frank wrote:

Interestingly, Chicago Trib ran a photo of a demonstration by a few
hundred photogs at a UK police station all taking photos in protest of
the law. Interesting expression on the female police officer's face
that was watching it all.


That wasn't just "a police station", it was New Scotland Yard, the
headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, which is responsible for
policing Greater London and for taking the lead in anti-terrorist
operations across the whole country.


No doubt there are others out there on the web. Enough of those
protests and the government will probably cave and write something
more useful. Say, prohibitions on what would be SWAT teams in the US
or narcotics officers working undercover. - both pretty much protected
over here for obvious reasons.

Governments forget working WITH the press is much easier than working
AGAINST them.


In the UK, Governments have no need to work with the press. Governments
have routinely silenced the press for decades using D-Notices.

D-Notices are a form of instant censorship. Once a notice has been
issued in respect of a particular story or situation, the media must not
make any further reference to it until the D-Notice is lifted. In
theory, compliance is voluntary, but enormous pressure is brought to
bear on publications or broadcast media who do not obey.

In the last year or so the system has been made even stricter, and I
think the D-Notice name has been replaced by something else.

A recent application of the system was to prevent reporting of many
extensive and highly effective demonstrations on UK college campuses
against Israel's military operation in Gaza. I read about the
demonstrations on CNN, where they made the Top 10 News for several days.
Trying to find any reference in the UK media was a thankless task; I
tried over 20 new web sites including all the national daily newspapers
and several TV and radio stations - nothing. But as CNN reported, these
were by far the biggest student demonstrations in the UK since 1968.

Presumably reports were censored to avoid upsetting Israel - the UK
having a Jewish foreign secretary may have something to do with this.