Taking pictures of people is legal.
That said, if you take a 300mm zoom to a children's playground you can expect to get in a fight.
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2026
86 points (96.7% liked)
UK Politics
5635 readers
159 users here now
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both !uk_politics@feddit.uk and !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk .
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
In the UK, you should not take pictures or videos of someone without their permission. This includes taking pictures or videos in public places like streets or parks
5th most CCTV cameras per capita than anywhere else in the world says what?
Only your corporate oligarch overlords are allowed to surveil, peasant!
There's little the authorities hate more than sousveillance
Its wild, meta style glasses (explicitly not run by meta) could be such a boon. Police don't wear body cams, that's no matter, every other member of the public is wearing a body cam to record your abuse.
But, like everything it'll be a reflection of the society they find themselves: harvest data from the proles and harass women.
I'd wear a meta style frame (again explicitly not run by meta, probably locally) as a personal dash cam. But I don't want to be associated with meta or perverts.
This looks like a classic good intention, horrible execution. Its obvious that this guidance is about not harassing women by being a creep and taking pictures of them, but its also clear the way its written it will be used by jobsworths to try and argue you aren't allowed to take pictures in public places because they might contain people.
so about those meta glasses, any regulation on that?
At first glance, this sounds alarmist. It sounds like the same rules as continental Europe, where it effectively means you can't focus on a person as the main subject of the picture or video without their permission, but it's OK if they are just in the background.
Which will effectively mean the end of street photography.
Which will effectively mean the end of ~~street photography~~ CCTV.
Silver linings and all that
If you think that this will apply to CCTV and surveillance I have a bridge to sell you...
Not worth killing street photography for
Because there's absolutely no street photography in cities like Berlin, Paris, Rome, or Madrid. /s
You don't need to be a wannabe paparazzi to be a photographer.
where it effectively means you can’t focus on a person as the main subject of the picture or video without their permission, but it’s OK if they are just in the background.
The law allows for that, however the implication of the literature released by the Home Office implies otherwise. They literally said "you can't photograph others without permission".
The main issue is that this is an official government publication, and as such people will regard it as factual. It's less that the law could come down on someone taking photos in public, but more that some self-righteous asshole might start a fight with someone taking photos, thinking the more strict version of the law the Home Office implied is accurate.
And there's also the slippery slope aspect of this being a potential first step to removing the right to photograph others without permission altogether.
The literature in the article says "should not", which is advisory and legally different to "can not", as you say.
- You're applying the technical terminology from The Highway Code, it's not clear that this applies here.
- The leaflet itself shows no explanation of the terms "should" and "must" like there is in The Highway Code.
- That kind of nuanced language really isn't appropriate in literature meant for people with a poor grasp of the English and English culture.
- "Should not" and "can not" are not "legally different" - the terms have no formal legal definition, they're just used in The Highway Code like that. But The Highway Code is not written by the government, it's written by a private business called The Stationary Office. They don't come up with legal definitions, they provide a specific layman's explanation of the rules of the road, as defined in both legislation and case law.
Ok so the upshot is that asylum seekers don't take photos of people in public because they mistakenly think it's illegal. Doesn't seem like the worst outcome.
The worst outcome is someone reading it (not necessarily an asylum seeker), thinks it's accurate because it's from the government, then uses that to justify harassing people with cameras. People legally going about their day, taking photos in public legally, but contradicting the advice in this leaflet, being harassed due to this leaflet.
The long term worst outcome is that this sentiment spreads until a new law is introduced that actually does prohibit taking photos without permission.
This effectively makes wearable cameras like the Meta glasses illegal.
Probably the only good thing that might come out of this.
If this puts a stop to those "auditor" morons, then I'm 100% behind it.
Up next UK bans farting in public spaces. Will breathing cost money? We think so. previous prime ministers found working lobbying positions at 3m.