The latest silly story about photographers being arrested is about Stephen Clarke, arrested in Manchester for allegedly taking photographs of sewer gratings. Watch the video here.
The police also took a DNA sample and it is not on the police database, despite a ruling that such action is illegal at the European Court of Human Rights. Once the police have your sample, getting off the database is not easy.
One man – perhaps the only one – who has managed it is David Mery, arrested in July 2005, three weeks after the London bombing and six days after the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes – while entering Southwark tube station on 28 July for being “calm on arrival, almost too calm” and having a largish rucksack and a strong French accent. You can read about his struggle, eventually successful – to have his DNA record removed from the database on his web site.