alex.mullr.net/blog

I only just saw this Guardian video of a stop and search because of filming near the entrance of the Gherkin in London.

If you’re rushed, start at 2:45 in:

Plain clothes police officer: I’m going to take a note of your details under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act. Do you understand that?
Journalist: Is this an official search?
Plain clothes police officer: Not a search, no, I’m taking your details to find out exactly what you’re doing.

You can go and read Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 if you want. It’s not very long. I think that police officer should probably give it another going over before citing it so easily.

(2) An authorisation under this subsection authorises any constable in uniform to stop a pedestrian in an area or at a place specified in the authorisation and to search—
    (a) the pedestrian;
    (b) anything carried by him.

Percentage of Section 44 which this officer understands?

Zero.

Respect I have for him, and by extension the Metropolitan Police, after watching this video?

Um. Yeah.

If you’re interested in seeing more, Cory’s got another great video.

Section 76 of the Counter–Terrorism Act 2008 – introduced a few weeks back – is very, very interesting. Essentially, it allows anyone taking pictures of police officers (or members of the armed forces) to be arrested if there is some any kind of possibility that the photographs will be used in the preparation of an act of terrorism.

Obviously, this causes issues with what police officers now have the power to do. So I’ve decided that it’s probably worth finding out what the people on the ground actually think, in the ineffectual, time–consuming way that only a student can: asking them.

So today, I decided to take the first step. Knowing that this could, in fact, be totally painful and I could be arrested on the spot for anything (wasting police time?), I was pleasantly surprised. The policewoman I spoke to was very well–informed about the new law, and her point of view (from what I could tell with two minutes of talking to her) was reassuring. I asked her whether she’d stop a journalist taking photos, to which her reply was an instantaneous "no, because they have the right to."

Yes, she is only one person; there are well over 31,000 police constables in London¹ and countless more across the UK. Yes, it clearly would’ve been better if the law hadn’t come about to start with. And yes, Gordon Brown’s response as quoted in the fourth paragraph of the appropriate Wikipedia section does make me want to bang my head against the wall and scream. But I’m still reserving judgement for now; it doesn’t seem to be nearly as bad as it could be.

I’ve wished for a while that I had a camera and lens that could do tilt-shift photography, but I think I’ve found a site that will tide me over until I win the lottery or get a proper job.

Kevin Spencer linked to tiltshiftmaker.com, a site to let you upload photos and have them converted to look like they were originally taken in a tilt-shift style. Obviously they’re not going to look nearly as good as a proper camera, and I did find myself getting bored after a couple of different photos (as Kev points out), but it’s nice to spend a couple of minutes messing about with. Here’s the one that came out best for me:

I’ve been messing about a bit with the time lapse movie feature that’s built into the Canon PowerShot G9 (a gorgeous camera, by the way, and I can’t wait to see what they do with the G10). Here are my efforts so far:

Jersey from Alex Muller on Vimeo.
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