Yes. It's that bad for lots of things, not just photography. Buskers, street vendors, informal gatherings outdoors in public spaces, walking the dog, having a cigarette, drinking a can of beer in public, kids meeting to sit around in the park - you name it. The myth/truth is the current New Labour government has introduced one new 'offence' for every day in office, through slews of legislation mainly aimed at regulating social behaviour.
This has in turn sparked off a general culture of mistrust and control, much as Cromwell's Puritan Commonwealth did 350 years ago. Schools refuse to allow parents to take pictures at sports days or concerts ('paedophile danger') while Capita SIMS, the Schools Information Management System, is automatically populated with official photographs of every school child in the country and photographers are required to provide these when doing school portrait shoots. Reason: to have the images available in case of abduction, truancy, accidents and emergencies.
Community Police - not real trained officers, hired hands - have the power to stop (or think they have) anyone doing almost anything in public. Old ladies get on the spot fines of £100 for failing to pick up dog poo, instead of a park-keeper armed with a pack of polythene bags who could offer to lend a hand (or at least, provide the bag). Photograph that happening - it has actually been the top request for search images on Alamy recently - and you risk being detained, police called, handcuffed, searched and questioned because you have aimed a camera at an 'official' and you might be a terrorist.
The latest story today -
http://monaxle.com/2009/07/08/section-4 ... gh-street/
I am lucky, we live in Scotland and thousands of restrictive laws passed by Westminster have no effect here. As you probably know, I'm into folk/traditional/live music and we have no restrictions here. You can get together in a community hall, cafe, pub or out in the open in summer if you like and do music. In England you can't, every event down a private party with a band in your own garden requires a local authority licence (and fee, all applied for in advance) under the pretext of controlling noise nuisance.
Concert organisers in England have to state the ethnicity and type of music being applied for in case it's a genre likely to attract an audience the police need to be aware of - like anyone young, anyone black, anyone... etc. Needless to say there are HUGE civil rights and human rights issues at stake. As with photography, these laws are set to be tested all the way up to Strasbourg and hopefully overturned for ever. Meanwhile, Scotland's slightly independent government resists most moves to curtail creative, personal, social freedoms.
We still have a problem with drunk kids in town squares and gangs of anti-social morons, but that's been around for hundreds of years.
David