Free Traffic Legal Advice

While I am 100% against any form of misogyny or harassment, I find this story a bit puzzling: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2450d5993vo

As I understand it, this person has gone around filming what was in public view, and frankly the content doesn't appear dissimilar to what is captured by Channel 5, ITV & BBC camera crews on various police programmes following public order officers around on a Friday and Saturday night. It's not my choice of viewing but if filming a drunk girl throwing up in a gutter or passed out on the pavement is now a criminal offence, surely those camera crews working for TV production companies should also be arrested?

It's also tricky to see how allegations of harassment or stalking could be sustained if the conduct was done without the knowledge of the person being filmed, and with the intention that the person being filmed would never find out about it.

The person who has been arrested was, as I understand it, engaging in this activity for business purposes i.e. to provide entertainment content to his viewers. While commercial activity has less protection under article 10 of the ECHR than, say, political speech, this seems to me to be an abuse of the criminal law. The fact that many people would find his content distasteful or even extremely distasteful seems to me to be irrelevant as long as it doesn't amount to hate speech or an incitement to violence.

After all nobody is made to go out and get so drunk as to cause an embarrassment to themselves, and it seems absurd to make it a criminal offence to film people who have made themselves so drunk as to end up in an embarrassing position in a public place.

What am I missing?

Then I would have expected him to be arrested for a voyeurism offence under section 67A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, the offences mentioned in the media suggest the police were dealing with a "this is outrageous but we don't have an offence that quite fits" situation.

or attacked a policeman with a feather 🪶

the offences mentioned in the media...

There you have it. The media are good at being rather vague about the actual offence being arrested for/charged with/guilt of. I've seen loads of articles reporting court cases where they fail to name the exact charge that was being tried, which makes having an opinion on the rights or wrongs of the sentence passed somewhat difficult. Or maybe that's why they report in that way.

the itv news report the other night went into a bit more detail, I've noted that it's died a death all of a sudden. oh and is there still a war on Ukraine?

we found more content locked under paywalled accounts which included footage of suspected non-consensual nudity and upskirting.

Yeah, that’ll do it.