Paranoia Strikes Deep in the Heartland...

The Metropolitan Police's new anti-terrorist poster campaign has been variously branded "paranoid", "pernicious", "corrosive" and reaching "new heights of stupidity". It encourages citizens to report each other for activities such as 'looking at CCTV cameras' and 'throwing away bottles which contained chemicals'.

The irony, of course, is that all this comes at a time when the Met itself has been under scrutiny in several senses of the word:

* three cases of alleged police assault have been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC);
* over 180 further complaints have been submitted by members of the public, some 50 of them alleging assault or excessive violence;
* and the head of the IPCC is quoted as saying that "the number of people who had filmed the protests on their mobile phones was proving a key factor in helping the IPCC determine whether complaints made against the police had any legitimacy".

If the Met wants us to treat those who look at CCTV cameras in the street as terrorist suspects, how on earth are they going to label those who film police officers?