David Miranda’s detention at Heathrow airport highlights the polices cavalier attitude to press freedom and rightly deserves the coverage given to the story in the Guardian but away from the front pages the police monitor and record journalists activities in far more routine and mundane ways.
For some time the police have been running a database on ‘domestic extremists’, a cute phrase that conjures more images of Nigella Lawson than political adventurers, and perhaps this nonspecific description is intentional as it covers an array of people from Quakers to artists to protestors and comics. Notably many on the list have no criminal record - the only crime some seem to commit is to enjoy their right to peaceful protest – yet they appear on a database that in some cases spans decades and attempts to provide political and sometimes personal profiles.
Earlier, emboldened by the John Catt court case (details below), I made a subject access request under the Data Protection Act requesting the information, opinions and images the Metropolitan Police held on file about me and was delighted to finally receive their response, namely 63 individual entries spanning 7 pages of cut and paste intelligence items.
The result is a bizarre list of events monitored by the police, lectures given, panels attended, even petitions I have supported. One entry notes my presence at an anti war demo, describing what I am wearing and what sort of bike I am riding, the police continue, “he said hello to us as he passed and seemed very happy.” This chatty tone noting my emotional wellbeing on their database is wonderfully odd in an Ealing Comedy meets the Stasi sort of way and has all the reassurance of a stalkers smile, but does make for bewildering reading.