Raise the Hammer

Loved this article. Two solid laugh-out-loud moments and an uncommonly poignant ending. Very nicely written.

Feeling that there was no way you could be legally prohibited from taking a photograph from a public place (a sidewalk) I went and poked around online and discovered that, in fact, the Security of Information Act defines "prohibited places" as:

any work of defence belonging to or occupied or used by or on behalf of Her Majesty, including arsenals, armed forces establishments or stations, factories, dockyards, mines, minefields, camps, ships, aircraft, telegraph, telephone, wireless or signal stations or offices, and places used for the purpose of building, repairing, making or storing any munitions of war or any sketches, plans, models or documents relating thereto, or for the purpose of getting any metals, oil or minerals of use in time of war.

Note the part that says "dockyards". It doesn't seem to say anything specifically about photographing them, although it talks a lot about code words, sketches, etc., so perhaps your photographs count here. But what I'm really worried about, for your sake, is this part:

Every person commits an offence who, for any purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State, approaches, inspects, passes over, is in the neighbourhood of or enters a prohibited place at the direction of, for the benefit of or in association with a foreign entity or a terrorist group.

So far as I can tell, you photographed this facility on the direction of Franz Kafka, and, famous novelist though he may be, he certainly also qualifies as a "foreign entity". Could Mark Fenton be fated to reprise the role of Josef K.? What could be more appropriate, really, for an updated version of The Trial, than Mark F., charged with photographing a prohibited place named Biox at the behest of a long-dead existentialist Bohemian?