Held as a terrorist: man suspected of photographing a sewer cover
Posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 by Home Office WatchCategory: DNA, Police
A Manchester man was arrested, held for two days, had his DNA taken and stored and was then released without charge.
His alleged offence? Taking photos of a sewer cover!
From boingboing.net (including video report):
“Though the police couldn’t find any photos of sewer-gratings on his phone (and even though “what a sewer grating looks like” isn’t a piece of specialized terrorist intelligence), he was held on suspicion of planning an act of terror, imprisoned for two days while the police searched his home, his phone and his computer.
“When they couldn’t find anything suspicious, they released him, but kept his DNA on file, as the biometric of someone who had been accused of plotting a terrorist act.”
Mr Clarke is now insisting that his DNA and fingerprints should be removed from police files.
Please help our campaign to protect innocent people’s DNA by encouraging friends and family to sign our petition at: http://ourcampaign.org.uk/dna
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March 9th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
From which one can be sure that there are no unsolved crimes in Manchester, nor any reason for police to patrol the streets
April 5th, 2009 at 8:43 am
How can they deem this as illegal, yet say Google Street view isn’t? I’m pretty sure terrorists could get more from google than they could ever get from a man-hole cover. Police officers have to start being acountable for these cock-ups, and have to start losing their jobs. If anyone outside of government or the council screwed up as badly as these people, they would be fired on the spot; why aren’t the police? Police, Teachers, government/council employees - jobs for life no matter how bad you are at them!
April 18th, 2009 at 9:01 am
…just imagine if he’d been taking pictures of access routes, available power conduits/poles and BT cabs/fibre ducts like I used to do for work!
Even though it surprises me at times I can fully understand police turning up to find someone reported to be acting ’suspiciously’ in the opinion of whoever called them, but actually arresting the person without rather better cause is a complete waste of time and money.
A picture of a sewer manhole out of context clearly has no use for planning anything. If there was a large amount of street scene included I could just about stretch to see a point of taking a further interest, but arrest?