February 27th, 2010 | 
Author: We are not surprised – here is yet another story emanating from the country that has declared open war against photographers. In this incident a photographer who took some snapshots of what appeared to be a newsworthy event of police swarming on Kidlington High Street was himself detained and harassed by a police officer who demanded that he delete the pictures. According to the story:
Mr Russell said: “They told me to delete the photos and I said ‘no’.
“It is not illegal and he should have known it is not illegal.
“There was nothing wrong with taking photos of police in the street but he would not listen. I thought if I tried to stop him it could turn nasty.”
[...]
When the details came back clear, Mr Russell demanded paperwork for the stop-and-search.
The form says Mr Russell was stopped for ‘taking pictures on High Street, Kidlington, of police. Refused all details. Not recognised [sic] by officers’.
The United Kingdom is going from bad to worse every day….
Posted in Photography and the Law
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All digital photographers should obtain and familiarize themselves with data recovery software, also known as undelete software. There are file recovery programs available for all operating systems, many of them are completely free, and if some stuffed uniform with an overinflated sense of purpose does illegally force you to delete anything it’s a simple matter to put that chip aside and completely recover the deleted data from it later on.
Perhaps even a wireless SD card to upload images to a remote location should be considered as an option if there is concern about the occurrence of such incidents.
Perhaps if the State Department were to issue a traveler’s warning stating “Tourists who take photographs in the UK are subject to official harassment” the police there might take notice.