The British government released a bewildering statistic yesterday: Somebody is stopped and searched every 20 seconds in that country. And nine out of 10 of those aren’t arrested, which means the police are increasingly using their authority, including the power provided to them under Section 44 of the antiterrorism act, to stop people for very little or even no cause.

From the Daily Mail article:

Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said: “Stop and search powers are being over-used and abused. When trainspotters, photographers and Japanese tourists are all up in arms, it should be clear even to Labour that this law needs to be tightened up.”

A companion article on the site talks about how a lot of these stops have involved photographers, and we know all about that from the various reports, like this one and this one and this one….

Article from the Daily Mail