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Comment by SagelyGuru | Hacker News Reader

Everyone seems to assume that the local council actually have the right to forbid a child taking photographs of her own property (in this case her lunch that she has just bought). Is that really so?

Even if the school should have some capability to issue its own strange rules and by-laws, contrary to the common law applying outside, should this not be up to the Governors Board?

We all far too readily acquiesce, at our own cost, to arbitrary orders by 'authorities', assuming that they have powers over our lives which often they don't have or should not have.

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If the building she's in is their property, then they very likely do have that right. (I'm not condoning their decision, of course.)

> If the building she's in is their property ....

You may well be right. Still, I find the concept questionable. I mean forbidding the lawful use of her property (camera, lunch), just because she is inside someone else's property? She is not photographing the school.

Besides, council property does not belong to the council officials but to the residents in the area and I suspect that, if their rights and opinions were respected, this order would not have been issued.

From wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography_and_the_law]:

"In general under the law of the United Kingdom one cannot prevent photography of private property from a public place, and in general the right to take photographs on private land upon which permission has been obtained is similarly unrestricted. However landowners are permitted to impose any conditions they wish upon entry to a property, such as forbidding or restricting photography."

I think the council would argue that they are enforcing the ban of photography to protect the children from people who might want photographs of the children. I know when I used to work with children we had to get written consents from parents before any child could apear in a photo and in some cases we were instructed to make sure some children were never photographed and step in the way if we saw anyone with a camera.

It's not really to protect the children, it's to protect the Council from being sued by over-protective parents.

That said letting the kids loose with cameras is going to be quite disruptive.

Don't you guys remember school at all? The school has the legal right to force you, especially at the age of nine, to obey any number of arbitrary rules and instructions.

When you think of it from an adult perspective, the idea that an arbitrarily-chosen authority figure can walk into the room, tell you to put your hands on your head for no reason, and if you don't put your hands on your head then you get punished, is pretty weird. But children have fewer rights than adults and there's no good way around that except to suck it up and wait a few years.

I would hesitate to apply that rule. A school is not a private club or an Apple store; it is taxpayer-funded and compulsory for all children.

It's also private property owned by the council - I couldn't just wander into a local school that my taxes pay for and start taking photos in the way that I could do in any public space.

I sense that after Dunblane Scottish schools are just a wee bit twitchy about random adults appearing and doing odd-looking things.

All UK schools are more than a 'wee bit twitchy' about random adults on site AT ALL.

US schools too. And rightly so. The kids are in their care so they better take care of them.

Nitpick: attendance at a council run school is not compulsory (i.e. you are free to home school or send your kid to private schools).

Of course, paying for council run schools is compulsory.

> attendance at a council run school is not compulsory

You're right, but what I was trying to say was

"A school is ... compulsory for all children" (home schooling being special case of school).

Even if there is a law that would give the local council the necessary power, freedom of speech (given from the british constitution or human rights or the constitution of the EU) would override that.

There is no such thing as a British constitution ;)

There is a bill of rights though

Wikipedia says otherwise ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin... Well, in a sense.

Yes

"Unlike many other nations, the UK has no constitutional document. In this sense, it is said not to have a written constitution but an uncodified one"

Worth the papr it's written on.

The UK doesn't have Free Speech in the US sense, nor a Constitution (with a capital C). I don't think there's a right to photography of private (albeit publicly owned) property, especially a school.

If you read my comment above, she is not photographing their private property (the school) but her own private property (the bought lunch). They say they can impose any rules they like as a condition of entrance on their property, even though it is not a voluntary entrance. Her parents may have a choice to send her to a non-council school but she has no choice.

As to the UK's non-existent constitution: the point is that in most countries a stronger parliamentary majority is required to change the constitution, whereas in the UK any shaky government, that just happened to muster a majority of one on a rainy day, can abolish the Magna Carta, for instance.

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