What if one of them seems odd?

This farce has me dismayed at the new paranoia sweeping the world, and fearful for photographers everywhere. The London police have launched a new terrorist fearmongoring campaign with posters around the city asking citizens to report “odd” photographers.

Source: http://www.met.police.uk/campaigns/campaign_ct_2008.htm

Radio ads that are part of the campaign say:

How d’you tell the difference between someone just video-ing a crowded place and someone who’s checking it out for a terrorist attack?

The answer is, you don’t have to.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/06/anti_terrorist_hotline/

The police are actually telling people not to use their brain, and let the police decide for them what is a threat. I’m sorry, but that’s insulting, belittling and downright oppressive. Without defining “odd”, countless innocent photographers (and I daresay ALL of them will be innocent) will be reported and subjected to unnecessary police investigation. Some of them may even be unfortunate enough to be persecuted and mistreated.

When the ordinary citizen become so afraid, and the government encourages them to be fearful of other ordinary citizens, then the terrorists have won.

And frankly, terrorists have a huge resource of photographs taken by others and shared through sites like Flickr and others. If they don’t want to get resported for suspicious activity, all they have to do to scout their targets is look up the Flickr map for photos taken nearby. As is always the case when this kind of madness happens, it is the innocent who will suffer most.

Naturally, within hours of the capaign launch, the parodies started appearing online:

Credit: Rob Beschizza

If you can’t laugh about this, then you have to cry.

Enjoy some more parodies at BoingBoing.