[Brinworld] PhoneCam vs. court; Publishing faces from the street

[Bill Stewart]

At 02:33 PM 04/25/2003 -0700, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
>Teacher sets up drug dealer 'web watch'
>A teacher sick of drug dealers and addicts in his neighbourhood has
>taken the drastic measure of posting their pictures on the internet.
>
>John Messiter says he has decided to secretly photograph those
>terrorising the area and make their images public.
>http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_773853.html?menu=news.technology
>
>Interesting privacy/public and libel implications in the latter.

There are two categories of people he's likely to photograph
- Real drug dealers and users
- Falsely accused drug dealers and users
The latter should be able to sue him for libel, which is too easy in Britain,
modulo a few issues about whether web photographs are libel or slander.
Some of the former might also try that, but it's probably too risky,
and the black market has other ways to provide legal services and
conflict resolution to people who can't use official courts....

On the other hand, crack dealers are less likely to read the web much;
if he were to print out posters and tack them up on lampposts,
I'm not sure where "Joe Bloggs, Crack Dealer" would consider them to be
annoying libel or free advertising.

He says that he wasn't getting adequate response from the police
when he called to complain about junkies hanging around,
but that he doesn't blame the police, because the Government
isn't giving them enough resources to deal with the problem.

The site is http://www.crackcocaineincamden.co.uk ,
and the proprietor's media contact email is messyjay at hotmail.com .
I was initially going to flame him for not having a clue
about the fact that it's drug laws that cause the problem,
but he's almost halfway to getting a clue:
         "This is not an anti-drugs site. It's an anti-crack site,
         an anti-heroin site, and most definitely an
         anti-people-who-do-crack-or-smack-in-the-entrance-to-my-home site"
and he thinks that cannabis laws probably aren't necessary and that
cannabis users don't cause the social problems that crack users do.

His site also says that the UK has "Anti-Social Behaviour Orders" laws from 
1998,
which lets courts kick someone out of an area for a couple of years.
This has its own set of dangers...