Potentially as in the law is so incredibly vague no-one knows. The Police may arrest you for it and it's up to the Court to decide. It's going to take a few Court of Appeal/HoL cases before we get a clear definition of what that section actually means/forbids.

In general, taking pictures of police, even the bastard ones, shouldn't be illegal.

That's what I thought. So as Paul points out, it's the same old [LIFTED] where the law is in the hands of the enforcers, not the people, or their elected reps, or the courts.

Hmm, even though the video being shown was "shot" by the Police, it was also clearly edited by the Guardian, the Police made a comment at one point about the reason he was standing on her feet, to stop her from kicking him, and yet, there was no footage shown of him being kicked.

I'm not saying that their response was justified, honestly I don't feel qualified to comment on its justfication since I wasn't there and couldn't hear/see everything that happened. It was stupid of the original officer to claim that he didn't have to give his badge number in the event that he was unidentifiable by other means, but the scale of the response just leads me to think that there was a bigger provocation than them peacefully taking pictures and badge numbers.

If anything, the fact that the Police knew that FIT were videoing every minute of the arrest would make me wonder if they were doing everything "to the letter of the law" if not entirely in the spirit of it. Perhaps they identified the members of FIT-watch straight away because they were wearing sunglasses and hoodies to avoid being recognised and have caused trouble in the past? I'd be interested to see the entire, un-edited version of the FIT tapes, there are (at least) two sides to every story.

There might be two sides to every story, but the police don't need to have theirs taken into account. They needed to held to a standard and clearly, they are not following it. This is happening with increasing frequency across the country lately and it's unacceptable.

The video is disgusting to be honest. I find it terribly offensive and almost turned it off. What is wrong with this world? Isn't it about time these tree huggers had a bath and put some decent clothes on

They should all get a job and pay back their benefit money too, etc.. </daily mail>

Has anyone called them 'Commies' yet? Am I too late?

Go ahead.