Making the law up

From Dizzy via The Devil's Kitchen we hear the tale of a councillor stopped by police for taking pictures of the station. As this is a subject a bit too close to my own comfort I thought I'd take a look at it.

Now presumably we're looking at section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 which deals with Stop and Searches I make this assumption as from Dizzy we get that the officer "demanded identification under the Terrorism Act".

What does s44 say about stop and searches. Well officers are allowed to do so only with authorisation which applies to specific areas and has been created as such by a senior officer. Nothing in the entire s44-47 requires any form of identification to be presented.

Now I'm taking this from the statute law website which requires updates from 2007 and 2008 so if this has been amended well there you go (except I very much doubt it as even the Terrorism Act 2006 didn't touch this). It also may well be that this is allowed but under one of the crime acts, the difference being that generally you need grounds for suspicion with those and you don't with the Terrorism Acts.

To my mind this is once again a case of people applying laws and rules without knowing what said laws and rules actually are. Such commentators as Dizzy and DK may rail against how the law via Parliament is removing our freedom, but it seems in at least some cases the law isn't at fault; it's just the people acting on it.