Man Held as Terrorist for Taking Pics of Sewer Grate

Sorry if this has been posted before but this is the first I have heard of this. This guy was arrested in Manchester for supposedly taking pictures of sewer grates, even though no pictures were found. I know this is the first case of civil rights infringement in the UK, nor is it the worst. But man, we thought the patriot act was bad. What are they using to justify this kind of thing in the UK?

www.boingboing.net...

Fear.

Apparently fear is what justifies lots of things done by the governments lately.

Here in USA things are going in the same direction, it's not a witch hunt yet but I suspect it will be soon

reply to post by 5thElement

I agree, but at least we don't have CCTV cameras on our street corners yet. Actually, come to think of it, we probably won't, the US government will find a more subtle, manipulative way to do it like cameras on traffic lights to catch people who run them.........

It's amazing how quick they label anyone as a terrorist these days. Specifically, this effect has become far more pronounced since 9/11.

When you think about it, 9/11 has served has nothing more than a justification for wrong doing in this world ever since.. like wars, arrests, labels, racism, etc..

They arrested him on terrorism charges because they believed (falsely) that he had been tampering with sealed covers after a security sweep - and in some respects I could see that they'd want to make sure he hadn't done that.

British security forces, in light of the campaign carried out by the IRA, are painfully aware that even small explosive devices in contained places, such as grids, manholes or litter bin, are potentially as lethal as cluster bombs - indeed the IRA proved this in Warrington when they detonated two devices inside metal bins on a busy shopping street.

Warrington Bomb attacks.

Its not just as easy as "taking someones word for it", hence the two days in custody and investigation but the DNA/Fingerprint issue is another thing.

As they cleared him and released him without charge, they should automatically dispose of those things and apologise to him.

That fact that they don't appear to have done is disturbing, and doesn't cast them in a very good light at all.

reply to post by Winsor


Given the land coverage and the way the housing development is spread in reference to how the U.K. is, id suggest you should be looking up abit further say about 5,000 feet, thats were your drone monitoring system will be dispatched. Just a side note, they can be brought down through modifying a house hold microwave oven with a few extra goodies and radical modification to the initial purchased item.

reply to post by neformore


Two days in custody though? So it took the police two whole days to check that the seals hadn't been tampered with. That should've taken two minutes, before they locked him up, before they took his fingerprints and DNA.

reply to post by Nammu


the reasoning may have been that he was photographing the seals in order to replicate them. they may have believed that he was gathering intelligence in order to carry out an attack.

i don't particularly agree with the actions of the police but i think the article tries to make the accusations more trivial than they are in order to sensationalise the story.

as nefermore points out, from the point of view of the police, this was a reasonable reaction. they're just doing their jobs in this case.

reply to post by pieman



That may have held if he had actually been photographing the grates. However the truth of the matter was that he was not photographing the grates, and no photographs were found on his phone.

I could well see myself getting into a situation like this. I'm curious by nature.

Me: "Hmm, I wonder what those strange things on the sewer grates are" *bends down to take a look*

Is that all it takes these days?