Filming In Public

[Paul2023]

Over the last few years I’ve seen a rise in people calling themselves auditors, basically people going around filming people doing their jobs and uploading the footage to social media.

Its usually people filming police officers, a person filming some times starts a confrontation with a police officer to try and get a reaction. Which gets them views.

I can understand why people may want to film an interaction with the police for their own evidence, but I think it’s wrong to go into police stations to be awkward just to annoy someone who’s doing their job.

One guy, who calls himself Meet The Tyrants, seems rather unpleasant. During covid he went to a testing facility and gave the workers there a hard time. He was rude and antagonistic, whilst these people were doing a vital role.

Some of these auditors are just going to general places of work and filming random people who work there. Again this same guy ‘Meet the tyrants’ has multiple videos on YouTube and has used phrases like ‘silly little woman “to a woman who objected to her work place being filmed. This term is very sexiest and I don’t know why people enjoy watching wind up merchants annoy random members of the public.

Some of these places of work are council offices and factories. I don’t think most women would particularly enjoy having a mobile phone shoved in their faces whilst they’re trying to do their jobs in their work place. Can privacy laws not stop this?

Also, not everyone wants to be on social media. What about people who perhaps are vulnerable or are in some kind of witness protection? Is it fair that someone can upload videos of them for potentially millions of people to see?

On another story I’ve come across, a woman on a bus sat down and didn’t put her push chair in the right place. She left it in the middle of the gangway. A member of the public ( a bloke) decided to take her picture without her knowing and put it on social media to embarrass her. He said something like ‘ why can’t mothers use the correct push chair area’? He didn’t even talk to her , he secretly took her photo. I find this kind of stuff really creepy and quite vile.

Another one I’ve seen again during covid was a young girl working in Asda asked a man to wear a face mask. He caused an argument and filmed her. The young girl was probably misguided be her employer, but I think it’s wrong that the poor girl was put online and ridiculed.

I do understand that people can film in public and there’s not much anyone can do about it, but I find it this modem life social media quite horrible when used in these means.

Does anyone else hate this new craze of filming in public?

Yes, me. I can’t see why it’s ok to film someone who doesn’t want to be filmed, and to then profit from it by putting it online.

I've seen the idiot, who films police stations. He's an obnoxious turd, looking for excuses to slate police officers. He even filmed their cars, in the car park, saying "audit, someone needs to do an audit".

The best thing to do is just ignore this stuff.
Also, I’m an auditor.. in what way is filming someone whilst pissing then off an audit?

It comes from USA, it was a first amendment audit.

Wtf some oik in the UK is doing I dunno

I don’t think there’s much you can or should do about the actual filming, because any legislation to limit filming in public would also limit free reporting. (I agree it’s annoying though.)

However we can have better legislation against people using footage to
harass or humiliate people. Years ago there was a horribly sexist Facebook page called Women Eating on the Tube, full of pictures of women eating, which Facebook took down after protests that it was sexist and nasty. There’s a lot the law needs to catch up on.

My husband has watched a few of these, mainly a guy filming people working in places and when asked why is deliberately antagonistic. He won't say "I'm a YouTuber", instead he'll keep going on about how it's a public place and the law says x,y,z. He tries to catch people out in the their knowledge of the law and then make out they're ignorant, jobsworths etc. When actually, all they want him to do is to stop filming them while they work.

I agree that the laws need updating in some way. This obsession with Gen Z filming strangers and then using the video for public amusement is like some twisted version of You've Been Framed.

I've seen one video, YouTube I think, where a guy goes and stands outside different businesses and starts filming

Eventually somebody will come out and ask him what's he's doing. Said guy gets confrontational as he wants a reaction on film and of course the police eventually turn up

He then gets confrontational with the police. I was sent the video, I watched most of it and couldn't really work out what the point of any of it was

I imagine he's retired and very bored

I have mixed feelings - it would be quite difficult to regulate this (what about dashcams for example) and it has caught some people being totally unreasonable and doing illegal stuff - cycling Mickey for example is a YouTuber who has passed a large number of examples of terrible driving to the Police resulting in a lot of prosecutions - if we had enough Police maybe they could do the job instead but they can't/don't/won't. If you do a job that takes place in a public place then as the law currently stands, you'll be subject to people filming you. On the whole I think the balance is correct - not least because it would be so complex to enforce and we don't seem to enforce 99% of existing laws.

Oh and the "auditors" are turds - just read the comments on their stuff, no-one takes them seriously.

I don't know what I think about "auditor" but absolutely I support putting amateur public space footage in public domain. The alternative is ridiculous and bad.

I’ve seen Cycling Mikeys videos, he’s a cyclist that films drivers breaking the law. He’s been on tv, he even caught Guy Ritchie on his phone if I remember rightly.

Nothing wrong in being a YouTuber , and I thinks it’s perfectly fine whats he’s doing. He only uploads videos of people breaking the law.

Similar to dash cam videos. People upload bad, dangerous drivers online. That’s completely fine and these people should be reported and punished.

However , “Uk Meet the tyrants” for example goes to an office block and starts filming. Poor old Jane gets sent out by her boss to ask him to stop filming. Jane is an officer worker , a middle aged woman who doesn’t know the law. She then faces a load of confrontation from the ‘auditor’who starts quoting the law. The law he probably learned from Google. Then the filmed starts insulting Jane, telling her she’s a stupid woman and she should get back to work.

Result is poor old Jane ends up on YouTube when she didn’t want to be put in that situation in the first place.

There are literally thousands of these types of videos.

I do get that people want to film police officers, not all of them act professionally and I think if you become a police officer you have to accept people will film you.

But not office workers or shop workers who are just trying to do a job.

Again, I have mixed feelings. I do sympathise with the Janes in the examples you cite, but sometimes they come across as excessively officious and unprofessional, making up laws that don't exist and telling people they can't do legal things. The fault really lies with the boss who sends them out to try to make someone stop doing something entirely legal - which is symptomatic of a wider issue in UK society of public servants trying to do things in secret for no reason at all.

While holding individuals accountable for breaking the law, like Cycling Mikey does, is justified, the trend of filming unsuspecting office or shop workers seems intrusive and unfair. Confronting someone like Jane, who's just doing her job, with legal jargon can be uncomfortable and disrespectful. Filming these individuals without consent for confrontational content raises ethical concerns. Balancing the right to record with the privacy and dignity of ordinary workers is crucial to maintaining a fair and respectful approach.

Again though I’ve seen a video of a guy going inside a police station. The police rightly do say though that he should respect people’s privacy.

Some people are already scared as it is about giving a statement in a police station, they could be vulnerable women for example perhaps speaking to the police about domestic violence.

Surely filming inside these types of places should be illegal to film inside without permission?

One guy was harassing a police officer in London, he was setting up a cordon. I’ve no idea what happened, it could have been anything but I guess must have been serious.

The guy filming aggressively started asking the police officer questions and stated he was a journalist.
Obviously anyone can claim to be or be a journalist.

Another guy actually walked into a fire station and started filming the fire fighters who looked like they were on a break.

Can people not do their jobs in peace anymore? Surely they have the right to go into work , ( I’d argue a fire station has health and safety risks anyway) and not have random members of the public invading their privacy?