> To be honest, this sounds reasonable to some extent.
Some - many, most? - of the people they will be questioning are completely innocent of a crime.
Imagine you are an innocent bystander in some political event and a group of policemen are holding you down while one of them tears your eyelids open with his fingers and forces your phone against your eye.
Does that sound reasonable to you?
And who gets to make this decision, some policeman, on the spot, in a busy crowd, on a bad day when he's been dealing with rioters? For any reason he likes?
This is just opening up a new avenue for police brutality and physical intimidation of minorities.
Look at stop and search in the US and how it is used (specifically, who it is used against), and it is far less invasive than this.
I think policemen should be standing up to oppose this and require the use of a court warrant, as is the current standard. I wonder how many will.
Some - many, most? - of the people they will be questioning are completely innocent of a crime.
Imagine you are an innocent bystander in some political event and a group of policemen are holding you down while one of them tears your eyelids open with his fingers and forces your phone against your eye.
Does that sound reasonable to you?
And who gets to make this decision, some policeman, on the spot, in a busy crowd, on a bad day when he's been dealing with rioters? For any reason he likes?
This is just opening up a new avenue for police brutality and physical intimidation of minorities.
Look at stop and search in the US and how it is used (specifically, who it is used against), and it is far less invasive than this.
I think policemen should be standing up to oppose this and require the use of a court warrant, as is the current standard. I wonder how many will.