The UK FOIA requests (that's Freedom Of Information Act) blog has been pursuing an interesting topic recently: where does the government ban you from taking photos in the UK?
It's part of what the blog calls the "War on Tourism and against Photographers' Rights, currently being waged by untrained private security guards, Police Community Support Officers and even by Police Constables."
(For some background, and an explanation of why the 'war on photographer' is daft anyway, read columnist Bruce Schneier's piece "Is photography really a threat?")
Now, there has to be a list of places that the government bans photography. It's usually a bit itchy, for example, if you pull out a camera near or inside places like GCHQ, its nuclear facilities, and so on. The UKFOIAR blog thought that if it could acquire the list of places where you're *not* allowed to take photos, well, that by extension (perhaps syllogism) tells you where you can take photos, and so tell obstreporous security guards, community support officers and even police constables not to get so het up.
Its first request was to the Home Office, which - perhaps surprisingly - said it didn't have such a list. But the Ministry of Justice might.
So they asked the MoJ - which replied that it would need to think about that. That was the start of August.
Then on August 21 the MoJ turned down the request - on the grounds of excessive cost (it would take more than one person working 3-and-a-half days to find out).
So now FOIAR is trying to limit the search a bit:
We shall try again, just concentrating on the name and location of any 'Prohibited Places' declared under the Official Secrets Act 1911; specifically by Order of a Secretary of State, which are currently in force.
We'll try to keep tabs on their progress.
