Remember Sir Ian Blair, the laughable policeman, the man who did for public confidence in the police what his namesake did for the trustworthiness of politicians? He's not happy with the European Court of Human Rights' ruling against the "stop and search" powers exercised with such gay abandon by his officers:

I find it difficult to reconcile the decision of the European court of human rights that police powers under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 are unlawful with the rather common sense matter of the wider duty of governments to protect their citizens from atrocity.

Let me help. Protecting citizens from atrocity and demanding that Austrian tourists hand over their holiday snaps because some plod wants to preserve the modesty of a bus shelter are two entirely different things. Unfortunately, the law is so broadly worded - in particular, the provision that a police officer (or pseudo-officer) doesn't need to have any grounds for believing that the person searched has about their person anything of use for "terrorist purpose" - that it is wide open to abuse. And your officers (and pseudo-officers) have repeatedly abused it. That has to cast some doubt on the wisdom of there being such a wide-ranging law in the first place.