ovaltina said:
No it's not. You're saying the tactic was "not well thought-out", but I'm saying it was a massive intrusion on the privacy of people who had done nothing wrong. A disproportionate intrusion by the Met, a public authority, compounded by the lack of information given to the people involved.
If you believe that people are complicit in some sort of illegal activity just because they're in a club where drugs are being taken/dealt then it follows the most of the gay scene is complicit.
This govt has shown itself to be crap at keeping confidential information confidential over and over. I don't trust it. And you can dismiss the "police state Britain" argument if you like, but I'm a little more cynical.
Where a search warrant under the Misuse of Drugs Act is executed, it allows all persons present to be searched. That has always been the case (the law was introduced as part of Tony Bliar's police state ... in ... er ... 1971). A moments thought will help you realise that for it not to would render it meaningless ("Oh, there's nothing here officer" says the gang of people with bulging pockets ...). So there is little basis for saying the searching was a "massive intrusion on privacy".
I have already explained how a failure to gather any information about who else was present could undermine the prosecution of the principal targets - so the establishing of identities, even if not suspected of any offence, although an intrusion of privacy is one which can be justified on very practical grounds. There will be NOTHING done with the details, if people do not already have a criminal record, other than keeping them in relation to that case file. ALL intelligence is regularly weeded (automatically in a lot of cases) if no specific reason for further retention can be given. The police do this more than any other body and are scrutinised by the Information Commissioner more than pretty much any other body. They bin stuff so much that they have been criticised (see the Bichard Enquiry). You may not
believe they do, but they do, and your lack of belief does not alter that fact.
The final piece is the use of photography. That is less clear, but rather than keep lots and lots of people hanging round for ages and ages whilst identification details are kept, the operational needs of establishing who was / was not there could be met by the much faster means of recording images - so that in any later prosecution of the principal suspects any issues could be resolved. This was probably the basis for the videoing (but, as I said right at the start, it would be a very valid question to ask). Again these images would simply form party of the file for this investigation and, in fact, they would be LESS intrusive than obtaining names and addresses, etc because there would be no way of knowing who they were and hence no way of filing them even if the police wanted to "Some bloke at Fire"; "Another bloke at Fire"; "Bloke with dodgy haircut at Fire"; "Oh, hello, he's cute ... at Fire" ...
There is more to the filming tactic than people are aware of and, whilst I again say it would be valid to ask about the basis of it's use, it is hysterical to jump up and down and imply that somehow the images are going on to some massive database. They're not. There are, however, lessons to be learned in terms of information given to people about the use of tactic, their legal rights (there is no power to compel cooperation so far as I am aware) and what will be done with the images - it would have been very simple to produce a leaflet to give everyone as they came out).
