Parliament.

According the to the Press Gazette, Austin Mitchell, Labour MP for Grimsby and a keen photographer himself, plans to take a delegation of photographers to the Home Office to discuss the increasing number of incidents involving police and PCSO's interfering with legitimate photography.