In this day and age, there's no bigger and more foolish waste of the criminal justice system as the criminalisation of 'unauthorised' photography. It may have been valuable when cameras were the size of laser printers and you got one photograph taken a year. These laws may have been en vogue when the village cameraman shared status with the village priest.
But now, with 30 million camera-enabled mobile phones in Kenya; with ordinary-looking eyeglasses that can take photographs; at a time when I can zoom into State House or the Department of Defence headquarters in Nairobi and look at each at great detail, and at leisure on Google Earth; when I can download the schematics for an aircraft, or SGR locomotives, or a skyscraper, from the internet; we're wasting police, courts and photographers' time trying to prohibit 'unauthorised' photography. What is so special about the KBC gate that one could get arrested for taking a snapshot of it? What is so unique about a shopping mall that security guards would consider it an arrestable offence for taking a selfie inside it?
Why was Michael Khateli arrested for taking photographs of his family in a public space, with his own equipment? Why was that poor, clueless Malawian arrested for taking pictures of a train that we're being asked to be so proud of? Why can we take endless photographs in front of the White House in America, or adjacent to 10 Downing Street in the UK, when these must be much more tempting terrorist targets?
Do we (or the authorities) assume that the only thing standing between a terrorist and their heinous acts is that last photograph?
We must concentrate on real crimes and real threats, and stop living as if it is 1965.
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