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Birmingham police forced press photographer to delete images

transmitter | 05.03.2008 12:05 | Other Press | Repression | Birmingham

The Editorial Photographers website has published an exclusive article about a Birmingham-based photographer who was forced by a police officer to delete images from his memory card while covering a protest on public roads outside the International Conference Centre (ICC) in Birmingham city centre. Lawrence Looi, from the News Team news agency, has since lodged a complaint with West Midlands Police.

The full article can be found here:
 http://www.epuk.org/News/818/police-officer-forced-photographer-to-delete-images

According to the written complaint, a copy of which has been seen by EPUK, a police constable held Looi by the upper arm and asked him to delete any photographs that had been taken of police officers. The officer also asked Looi to identify himself, but refused an offer to see Looi’s NPA-issued National Press Card.

In his complaint, the photographer wrote: "I remained calm and polite at all times and add that, at no point did I become aggressive. I politely requested for his name and details, explaining my wish to lodge this complaint. I was then released and allowed to carry on with my work."

Then, Looi says, he was approached by a police sergeant who asked to view the photographs taken. Looi agreed to this but refused a request from the sergeant for any photographs which showed identifiable police officers to be deleted. The complaint goes on: "[the police sergeant] then threatened to take my camera from me to delete the photographs. To quote…‘Do it or I’ll do it myself’. He then grabbed hold of my camera with the intention of doing so."

Looi says it was at this point that he agreed to delete the images. "I didn’t want the hassle of him trying to intimidate me and waste my time by detaining me," he told EPUK. "In hindsight, I should have probably have let them arrest me." Looi was unable to later recover the images using specialist recovery software. In his letter to West Midlands Chief Constable Sir Paul Scott-Lee, Looi wrote: "I believe that I was unlawfully physically detained …against my will and the direction to delete the photographs had no legal backing. I only complied to save further detention and aggravation and because I had other urgent work to complete."

According to the complaint, the two police officers had said that images could compromise the safety of any officers pictured who may later undertake undercover operations. But the incident is a clear breach of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) national police-press guidelines ( http://www.epuk.org/Resources/819/acpo-police-media-guidelines) which state: "Members of the media have a duty to take photographs and film incidents and [police officers] have no legal power or moral responsibility to prevent or restrict what they record." "It is a matter for their editors to control what is published or broadcast, not the police. Once images are recorded, [the police] have no power to delete or confiscate them without a court order, even if [the police] think they contain damaging or useful evidence." The guidelines also warn that any police officer who deletes a photographer's images could face criminal, civil or disciplinary action.

Under the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act, journalistic materials such as a camera memory card are classified as “special procedure materials”, and are subject to certain safeguards under law. However, solicitor Mike Schwartz of Bindman and Partners has previously warned that police are using their powers of arrest to gain access to these materials. Speaking at the 2007 NUJ Photographers' Conference, he said:"The police are arresting journalists, seizing their equipment, treating them as suspects, looking at their photographs, taking copies, perhaps returning them to them, taking no further action often (but not always) and they've got, straight away, what they want."

Looi's case, however, was just the latest in a series of 'controversial incidents' between police officers and photographers, and comes just a week after the Metropolitan Police agreed an out-of-court settlement with injured protest photographer Marc Vallee.

The EPUK article then lists some incidents where police have been accused of misusing their powers to try to control press photographers since the first police-press guidelines were agreed with London's Metropolitan Police in March 2006. The list is reproduced below for information.

- March 2006: While photographing an armed incident in Nottingham, photographer Alan Lodge is arrested firstly for assault, then de-arrested, before being arrested and de-arrested for breach of the peace, and finally being arrested and later charged with obstruction. Lodge, who helped draft the guidelines used by the police for dealing with the press, was later found guilty .

- August 2006: During a terror alert, police at Heathrow Airport forced two staff press photographers to delete images from their camera memory cards. All photographers arriving at the airport were banned from taking pictures of the incident.

- September 2006: Milton Keynes News staff photographer Andy Handley is arrested for obstruction after refusing to hand over his equipment after photographing a traffic accident. Police later apologise, and describe his arrest as “a serious misjudgement”.

- October 2006: Photographer Marc McMahon is arrested for breaching the peace while photographing an incident on Newcastle’s Tyne Bridge where a man was threatening to commit suicide. Despite showing his press card, police unlawfully told McMahon he could not take photographs, and when he continued to do so, he was arrested. McMahon’s camera bag containing £10,000 of camera equipment was later stolen after being left at the scene by police officers. A court found McMahon not guilty of obstructing a police officer, and said that he had acted “professionally”. McMahon later sued the police for the loss of his equipment.

- October 2006: Photojournalist Marc Vallée is hospitalised and left unable to work for a month with injuries sustained following police action at a demonstration in Parliament Square. The Metropolitan Police later agree an out-of-court settlement with Vallée, but do not accept liability.

- November 2006: After being photographed, off-duty SO14 officer Paul Page pursues Sun freelance photographer Scott Hornby, ramming his car to a standstill then forcing him out of the car at gunpoint. Page is later found not guilty of dangerous driving, possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear, and false imprisonment after telling a jury that he thought the photographer was a hitman.

- April 2007: The police-press guidelines used by the Metropolitan Police are adopted by all other police forces in Britain.

- September 2007: Freelance photographer Mike Wells is stopped and searched three times and had his phone taken while covering the Defence Systems and Equipment International exhibition in London. Despite showing his press card, officers told Wells that he was being searched on the grounds that he was a person likely to cause criminal damage such as graffiti.

- November 2007: Amateur photographer Phil Smith was stopped from photographing the Christmas lights being switched on by police at a public event in Ipswich, and asked whether he had a “licence to use the camera”. A police spokesperson later said that officers had been “overzealous in the execution of their duty”

transmitter
- Homepage: http://www.epuk.org/News/818/police-officer-forced-photographer-to-delete-images

Comments

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Undelete

05.03.2008 12:35

The photographer could just 'undelete' the images to recover them, there are numerous utilities to make this easy. On actions it is good to carry a spare memory card for the camera in case one gets confiscated.

Danny


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Real world please

05.03.2008 13:58

If you are really telling me you can't understand why there should be times that a police officer might need you to delete images I would be amazed.

Officers working undercover face terrible risks and to think that your "right" to take a couple of pictures and publish them on the web outweighs that truly staggers me. But then I presume you are the kind of person who is very anti police right up to the moment when you need them.

Grown up


File Recovery

05.03.2008 14:31

 http://www.cardrecovery.com/?rid=google&kid=cr0103

There is a free download here for SD card file recovery software.


Funny how the most sophisticated forensic file recovery software requires a license? In other words only the police are 'allowed' to access the data they want.

Mike


RTA

05.03.2008 14:48

"Looi was unable to later recover the images using specialist recovery software."

Pedant


Undelete?

05.03.2008 14:56

Danny, I don't think that's the point. Why should you have to go to those lengths when taking photographs in a public space is 100% legal. The police have no right to ask/tell you to stop taking photographs or to delete photographs, a fact which is supported by the myriad of laws they use to justify such actions - human rights legislation, breach of the peace, obstruction, etc. This is a worrying trend at a time when the police constantly photograph the general population (CCTV) and specifically target 'activists' (FIT) - why can they photograph us and we can't so much as go near them with a camera?

Dissident Werewolf


Equally pedantic, hopefully helpful

05.03.2008 15:17

"Looi was unable to later recover the images using specialist recovery software."

Yeah, I read that. Off the top of my head there are three likely reasons for that.

1) More photographs were later taken on the same card before recovery was attempted.
2) The card was formatted before recovery (unlikely)
3) The software used wasn't functional or wasn't used correctly.

To call this specialist recovery software indicates Looi may not be the best person to try to recover these files. This isn't specialist software, an undelete add-on was available or built in for every OS for the past 30 years. Most techs also have disk editting software that can read the data straight off any drive without reference to file allocation tables. If the pictures were taken and not overwritten then they are still there even if they don't seem to be - this is why activists should be careful with the disposal of their drives.. I mean maybe Looi has some specialist camera that overwrites erased files but I've never seen that feature on any camera so I'd suggest just cos Looi hasn't been recovered doesn't mean that they aren't recoverable. If you have given up on recovering the files then you could post the card to me and I'll try. You'd be trusting me not to steal the card but even my enemies don't accuse me of petty theft. If you'd like another attempt made then give me an email address and we can arrange it.

Danny


lycanthrope

05.03.2008 15:28

Agree completely and wasn't intending to diminish the point of the article, just trying to make activists aware that you can agree to delete images and still recover them later if you stop using that card in the camera at that point. If Looi can't, perhaps someone more technical here can help.

Also it is a good tip I think for photographers to carry more than one card on them. Police oppression and erosion of civil liberties is obviously bad, bu the oppression is a reality so we have to circumvent it where we can..

Danny


Memory loss

05.03.2008 18:55

Well as already pointed out there is software to do it.

I've thankfully never had to do it. But here is how an intellectual property recidivist (or "unilateral open source evangelist") like myself would go about it:

Google 'memory card data recovery' or 'memory stick data recovery' and then again with the word 'forensic' added you will find a load of stuff.

Go to the Pirate Bay, Mininova etc. and search for as many of them as possible. Download them (you will need BitTorrent or Azureus Vuze etc.) Read any .nfo file in Notepad, it'll tell you how to get the application fully working. And always scan for viruses before you open anything.

Keep throwing software at it until you get a result.

Then come back and tell us which worked.

My bet is on any forensic retrieval program the police use. They generally rule the roost on hard drive recovery.

Data "deletion" is normally just a system of changing a flag in the file header data from "leave me alone" to "I'm free space now". So usually it is just a matter of switching the flags back.

If you are going to be taking pics in a situation where you think the police may confiscate or destroy your images, then have a spare card handy to switch for the real one.

Prats of the Caribbean


Really pedantic

05.03.2008 19:49

>Data "deletion" is normally just a system of changing a flag in the file header data from "leave me alone" to "I'm free space now". So usually it is just a matter of switching the flags back.

Every memory card I've had has been pre-formatted FAT, so the 'file header data' (assuming there is file header data) doesn't contain any information about whether it is deleted or not. In fact a table containg the start cluster of every file is maintained by the OS. A cluster is just a discrete area on the disk containing a small set amount of data. That cluster then points to the next cluster of data in each file, which might be on a quite seperate part of the media.

You are correct it is simple to switch a deleted file to be recovered though asssuming it hasn't been overwritten.

wikipedia -

The File Allocation Table (FAT) is a list of entries that map to each cluster on the partition. Each entry records one of five things:

* the cluster number of the next cluster in a chain
* a special end of clusterchain (EOC) entry that indicates the end of a chain
* a special entry to mark a bad cluster
* a special entry to mark a reserved cluster[citation needed]
* a zero to note that the cluster is unused

Looi can try this online facility for recovering the photos for free:
 http://www.fileslost.com

"Can FilesLost.com recover files that were stored on an external media?

Yes, FilesLost.com can recover files that were stored on:

* an USB hard drive
* an USB thumb drive
* a storage card such as these used in cameras and phones

Just plug your device (or insert the card in your card reader), make sure that windows can access it before visiting FilesLost.com"

Danny


photo terror

05.03.2008 22:35

This new anti terrorism campaign from the Met seems very apt...

 http://www.met.police.uk/campaigns/counter_terrorism/ct_camera_2008.pdf

Quick - someone taking photos, could be a Terrorist!!

jim


Hmmm

06.03.2008 10:15

Well if you want to complicate the scenario for newbies, with another layer, then the flags are set by the file system which handles storage by keeping a list of what it has thrown in various corners of the storage device.

Well I suppose it is possible to devise a system where there is no file header and a monolithic file table. But that would require that there only be one type of file, no variables and one size of file employed, and therefore you effectively have a discrete partitioning system whether by design or default- files delineated by a checksum. In other words, chunks of raw data that never change in length.

Great for avoiding fragmentation; crap for wasting resources and in itself totally inflexible.

The only system I have ever encountered that worked vaguely like that were early digital audio samplers, that often also partitioned the RAM too. But I assume that there must have been something of a file header to describe system parameters for retrieval.

Every flash card I have ever had my hands on reads outside the device that took pictures. So without actually needing to examine the data at the hex level, we can safely assume that file headers are written (commonly .jpg, .tif(f) and various incarnations of .raw) and given that you'll be hard pushed to find a digital camera that only offers one file size anymore, that there is no discrete partitioning going on.

Instead, like you describe, a "file allocation table", to use the Microsoft parlance, where storage/retrieval is managed by the flagging of availability is pretty much certain.

Though the degree to which the cards' own systems are similar to FAT is inobvious and a question for someone who writes platform specific device drivers for them.

Prats of the Caribbean


Guesses confuse more than facts

06.03.2008 12:41

"Well if you want to complicate the scenario for newbies,"

The facts aren't as confusing as your imagination. For a start, a 'header' is just the start of a file, which is OS independent and can therefore not store any OS information as you suggested.

"given that you'll be hard pushed to find a digital camera that only offers one file size anymore, that there is no discrete partitioning going on."

No one said you could only have one file size on any file system- that would be bizarre. You do however have only one cluster size per file system, which is 'discretet partitioning' if you wish to use that term, but that size is determined by whoever formats your device, is the same throughout the device, and never varies until reformatting.

"Though the degree to which the cards' own systems are similar to FAT is inobvious and a question for someone who writes platform specific device drivers for them."

No, it is perfectly obvious to anyone. Connect your camera to your PC. Assuming thats a windows PC, right-click on the camera drive in explorer and choose properties. It will list the file system used, which is almost certainly FAT. You can even find the cluster size used on the device with a simple Chkdsk to list its size as 'allocation unit- and this will be a discrete size. Think of clusters as identical boxes that a file is chopped up to fit inside. Of course few files will fit inside exactly and so the last cluster will contain some free space. This is nothing to do with the files though, and it is really only important when formatting a device.

Apart from this technical lesson for Prat, I think the link to the file recovery site means no newbie has to understand any of this to recover their files. (Although if it brings up a blank box with a red cross in it then you need to download an applet from  http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp )

Danny


FFS2

06.03.2008 14:55

"which is almost certainly FAT."

Well, I was going to write a screed about device driver emulations such as you find in virtual drives and the such, but I just went and did some reading first.

My suspicion of possible emulation would have been right at one time, but has since been superseded:

"Flash file systems

Because of the particular characteristics of flash memory, it is best used with either a controller to perform wear-levelling and error correction or specifically designed file systems which spread writes over the media and deal with the long erase times of NOR flash blocks. The basic concept behind flash file systems is: When the flash store is to be updated, the file system will write a new copy of the changed data over to a fresh block, remap the file pointers, then erase the old block later when it has time.

One of the earliest flash file systems was Microsoft's FFS2 (presumably preceded by FFS1), for use with MS-DOS in the early 1990s.[7]

Around 1994, the PCMCIA, an industry group ,approved the Flash Translation Layer (FTL) specification, which allowed a Linear Flash device to look like a FAT disk, but still have effective wear levelling. Other commercial systems such as FlashFX and FlashFX Pro by Datalight were created to avoid patent concerns with FTL.

JFFS was the first flash-specific file system for Linux, but it was quickly superseded by JFFS2, originally developed for NOR flash. Then YAFFS was released in 2002, dealing specifically with NAND flash, and JFFS2 was updated to support NAND flash too.

In practice, flash file systems are only used for "Memory Technology Devices" ("MTD"), which are embedded flash memories that do not have a controller. Removable flash memory cards and USB flash drives have built-in controllers to perform wear-levelling and error correction so use of a specific flash file system does not add any benefit. These removable flash memory devices use the FAT file system to allow universal compatibility with computers, cameras, PDAs and other portable devices with memory card slots or ports."

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Flash_file_systems

Quite what you think you have taught me is lost on me. I can only imagine that the lesson was overcomplicating information of users.

Prats of the Caribbean


why everyone hates techies no.185

06.03.2008 16:28

To Pooi :

Mike who posted earlier on this thread is technically aware, at least if it is the usual Mike, I'm sure he would be able to help you recover the files too if you can't and don't want to trust me with it. I don't know anything else about him though. I suspect whoever tried to recover the files to begin with wasn't anymore competent than Prat unless the photgrapher made the mistake of taking more pictures afterwards.


To Prat:

"Quite what you think you have taught me is lost on me. I can only imagine that the lesson was overcomplicating information of users."

Well, I hope I taught you fileheaders have nothing to do with filesystems or partitioning. You think the contents of a Jpeg gets changed when it moves between filesystems ? I hope I taught anyone else even more ignorant than you to ignore that red-herring.
I hope you now understand that files are stored in clusters. You do realise you aren't qualified to even format a disk if you without knowing that ? You still haven't shown any understanding of that 'newbie' fact so maybe you should do some more reading and less spraffing.

"My suspicion of possible emulation would have been right at one time, but has since been superseded: "
Even on those devices the file header information would not store any information about whether the file was deleted or not as you claimed, that would still be set in the emulated FAT table, so that is irrelevant. Which is rich given that you accuse me of overcomplicating the issue for correcting you other mistakes.

I am sorry if I seem autistic or egocentric but to talk about file recovery without any basic understanding of partitioning and file systems disqualifies you from refering to others as 'newbies'. You talk about confusing 'users' which suggests you may have had some helpdesk role related to IT. You initimate knowledge of device drivers - what devices have you written drivers for again ?

You are correct though, I obviously haven't taught you anything, I doubt anyone ever has. The one thing I'd like to teach you is that you shouldn't affect expertise you don't have on the internet as you only fool the people who know less than you do, there will always be someone who genuinely understands a subject who will come along and correct you.

Danny


The software used by the cops

08.03.2008 16:02

is PY-FLAG with knoppix os

Mr Plod


Clarification

09.03.2008 17:18

Yes, I am 'technically aware', and I can help, but file recovery is probably something anyone can try themselves and succeed with. However, if anyone needs more help then ask.

All this geek talk about file systems is not only irrelevant to newbies but techies too, there is no need to understand these low level details unless you are going to develop your own file recovery software. There are a variety of applications for file recovery and I listed one specific to SD cards as it can be guaranteed to support the common file systems used.

I have one piece of advice to photojournalists, it is worth downloading such software and testing it before going to a situation where police may behave in the illegal manner described in the article. I.e. take some photos, delete them, then attempt recovery. If this works then you can feel smug if the police force you to delete them. Remember not to take more photos afterwards as this will overwrite existing images.

Mike


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