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[B]Security guards at O2 Arena, an Olympic venue, unlawfully challenge a Guardian newspaper photographer[/B]
Once again, the ignorance of security guards has been highlighted and this time by a national newspaper. Yesterday, The Guardian published a report, supported by [URL="http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/apr/16/02-olympic-venues-row-security-photography"]video footage[/URL], where O2 Arena security guards moved to prevent the newspaper's photographers from taking pictures of the O2 Arena from public land, as they are perfectly entitled to.
Four security guards, one with a dog, challenged the photographer and made an attempt to detain and force him to show what had been photographed. The photographer asked the security guards under what law they had a right to stop him from taking photographs and force him to show them his images. They mistakenly responded by referring to 'anti-terrorist' laws, which is complete nonsense.
It's difficult not to judge that the security guards were not properly briefed on the laws regarding the rights of photographers and, at worst, they were using their position as security staff to bully a member of the public unlawfully.
The fact is that it is perfectly within the rights of a photographer to photograph subjects if he or she is stood on public land. Those rights disappear when the photographer enters private land. Indeed, the rights of photographers who attend Olympic events this year don't seem to have been clearly defined or publicised, although that is another matter.
Nobody is denying that security is of paramount importance during the Olympics, but not at the expense of lawful rights. I certainly hope that if a security guard has genuine concerns over someone photographing illegally or suspiciously, they will take the correct and appropriate action. That does not mean confronting a photographer and claiming that they are breaking the law when, in actual fact, it's the security guard who is legally in the wrong.
On the vast majority of occasions, they tell people this rubbish and the people go away.
However:
If they incorrectly quote any Laws, Acts, "rules", etc., inorder to achieve their objectives, they are guilty of deception - "the act of misleading another through intentionally false statements or fraudulent actions".
Even in the absence of any dishonesty element at all, a person could commit a deception offence by obtaining a benefit (their employers wishes) by deception in the belief that he or she has a legal right to it.
One of Your human rights is:
�the right to peaceful enjoyment of your property
If any of these rights and freedoms are breached, you have a right to an effective solution in law, even if the breach was by someone in authority, such as, for example, a police officer.
There also exists in law:
The wrongfulness of temporary deprivation:
If a person is temporarily deprived of his or her property, he or she wrongly suffers a loss of some sort. In the first place, there is the straightforward loss of use of the property � or at least of the liberty to use it or not, as the owner chooses.
Interestingly, a deception offence can be committed by engaging in a continuing course of conduct which involves individual instances of any of the existing substantive deceptions.
Unfortunatly, they are big and we are small, so unless there is a EuroMillions Jackpot winner out there that fancies taking them on, we simply have to stand our ground and keep saying:
You're WRONG !