Police have come under scrutiny over their desire to monitor journalists, campaigners with no criminal convictions, and elected politicians

Journalists who have been monitored by the police will give a talk next week on state surveillance.

Jess Hurd, a photojournalist, and Jason Parkinson, a video journalist, discovered that the Metropolitan Police has been recording their professional activities on a secret database designed to keep track of so-called domestic extremists.

They are among a group of journalists who are taking legal action against Scotland Yard. (For more details, read this and this).

The police’s “domestic extremism” unit has been monitoring and compiling files on thousands of individuals including campaigners with no criminal convictions such as 89-year old pensioner John Catt, and elected politicians Jenny Jones and Ian Driver. Another campaigner found that police had recorded how he sold anti-capitalist publications at the Glastonbury music festival.

The two journalists will speak about the controversy over the surveillance and the legal action which has been backed by the National Union of Journalists.

They will be joined by Shamik Dutta, the lawyer for the group of journalists and Catt. The octogenarian’s legal action to compel police to delete his file from the “domestic extremism” database has reached the Supreme Court and awaits a verdict.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest John Catt and his daughter, Linda, are peace activists who have been monitored by police and placed on a secret database of ‘domestic extremists’. They tell their story

The meeting - which is free - will start at 6.30pm on Tuesday January 27 in London (more details here). It has been organised by the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers and the Mansfield Student Law Society.

Parkinson found that the Met had more than 130 entries logging his movements, including what he was wearing, at demonstrations he attended as a member of the press.

Like others, he had used the data protection act to obtain his file from the police.

Anyone can apply for their file - this here from the civil liberties group, the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol), is a useful guide on how to do this.

Netpol is holding a “domestic extremism awareness” day on February 5.

The group is urging members of the public on that day (more details here) to submit a request to the police for files that they are holding on them, and to “tell us, on Facebook and Twitter - using the hashtag #domesticextremist - what might make you a so-called ‘domestic extremist’.”