on youtube I watched a British reality show about airports and (mostly foreign) passengers being searched for anything illegal.

What I find troubling is that many of these passengers speak very little English and find it difficult to articulate an answer to what officers ask in English. I remember an Indian national who didn’t speak any English that though he had the right visa to work in the UK, only to find he had been duped by an Indian scammer and was refused entry. He started crying and the crew filmed the whole scene.

This is humiliating to say the least and I wouldn’t want this to happen to me if I visit the UK. My questions:

  • Should a reality crew start recording me, do I have a right to my image and can I tell them to stop recording me? Do tv crews respect that?

  • What about the police? Can they record my face, even if I don’t consent?

  • I also have a cultural question: If an officer at a British airport asks you if he can search your luggage and you say no and you ask him if you are under arrest, what happens then?

  • Devi@kbin.social
    1·
    6 months ago

    There’s some very wrong answers here. So most of the time you can’t film a person without consent for broadcast, for TV or just your 12 follower youtube channel.

    There are a few exceptions and the relevant one here is breaking the law, so if you are smuggling drugs for example, then you can be recorded and broadcast. If suspected of a crime and currently being dealt with by authorities, so say if you were being searched suspected of drug dealing then you could be filmed against your will legally, BUT, if no drugs were found then it can’t then be broadcast.

    Now with the Indian man you are discussing, he did break the law, kinda, unknowingly, but if you broadcast him this would be a defence, HOWEVER, I would never cause that’s bullshit, did they blur his face? Cause morally that would be the right decision. It’s an important story to show, possibly a type of human trafficing, but the person/victim should not be shown.

    Now for your end questions, you have a right to request them not to record, they may have a different right to continue and should explain this to you, but if you’ve done nothing wrong then the footage gets deleted and it’s just an annoying thing that happened one time.

    Police record everything on bodycam, they sometimes have a camera crew with them, same rules apply for them as above, but when dealing with the police you are always recorded, this is for your protection and theirs. If you commit a crime they can broadcast this.

    If an officer at the airport wants to search your luggage and you say no then it really depends on the type of officer but it’s quite likely that you won’t be admitted into the country. If you haven’t gone through immigration then they can send you back for basically any reason, and refusing to be searched, drug tested, interrogated, etc, all counts.

    • vestmoriaOPEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      There are a few exceptions and the relevant one here is breaking the law

      could you paste a source?

      Regarding the Indian national: No, no blurred face, which I find denigrating because to me this is sensationalism against a person who cannot defend himself.

      • Devi@kbin.social
        1·
        6 months ago

        So this is the rule -

        https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/section-eight-privacy

        8.1 states the use of crime as a public interest defence.

        I have a problem with the case you state as it appears that they have broken 8.19 as he’s also a victim of crime in this scenario. This is common in police programmes where cases of domestic violence often involve people who are both perpertrators and victims and the general rule is to blur them.

        If you feel you want to, then I’d say complain to OFCOM about this. They can fine the programme makers and force them to blur for future broadcasts.