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Police Restrict Public Photography
An anonymous reader writes "News.com is reporting that in Australia, recent attempts by a photo club to take pictures of industrial installations was met with police resistance. From the article: 'Club member Hans Kawitski was told not to photograph industrial installations and was ordered to inform members of the camera club to follow his lead. Liberty Victoria said its advice to photographers would be to ignore the directive. "The police have got no place making such warnings," president Brian Walters SC said.'"
... but CCTV is fine. Mmmm, double standards.
One of my friends was taking pictures of an industrial facility at night for a photography class - security detained him and destroyed his film.
But we'll all be thankful when terrorism goes away for good, though, right guys?!
Unfortunately that happend in some countries of "west" a long time ago allready... McCarthy anyone?
If it's the government or some corporation, it's good. If it's you, it's bad.
For other examples, look at rootkits, spying, lying... the list goes on.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
One day I got lost at night and so walked up and down a block a few times trying to figure out where in the hell I was. A police officer stopped me. He asked me if I knew why he stopped me. I told him no. He said I was "walking suspiciously". I blinked at him like he was an idiot and asked him if he was going to arrest me for "walking suspiciously".
At that point I think he realize that he was being a complete fucking idiot, as I wasn't breaking any law and he sure as hell couldn't arrest me for anything. He muttered some vague threat about "keeping an eye on me" and then waddled off to eat donuts, go bust an underage drinking party, or confiscate marijuana from college students and cancer patients.
My point? Australia might be different, but at least in the US, they can't drag you off without a charge. Hell, a street officer can't even search you without some justifiable suspicion that a law has been broken. If there is no law in the books against taking pictures of whatever, you can take pictures of whatever. If the police are really giving you a problem, go grab your Australian ACLU equivalent and bring a member with you. Let the police do something stupid, then tack their balls to the wall and make an example out of them.
People don't realize how eager the ACLU is to throw in a helping hand. When I was young, we had a local guy get the beat up by the town sheriff for insulting him. The ACLU was down before weeks end. They had a trial that ended with the Sheriff losing his badge and paying restitution. I would be amazed to learn that there exist first world democracies without an ACLU equivalent. Honestly, if you are really having problems, just give them a friendly call. If nothing else they will give you some good advice and inform you on the legal limits of your position.
For those who haven't heard the term before, sousveillance refers to the use of technology by members of society to watch and record the activities of others, particularly authority figures. It seems like it's becoming increasingly futile for organizations to try to resist sousveillance, as the police in the article attempted to do. As technology progresses, cameras and cameraphones are just getting smaller, cheaper, and harder to detect. Eventually it gets to the point where people have things like retinal implants and little remote-control cameras, and it becomes absurdly impractical to try to keep them away from all the things you want to keep secret.
I've recently started reading David Brin's The Transparent Society, which proposes the somewhat counterintuitive notion that instead of resisting government invasions of privacy, we instead ensure that everybody is able to watch everybody. In effect, the answer to the question "Who watches the watchers?" becomes "Make everybody a watcher." This of course has its problems and I'm still not sure what I quite think of it, but it's certainly an interesting idea. The first chapter of his book is available online. I highly recommend skimming through it.
"The shopping center is private property"
If they value their privacy so much, they shouldn't invite the general public to come inside.
Okay, let's assume for a minute that the article supports your statement that "some cops just warned them" or that you merely forgot to cite a secondary source which includes this information.
You're okay with the police "just warning" people not do things they have every legal right to do, even though doing those things won't cause anyone any harm? What exactly are they warning them about then? A warning implies a threat, and in the lack of any other threat, whose left but the very police doing the warning? That's intimidation.
You seem to be arguing that just because the police can't legally stop people from taking the photographs that it isn't a "ban" or "restriction". It certainly sounds like they're trying to restrict people to me. They're just not doing so legally and their reasons are unclear.
And, by the way, there are plenty of "damn things" the police can do if you don't cooperate - especially if they're corrupt.
i'm a keen photographer, although at the moment I seem to spend more time reading about my hobby than actually doing it. One of the magazines I regularly read has been full of tales of police/security over-zealousness for months now. Unfortunately in Britain at the moment, the police do not need to charge you with anything to detain you - if they have suspicions of any sort that they can relate to terrorism in any way, they can haul you off to the station for questioning. This has happened and been reported in photography magazines several times recently (and that's only the incidents that the victims actually wrote to magazines about). A well known case was of a man taking photos around (I think) Canary Wharf in London (near the Gherkin building and all the new, Norman Foster -esque architecture). He was basically meandering round taking photos of buildings, someone reported him to the police as being suspicious, and that was that: I believe he was taken to the station, questioned and interviewed, but eventually released without charge. I've read dozens of similar reports in the last few months.
The problem is exacerbated in Britain because of (in my view) the scare-mongering tabloid press and their one-upmanship over fantastic headlines; there have been so many over-the-top stories and rumours about paedophiles over the last few years, for instance, that much of the public is now paranoid about the issue, even though such crimes have pretty much stayed at the same level they were at decades ago. Famously, after one paper named and printed photos of known sex-offenders, gangs of vigilantes went round beating up people who looked like the people in the pictures, or had similar names; and in one case, a paediatrician was forced to flee her home because people thought she was a danger to children and daubed threatening graffiti over her house. This eventually led last year to the major of London announcing a plan to erect signs in public spaces such as parks to warn people to be suspicious of anyone with a camera; thankfully he has since backed down.
Unfortunately this does seem to be rubbing off on people: much of the public would now rather not ask questions but just act on their paranoia. In the recent case of an innocent man being shot by police because he happened to live in a block of flats where a terrorist suspect lived, it quickly became apparent that it was all a terrible case of mistaken identity and incompetence by the police; but most of the people I heard talking about it in the following days thought the victim deserved it, either because he was an illegal immigrant (he had overstayed his visa), or because he vaulted the ticket barrier (he did not), or because he had on a bulky jacket (he did not), or just because it's better to be safe than sorry, and a few unnecessary deaths is a price worth paying (!). I had to stop myself from having a big argument with a taxi driver a week after the incident, as he was adamant that even if the man was innocent, was acting innocently and did nothing wrong whatsoever, his death was still OK because we live in dangerous times and if the police think, for whatever reason, that someone *might* be slightly suspicious, shooting him 8 times at point blank range is the best thing to do. Needless to say I didn't tip him.
Unfortunately people are becoming accustomed to paranoia - it seems our governments are in some cases willingly fostering a feeling of unease about anything and anyone, and people are responding.
If they really don't like you, they can say you threatened them and arrest you for that. If they push you and you reflexively grab their wrists, you might get shot, and at the very least you've now assaulted an officer of the law. They can provoke you with impunity, because no one will believe you. Everyone will take their word for it, because you're just a schmuck with a camera, while they were putting their life on the line to protect and serve. Cops are heroes, and you're just a suspect who stopped them from keeping us safe. Who told you you have these "rights" to take pictures? Wow, another bleeding heart liberal. Haven't you done enough damage to our country without berating the poor police officers?
The ideal situation for cops is where there just about everything is illegal if they want it to be, so they can tell you "move along" and you have no choice. Cops are people, people like power, and people also generally have trouble dealing well with power. It tends to go to their heads. But as long as we always give the cops the benefit of the doubt, we will be falling headlong into a police state. Of course that won't matter until you're the one who gets the stern "move along," and by then it's too late. The only way to protect freedom is to be skeptical of, even slightly hostile to, government power. If abuse of power is considered innocuous, then we're pretty much done with the whole freedom thing.
And of course the spies would have never thought of hidden, miniature cameras in buttons, purses, books and what not, yes? The actual purposes this (and many other equally ridiculous) prohibitions served were to: intimidate the population, empower the police to arrest people wantonly on a multitude of pretexts and to create a false impression that the state vigilantly guards you against the Emmanuel Goldsteins of the world. I feel rather sad that so many people fall for such obvious psych-ops manouvers.
When an official lies to the public, it is patriotism. When the public lies to an official, it is perjury.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.