In a statement, Heather Carpenter, a Reuters spokeswoman, said: "The use of long lenses is standard photo journalism practice and many news organizations, including Reuters and The New York Times, use them as a matter of routine.
In this age of long lenses, digital leaks, citizen journalism and instant communication, it would be impossible for a president to disguise his physical disability or for a prime minister to have a reputation for heavy drinking.
The letter listed a number of similar incidents from recent months, including the use of long lenses to capture the Duchess of Cambridge playing with her son in private parks and "monitoring the movements" of Prince George, his nanny and other household staff.
We arrived to discover dozens of long-lens cameras pointed in our direction.
Staking out a couple, Billard and another photographer will hide 10-20 metres away, clutching the sort of long-lens camera that is synonymous with the trade.
"The use of long-lens photography to take pictures of people in private places without their consent is unacceptable," says section three, paragraph two.
Soth's gaze in Broken Manual marked an interesting conceptual shift, his pictures playing with tropes of American romanticism that recall Whitman and Thoreau, and also (in his use of long-lens photography and grainy imagery) mimicking surveillance and spy-camera footage.
A publication will be expected to justify intrusions into any individual's private life without consent.' The use of long-lens photography to take pictures without the subject's consent is described as 'unacceptable', but this does not apply to the Sun's photograph.
But he knows that neither his fans, nor even the merely curious – who he reckons account for all but about 150,000 of those Twitter followers – have much time for a rich rock star banging on about how hard it is to live life at the end of a long lens.
