AU: BlackBerry seizure an 'abuse of police powers'

A MAN detained and threatened with arrest under the Terrorism Act for filming police on his mobile phone has alleged police abused their powers.

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24844476-952,00.html

Sydney resident, Nick Hac, stepped outside his apartment. A group of police officers went rushing by armed with video cameras. Since the police were filming in a public space, Hac decided to film them. He put his Blackberry into video mode and started shooting.

When members of the New South Wales police force spotted him doing this, they confiscated his Blackberry and threatened Hac with arrest under the Australian Anti-Terrorism Act.

The abuse of power by the cops included taking it upon themselves to go through the contents of Hac's Blackberry.

Tech Wired Australia:

“They also interrogated me, and told me that they would be deleting the video I had taken. They also went through all my contacts, photos and emails before returning the Blackberry to me. They even had to ask one of my business partners how to delete files on the Blackberry as they wouldn’t let me do it”

“I told the two Police women repeatedly that I did not consent to them going through my mobile. They embarrassed me, I had two of my business partners with me”

“The world we are living in is becoming too restrictive, I was just being a citizen journalist capturing video in a public place, the public need to know their rights, and so do the Police”

Hac described the two female officers who verbally accosted him as "drunk with power." When he asked what crime he had committed, they told him to shut up.

The Blackberry is Hac's private property. The cops had no right to seize it without his permission ... certainly not without a warrant or probable cause.

Under law Australians have the right to take photos and shoot video of people and public places. On the comment thread attached to the Tech Wired article Nick Hac points out the following:

“Unauthorised” photography in Australia has in fact been authorised since the 1937 High Court decision in Victoria Park Racing v. Taylor (1937) 58 CLR 479 (at p.496).

This was reaffirmed recently in ABC v Lenah (2001) HCA 63, where the Court ruled that despite the passage of decades since Victoria Park, any concept of a “Tort of invasion of privacy” still does not exist in Australia.

As Justice Dowd put it with blunt clarity in R v Sotheren (2001) NSWSC 204:

“A person, in our society, does not have a right not to be photographed.”

Anti-terrorist measures have been used in both the US and Australia as a pretext for reining in people's rights under the law. This is an example of a cowboy-like response, with cops using bullying tactics on a citizen who was operating within his rights. Incidents like this need to get more media coverage, if only to signal to the watchers ... that they too are being watched.