Today saw a protest by press photographers outside London’s Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police.

The protest, organised by the National Union of Journalists, was against Section 76 of the Counter Terror Act, which makes an offence of eliciting, or attempting to elicit ‘information about an individual who is or has been—
(i) a member of Her Majesty’s forces,
(ii) a member of any of the intelligence services, or
(iii) a constable,
which is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, or
(b) publishes or communicates any such information.’

This is obviously a little problematic. Acting as an addendum to Section 58 of the Terrorism Act (2000), it makes publication of materials an offence. What it does do, at least, is to specify what some of the materials ‘likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’ might be, i.e. information about serving or former policemen and soldiers.

This could, of course, include photographs: it could also include home addresses, movements etc. To this extent, one can see where the government might be concerned: one need only think back to the plot to kill a Muslim soldier at his home in 2007, or before that, the numerous killings of off-duty UDR and RUC men in Northern Ireland. Neither of these are extreme hypothetical scenarios: these are things that have happened, and things the government clearly feel need to be addressed.

Gathering this type of information is not, of course, the sole preserve of terrorists or their accomplices. Investigative journalists and even war reporters may also find themselves in possession of such materials: the worry must be that a politicized police force may use this legislation to shut down an investigation. This is worrying on a national level, but could be even more so for a local journalist looking in to police malpractice or corruption.

This new legislation, while offering part clarification of Section 58, does nothing to supercede its impossible vagueness: it states specific things that do fall under the terms, but still doesn’t offer a definition of what else might fall under those terms, and indeed it broadens the range of circumstances where one might fall foul of anti-terror legislation.