irrelevant noise [subsection (1)(ab)(i)]

On 9 March 2021, Robert Buck­land MP, Sec­re­tary of State for Jus­tice in the Gov­ern­ment of the United King­dom, in­tro­duced a bill to Par­lia­ment which, amongst a broad range of stated in­ten­tions, aims “to make pro­vi­sion about the main­te­nance of pub­lic order” by ex­pand­ing the con­di­tions al­ready im­posed on pub­lic protest by Sec­tion 12 of the Pub­lic Order Act 1986. The very first new con­di­tion pro­posed by the UK Gov­ern­ment is that the “noise gen­er­ated” by pub­lic pro­ces­sions, pub­lic as­sem­blies, and even one-per­son protests, could be suf­fi­cient grounds for po­lice ac­tion, if a po­lice of­fi­cer de­cides the “noise gen­er­ated” has a “rel­e­vant im­pact” on peo­ple near the protest. For ex­am­ple, a po­lice of­fi­cer may de­cide that the “noise gen­er­ated” by a protest “may have a rel­e­vant im­pact” — ac­cord­ing to the UK Gov­ern­ment — if it might cause peo­ple nearby “to suf­fer se­ri­ous un­ease.”

ir­rel­e­vant noise [sub­sec­tion (1)(ab)(i)] imag­ines the re­al­ity in which legal mech­a­nisms con­tin­u­ously sur­vey acoustic con­di­tions for “rel­e­vance” — an in­ten­tion­ally vague and po­ten­tially ar­bi­trary mea­sure. Em­bed­ded in the per­for­mance soft­ware is an acoustic sur­veil­lance ap­pa­ra­tus within which the per­form­ers are re­quired to nav­i­gate thresh­olds at which their “noise gen­er­ated” is con­sid­ered “rel­e­vant” or likely to cause “un­ease.” Under this regime, they face the sonic chal­lenge of aim­ing for suf­fi­cient ir­rel­e­vance and low enough im­pact in order to be per­mit­ted to be heard.