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Comment by Angostura | Hacker News Reader

From the Independent coverage:

> The force had put out a statement saying “anyone who declines to be scanned will not necessarily be viewed as suspicious”. However, witnesses said several people were stopped after covering their faces or pulling up hoods.

> “The guy told them to p* off and then they gave him the £90 public order fine for swearing,” Ms Carlo added. “He was really angry.”

I live close to Romford, and I'm quite tempted to wander past with my face obscured and then politely decline if asked to be photographed.

Of course, I'm white, middle class and middle aged, so I probably wont be stopped.

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“The guy told them to p off and then they gave him the £90 public order fine for swearing,”*

This is a common use of laws in the United Kingdom. They put lots of laws on the books around trivial things that they almost never enforce on their own, but then which officers arbitrarily use in "convenient" situations like this. The average person swearing in the street will not be accosted, someone arguing with a cop who wants to make a point will.

Up to and including ASBO's

Which whatever their intention became a useful 'we don't like your face' tool.

My default position is 'explain why you want these powers with evidence they are nescessary' unfortunately the average person here doesn't pay any attention, which is why we are one of the most heavily surveiled democracies in the world.

A great loophole to subvert bureaucracy and return the power to the whims of individuals....

This is called selective enforcement and is part of the erosion of the rule of law in the UK. When you have mountains of laws such that most people are always violating them, you can target anyone you don't like. This leads to abuse of power and is formative in the transformation of police from those that uphold the law to thugs. The thugs decide when to punish on whim.

To what, show who is really in control of the land? Sounds corrupt and a slippery slope to me.

“The guy told them to p* off and then they gave him the £90 public order fine for swearing,” Ms Carlo added. “He was really angry.”

Accepting such a fine is voluntary, he could go to court and defend himself instead. I'd be surprised if some organisation or another didn't offer to pay his costs?

If he gets off, it will absolutely be the result of the publicity around this case. Courts will uphold these rules if imposed on normal people.

I am not so sure he did anything illegal? Courts in the UK are fairly independent of public opinion.

Man in the news photos didn't look that dark either.

Is "piss off" swearing?

They're just "protecting and serving" their fragile egos.

What society needs is genetic engineering to ensure no more micro dick, low IQ, braindead thugs are born into the world to play grown-up wunnabe nazis.

> "neccessarily"

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