Saturday, March 07, 2009

Alleged sewer grate photographer arrested under terrorism laws

Via Cory Doctorow:


"Have a look at this news-video about Stephen Clarke, a man who was accused to taking pictures of sewer-gratings in Manchester and arrested. Though the police couldn't find any photos of sewer-gratings on his phone (and even though "what a sewer grating looks like" isn't a piece of specialized terrorist intelligence), he was held on suspicion of planning an act of terror, imprisoned for two days while the police searched his home, his phone and his computer. When they couldn't find anything suspicious, they released him, but kept his DNA on file, as the biometric of someone who had been accused of plotting a terrorist act."
Mr Clarke is familiar with the European Court of Human Rights ruling in S. and Marper v. The United Kingdom in December last year and is planning to press to have his DNA and fingerprints removed from the police databases.

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