Forgetting why police photograping demos is questionable?
In the days of the cold war there were frequent accusations against the authorities of unreasonably recording and registering the activities of left-leaning people. The authorities generally denied or apologised, as such practise was seen as mirroring the comunist regimes' surveilance of all political opposition.
There was a shared understanding that the authorities of a free state should not keep records of legal political activity, lists of participants of demos, or still worse, lists of demos individual had participated in. This is related to the vote being secret at elections.
Many comments in this thread seem to believe that the policie must have unlimited permissions to photograph demos, as a mirror of the citizen's constitutional rights. Since I am not British, I don't know your laws, but in regular civilised nations, a police force does not have the same free speech and free political opinion rights as the citicens. The cops have civil rights when they are off duty. When serving, they are supposed to be politically neutral and to protect the political freedom of all citicens, wether left or right leaning.
Of course there are conflicting considerations, since the police must have some means of discovering whatever they are supposed to prevent. They are not obligued to walk blind-folded in the streets. But there should be laws that prohibits the keeping and amassing of information about individuals except during limited times of investigation of reasonable suspictions. Evidently, such investigations must be declared through a procedure that involves a body (the courts) at some distance from the investigators.
There were always a level of doublespeak, because everybody assumed, and mostly agreed, that a limited-size secret service would operate within wider bounds. This was generally accepted because such a service would be too small and too busy with real threats, to represent a serious danger of subvertion of the democracy. However, that was before the advent of the powerful and cheap computer and database technology.
It is a pity that so many people only react based on the subjective annoyance of being under surveilance. Democracy will be subverted unless the public maintains some knowledge of "abstract" or "theoretical" concepts and principles, and are willing to fight for them. Don't the schools teach the principles underlying democracy?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
