| POLICE — Powers — Retention of evidence — Claimant protestor attending meeting of company in order to protest — Police deploying officers and photographer — Whether taking photographs of protestor lawful — Whether retaining photographs of protestor lawful — Human Rights Act 1998, Sch 1, Pt 1, art 8
R (Wood) v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis; [2008] WLR (D) 173
QBD: McCombe J: 22 May 2008
Taking and retaining photographs of someone engaged in a political protest or demonstration was not unlawful and did not infringe his human rights.
McCombe J so held when dismissing the claim for judicial review by the claimant, Andrew Wood, of the decision of officers of the defendant, the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, to photograph him and try to obtain details of his identity at the Reed Elsevier plc annual general meeting on 27 April, 2005.
The claimant was employed by the Campaign against Arms Trade and attended the annual general meeting of the parent company of a company which organised trade fairs for various industries including the arms industry. The defendant decided to deploy a number of officers and a civilian photographer, in uniform, to the meeting. The claimant’s participation at the meeting was confined to asking one unobjectionable question. Afterwards the photographer took photographs of the employees of the Campaign against Arms Trade, including two clearly showing the claimant.
McCOMBE J said it was clear from previous authorities that the mere taking of a person’s photograph in a public street did not generally interfere with that person’s right of privacy under art 8 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. While there appeared to be no English cases dealing with the retention of photographic material by police and the question of engagement of art 8, the English courts at the highest level had adopted a robust approach to questions of interference with rights under art 8(1) in relation to not only the taking of photographs in public places, but also their subsequent retention and in relation to the retention of intimate samples for proper police purposes in assisting in the detection of crime. There was no interference with the claimant’s rights under art 8(1) by the taking and the retention of the photographs. If there had been such an interference, it would have been in accordance with the law and proportionate for the purposes of art 8(2) of the Convention.
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