The Counter Terror Expo is organised by Clarion Events, who are also responsible for the world's largest arms fair, DSEi, held every two years in London's former docklands. It is sponsored by Thales, a leading manufacturer of weapons and security systems and exhibitors include other leading arms companies.

The protesters point to the role of these products in war and repression around the world, killing men, women and children and to the huge profits that are made from this, while the manufacturers claim their weapons and control systems make the world a safer place.

The major focus of this exhibition was on surveillance systems, enabling governments and their agencies to keep track of people particularly through electronic data gathering from CCTV systems, internet communications and web browsing, electronic payment systems, mobile phone movements, automatic number plate recognition, Oyster cards and of course the planned ID cards.

The protesters called for resistance to this ever encroaching surveillance society and to an end to the climate of state and corporation induced terror.

While I was photographing there, one man was arrested by police and after considerably argument was bundled into the back of a police van. The man was alleged to have damaged property by chalking on the pavement, which seemed an absurd charge. Arrests such as this seem often more designed as a kind of instant punishment for people who upset a particular officer than anything to do with upholding the law, and unfortunately bring the police into disrepute. One of the officers present later handed out a leaflet about policing of protest to the other police there, who put it away in their pockets, but it might have been helpful had they got it earlier and read it.

This article with more pictures is on Demotix:
 http://www.demotix.com/news/301621/counter-terror-expo-exposed

and I will post a fuller set of images in a day or two on My London Diary:
 http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2010/04/apr.htm#terror