Emma Cowing: Civil liberties? Yes, we get the picture

“That’s where that man wis near arrested fur taking a picture of his wean.”

His wife goggled at the plastic pink seats and shook her head. “That’s shocking, that is.”

While the gentleman may have added his own, colourfully Glaswegian gloss to the story, the bare facts were true. Last Friday, in this small corner of Braehead shopping centre, a man named Chris White was apprehended by a security guard after taking a photograph of his four-year-old daughter in an event that would trigger worldwide anger.

He was asked to delete the photos, banned from the mall, and when two police arrived on the scene, informed they could confiscate his phone under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Things might have ended there had Mr White, outraged at their behaviour, not taken to Facebook to explain what had happened. In a post entitled “Boycott Braehead”, he complained about his treatment. Before long it had spread like wildfire, first to Twitter, then to a number of legal websites, and finally on to mainstream media, including BBC and STV.

Braehead waded into the battle, issuing a spectacularly misjudged statement which omitted an apology, referred in patronising tones to terrorism and the threat of paeodophiles, and finished up by remarking: “I’m sure people will agree it is better safe than sorry.”

They didn’t. By the end of the day the incident was making headlines in China.

I admit that part of the reason I popped into Braehead on Monday was for a neb. After all the fuss on Twitter and Facebook, I half-expected to find an angry mob brandishing pitchforks and Nikon CoolPix compact cameras outside the entrance to the M&S food hall.

As it was, the place was surprisingly busy for a Monday afternoon, full of families, couples, older people, all happily doing their shopping, minding their own business, and not taking photographs. The ice-cream stand was being manned by two teenagers, and there wasn’t a security guard in sight.

But perhaps I was looking in the wrong place. Because the real shift that this story has precipitated is not to be found on a shopping mall escalator.

Instead, it is at a much deeper, societal level. The level of anger displayed by those who heard about Mr White’s treatment was both heartfelt and unanimous.

They were genuinely shocked, outraged that a father could not so much as take a picture of his daughter enjoying an ice-cream without being apprehended by police.

As a nation, we are getting sick of being told what to do, what not to do, and when. Mr White’s experience epitomised for many a deep-seated anger about just how difficult it can be to get through the day without having to comply to a million and one rules that threaten to curtail our civil liberties.

From body-scanners at rail stations to police curfews, CCTV cameras pointing into properties to smoking bans on high streets, Britain is fast becoming a country where you feel you must first ask permission before you so much as clean behind your ears.

For those in the media, Mr White’s experience is not a surprising story. We come across this sort of stuff every day.

Last year, myself and a photographer colleague were accused of being terrorists after the management of a shopping centre took exception to us interviewing some people about that weighty al-Qaeda concern, The X Factor.

But when these rules – “all for our own protection” – affect private individuals to the extent that a man taking a photo of his daughter nearly ends up in a police cell, the time has come to say “enough”. The fact Mr White did has made him a very modern hero.

The Boycott Braehead protest is not going to result in the shutdown of Braehead. But it may do something more important – remind every one of us that we are private individuals. And that every once in a while, to protect that status, we must defend our own civil liberties.