The BJP reports that their attempt to find out where in the UK s.44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 applies has been refused by the Home Office for reasons of national security.

"After careful consideration we have decided that this information is exempt from disclosure by virtue of Section 24(1) and Section 31(1)(a-c) of the Freedom of Information Act.
‘Section 24(1) provides that information is exempt if required for the purposes of safeguarding National Security. Section 31(1)(a-c) provides that information is exempt if its disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the prevention or detection of crime, the apprehension or prosecution of offenders, or the administration of justice."

While it is common knowledge that the entire City of London, at the behest of the Metropolitan Police, is covered by section 44 of the Terrorism Act, it remains unclear which other areas in England and Wales have requested the stop-and-search powers.
After growing concerns from BJP readers, who have been, in some cases, abusively stopped from taking pictures around the country, news editor Olivier Laurent filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the Home Office dated 24 April. The request asked for a ‘full list of all areas – in England, Wales and Northern Ireland – subject to Section 44 Terrorism Act 2000 authorisations, which the Home Office has a statutory duty to be aware of.’

But BJP further quotes the Home Office

In order to help maintain public confidence in the use of stop and search, the Metropolitan Police Service does make the existence of any Section 44 authorisation in place public knowledge.

So the Home Office can't tell us for reasons of national security, but the police do for PR reasons. Ha. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, unless there's an Met press release saying what a great job they're doing.

So let's get this Kafka-ism clear. Not only can photographers expect to be pointlessly detained and searched with tedious regularity - s.44 now gets used once every 3 minutes in London - but they can have no idea whether the search is being carried out lawfully within an authorised designated area except on the word of the police officer searching them. Well, except inside the M25, obviously, which since 2001 has been permanently designated under these purely temporary powers.

It's worth noting that failing to comply with a s.44 search is an arrestable offence under s.47 of the Terrorism Act, where not complying with an invalid stop and search is no offence at all. So not knowing this secret information can land you in the cells.

Was not the entire excuse for s.44 stop and search supposed to be deterrence of terrorism? That by visibly and extensively harassing the sheep, the wolves would be persuaded to stay away? This can only work if terrorists are aware of it.

The Home Office claims allowing undesignated areas to be identified might heighten their appeal to terrorists. Of course the wily Home Office may now also be thinking "ahhh, but if they don't know, they must assume the entire UK is subject to our arbitrary and pointless powers, so we'll keep schtum". Or perhaps that s.44 authorisation is in fact painting a big target sign on an area that actually increases risk of attack. Or maybe they just haven't really got a clue what they're doing.

It appears the Freedom of Information Act is so incisive a tool that it can't even get at information that the Home Office, via its National Policing Improvement Agency, insists should be communicated to communities wherever designated areas exist. The NPIA even publishes, in the same publically downloadable PDF, a template poster for the purpose of notifying the public and any would-be terrorists of this critically secret activity that can't be disclosed to BJP.

Mind you, the NPIA seems hardly well known, even among police. It also issues a s.44 stop and search aide memoire for police that states

Terrorism powers must never be used for matters that are not related to terrorism....There is no power to stop people taking photographs or digital images in public places under the Terrorism Act 2000.

Since they clearly forgot to distribute this, you can download the aide memoire from the link below, print it out and offer it to the next policeman you meet who's evidently never heard this instruction. We are sure he or she will be grateful.

That may have come in useful yesterday

BBC24 yesterday had rolling coverage of Chinese police with brollies trying to rather delicately to get in the way of foreign TV broadcasting reports showing the enforced emptiness of Tianenmen Square on the 20th anniversary of the massacre of pro-democracy students. "Thank God we live in a society where the police don't interfere with press" was the BBC reporter's subtext as he clearly enjoyed winding up Beijing's finest.

But, in breaking news back in London, Marc Vallée reported that he witnessed 5 press photographers being S.44 searched by police, aides memoires notwithstanding, inside Downing Street where you don't even get in without police permission. Pretty much like China then. Only the Beijing police didn't dispute the validity of press credentials, unlike Cmdr. Bob "what's a press card?" Broadhurst. They just waved brollies in front of the camera.

Here's an extract from Jess Hurd's Twitter stream about this incident:

If this sort of exceeded authority wasn't so grotesquely normal in Chairman Brown's Westminster, one might think we were living in a surveillance society run by a remote, self-serving political elite whose notion of defending freedoms from misuse by terrorists is to suppress them. Pleading with the Home Secretary, the late Jacqui Smith, MP and porn broker (Lab, Redditch, but not for long) to clarify the right to take photos, produced the supremely opaque guidance that photography is legal unless it's illegal, and it's basically up to the police to make operational decisions about implementing tyrannical harassment of people with cameras. The same Jacqui Smith then promptly set up Project Argus with the aim of adding 60,000 ill-trained jobsworth private citizens to the ranks of those empowered to interfere.

We should have learned by now that complaining about anything is increasingly viewed as disruptive, hostile disloyalty to the Peoples' Government, and criticism is now pretty much a synonym for terrorism. Complaints about having one's Billingham turned inside out every 300yds achieved only a Met Police Authority decision to try s.43 instead, to really stick it up suspected terrorists with cameras. s.43 enables seizure of cameras, cards and other documents without arrest.

Compare and contrast our evolving policing-by-obligatory-consent culture with the unequivocal order to back off recently issued to New York's police, in response to similar "Goddam-it's-a-camera-must-be-Al Quaida" idiocies in the US:

The Bush era joke about not visiting the US until it was a democratic country is sounding distinctly hollow lately. We know of one pro who has been s.44'd 7 times in 3 hours - over half the time he was attempting to work was wasted by police - so mind how you go, and where, sir.