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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.'"
I believe "Do not photograph under pain of severe penalties" was at one point a standard sign on 1950s era train stations and other installations in the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries. As the saying goes: "Check you hate at the door or you will become that what you hate most"....
I was at the tollbooths on the Staten Island side of the Verazzano Bridge, photographing someone on a motorcycle waving his E-ZPass aroud trying to get the thing to read. I never saw anything like that so I took a picture as I got up to the toll the police stopped me and threatened to fine me if I didn't delete the picture. It's been like that for as long as I can remember going over the bridge, dunno what the rules for at all. Also, I'm always afraid taking photographs at the ferry terminals. When they had the 100 year celebration, I had my camera with me but I was afraid to use it because I just assumed photography wasn't allowed. Eventually I started taking pictures, and just figured they had nothing posted about photography so it's allowed, or if I get in trouble I can tell them to put up some signs.
I recall the case of the Arabic-looking students on a trip to Disneyland, whose home-video of their fun day out was later used against them as evidence of a terrorist plot. Apparently they spent an awful lot of time in places that would be good to bomb - like long queues. Obviously there's no other reason why a visitor to Disneyland would spend a lot of time in long queues...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
When I was photographing the beautiful old federal buildings in downtown Denver (probably about 3 years ago), a federal officer pulled up and told me to stop taking pictures. When I asked him what law I was breaking, he refused to answer, but demanded my ID and told me I was now going to have a "record with the FBI." When I then asked him for his name and/or badge number, he got back in his car and drove away.
Luckily, mine had a happier ending then this guy.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Speaking as a freelance photographer, things are worse than people think. Not only can you not sell, but nobody will help you to publish such photos. It wasn't too many years ago that any photo except those that were truly "private" could be taken and used, if for nothing else than at least for documentary purposes.
...and any representation of anything or anyone, anywhere, is subject to lawsuit unless you have their name, signature, and fingerprints signing off on it. No wonder the news media never gets into real issues anymore. The list of things they can't discuss/photograph without permission of "the owners" under penalty of endless lawsuits and liability is virtually endless. And thus, they're left photographing/describing those people that WANT to be publicized (i.e. endless human interest and movie-star footage and news).
Now, however, the list of things that nobody will buy and nobody will publish (printers even refuse to handle these if you try to self-publish books or similar works) includes:
- Any person (unless model contract is present, even if it's YOU!)
- Any item (unless property contract is present, even if it's YOURS!)
- Any building, patch of land, or piece of water (see previous item.)
- Any manufactured item (because industrial design = intellectual property.)
So, a partial list of things that can't be photographed without a contract on file includes: all people, all property (if it's not owned by the government, it's private and needs a signed release; if it's owned by the government, it's too dangerous to shoot or use anyway), all places (nearly all land and half the water in the world is owned by individuals or nations), all manufactured items (because all of them had to be designed by someone, and such design is intellectual property -- even things like soap bars with logos washed off them or empty containers without labels), all logos, text, phrases on signs, etc. (because thanks to copyright law, any piece of writing created by anyone is copyright by them, even if only three or four words long and done in graffiti in a public place).
I think stock and editorial photographers are probably more aware than most of just how much intellectual property now affects our culture/society. Take a picture of a graffiti-covered shed in the middle of nowhere? You need a signed release from the shed manufacturer (for the industrial design), the owner of the land (for property release), and the graffiti "artist" (for text release). You basically need 2-3 signed contracts for EVERY PICTURE YOU TAKE, even of a ping-pong ball from the back floating in your own bathtub in the dark, because of all the intellectual and real property (and thus potential liability) involved in every photograph of everything.
Basically:
- Take a world in which ALL things are owned by SOMEBODY
- and add intellectual property on top of physical property
- and add a culture of litigation
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Unfortunately this is all too common these days. Everyone with a camera is automatically a paedophile or a terrorist (more even more.
However they still ask the public for photographs when it suits them.
Right so call those fuckers to task. I'm sure at this point it's too late (there are statues of limitation and the longer that goes by the less evidence) but don't put up with that shit if there's a next time. Call the cops, file a report, demand arrest. Don't let the issue go, fi they don't do something contact the DA, retain a lawyer, call the ACLU. Talk to the local press, reporters usually love stories like that.
Hell for that matter if the state allows it get a CCW permit and carry a gun and a can of pepper spray. If someone tries to take you by force, that's at the very elast grounds to use non-leathal force, and may be grounds for the threat or use of lethal force (please note, this is not legal advice, check your local laws regarding the carry and use of weapons before doing so and always obey all weapons laws).
The point is, if you take stuff like this sitting down, then you are part of the problem. Injustice has to be challenged, espically in a case like this where it's two private entities involved.
It's just not worth the hassle anymore. Either it makes you seem suspicious when photographing buildings or bridges, or it makes you seem suspicious when photographing people. I no longer want to walk around thinking that people are suspecting that I'm either a terrorist, paedophile or pervert. In fact, I worry less about the police thinking I'm a terrorist than about people thinking I'm a paedophile or pervert.
In my country, most shopping centres and many other organizations do not allow taking photos. I do not know why, because they refuse to explain. This was bad surprise for me when I got my digital camera. For example, in UK nobody cares when I take photos in stores or other public places.
The cops/police/fuzz don't always understand what they are allowed to do or not do, under the law.
/. read-through), and campus security busted in, I would not be required to prove that I am of legal drinking age, even if they request it.
I'm a college student here at Ohio University, and as part of the required freshman introduction-to-college course, we had to learn and understand what, under the rules of the college and laws of the land, the police and campus security were allowed and not allowed to do.
Example: Say the president of the college (unlikely) knocked on my door while I had friends over to partake of substances of debatable legality with, I have the right to refuse his request to come in and look around for said substances. He could get all the campus cops and resident assistants he wanted to, but as long as the substances are not immediately visible from OUTSIDE the room, there is no trouble.
Take home: campus police can't bust in, even if they'd like to. if they in any way break with the stated policy, any charges they might want to file are thrown out.
Second example: Any member of campus security is not allowed to request identification that contains your age on it. So if I was at a party (which happens often, even though I take time for classes and the occasional
Take home: There's a set minimum level of compliance that students have to give to campus security, mandated by both on-campus civil liberties and those granted under the Constitution and assorted Amendments.
TFA is an extreme case, I believe. Sometimes police get a bit overzealous, which is why it's up to the townfolkery to know where their rights/liberties begin, and where the police's legal and civil abilities end.
How?
..
Smaller camera's. Camera's in things you don't know are camera's. Camera's with the ability to send their pictures to anywhere on the planet, instantly.
Can't have a police state then, can we
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Forget Australia. In US i stopped a cop car once when i was lost and asked HIM for directions.
He was surprised, since he had been following me driving around for 45 mins (i didn't know it at that time). Seems he was about to stop me, and instead i had let him overtake me, and flash lights many times to make him stop.
Of course i got the directions i wanted(and i again lost the way...but that's a different matter), and eventually reached home after i hollered for my friend to pick me up from a Dunkin' Donuts place 30 miles away.
The point is, they do check around and for guy who was driving crazily at 4.35 PM on I-84 between CT and NY on a friday evening, they must have damn sharp.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
The FBI agent "said that he checked all the trash bins at Disneyland and that he believed the one on the video was the best one in which to place a bomb."
Actually, i do not really trust people trying to get innocent people in jail, and checking all trash bins to see which is the best to place a bomb.
Being suspect has become a crime, but not for FBI-agents. Very, very scary.
Trust me, I work for the government.
A few weeks ago I was on vacation and visiting one of the more beautiful suspension bridges in the states. I was using a consumer style digital camera to hopefully get a decent shot for home use. After shooting the bridge and other good angles for maybe 30 minutes from a nearby park area, the local police arrived. They told me that photographing the bridge is "strongly discouraged." I looked at them like they were on crack, and they added, "for national security reasons." To their credit, they were very polite and seemed somewhat uncomfortable with their new job of keeping the world safe from photos.
The bridge had a new lighting system specifically made for aesthetic purposes, funded by donations from the public over the last couple decades, and this is the fruit of those efforts.
I'm too young to feel this damn old. I remember when this kind of bullshit was for those countries that didn't have freedom like the US. When I was in elementary school (in the 1980s), this would have been a scary story about the USSR or Nazi-era Germany, but unthinkable for the "land of the free." I hope to hell that the warning klaxons were louder than this for the Germans 70 or so years back. I'd rather be overly paranoid and bent about the issue than just plain correctly worried. Planet-wide and synchronized, this shit is making me ill.
A friend of mine was taking tourist pictures of New York City and a city policeman came up and asked him why he was taking pictures of the bridges. He cooperated, talked to them for a while and let them know it was just for fun, but felt strange that he would be questioned about taking pictures of bridges. They left him alone and he continued taking pictures, but he thought it was a bit odd.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
It happened in Philadelphia, too. The original article appeared July 3, 2002 in the Philadelphia Inquirer. An art student of some sort from Finland and a local Democratic Party committee member were taking pictures of the Sunoco refinery from the Passyunk Ave. bridge. Cruisers, choppers, cops galore. They took the cameras, destroyed the film and detained them for a couple days. When protesting to the police that they were taking art photos, the cop said, "Nobody takes pictures of refineries as art, especially not in Philadelphia."
The city later admitted the arrests were wrong and settled a potential law suit with the local Democratic Committeeman, but the other guy got nothing, so the ACLU filed suit on his behalf.
And, it happened to me. I was on some decrepit lift bridge over Jamaica Bay taking pictures for a field survey for a refurbish project. I'm almost finished, and some asshat from the NYC Bridge Authority comes shouting up at me.
Asshat: You can't be out on this walkway!
Me: Why not? the sign says open to the public?
Asshat: No, it says you can't be here!
Me: Lets walk back and look at what the sign says.
Asshat: Don't make me call the cops on you!
Me: Then why're these five people jogging over the bridge?
Asshat: Hey, did you unlock this gate?
Me: Where would I get a key for a big-ass padlock on some rusty bridge over Jamaica Bay?
Asshat: You better not have! You can't take pictures of this bridge!
Me: Then fix your own fuc-
The salesguy with me took over, started schmoozing the asshat and I took the last few measurements and pictures. The salesguy saved that Bridge Authority cocksmooch from going over the railing. At the time I was about to go nuclear and quit, but a week later it was pretty damn funny, especially when the salesman reenacted it with the Brooklyn accent and all.
Why does my coffee mug smell like trout?
So if a friend of mine comes over to my house, and brings along someone he knows but I've never met, is no friend of mine, and that fellow has a camera with him, I should be perfectly comfortable as this stranger walks around in my house taking pictures at will? It's normal enough to have a friend-of-a-friend be welcome on your property, but I'm pretty sure he'd feel that asking permission to take pictures of my private space would be the proper thing to do, or at least I should hope so. Just because I've invited him in does not mean he will assume he can do whatever he likes there.
..Also happens in a little island (30miles by 10miles) in the UK called the Isle of Man. I was taking some concept photos for my City & Guilds, the title of my peice was Industrialism.
I was down in the harbour, merely shooting some snaps of a gas cylinder, when the security guard for the gas company drives up to me and tells me to move on. When I argued the fact that the 1000's of tourists coming into the docks each year probably have countless photos of the massive & intrusive structures as well - I was told to move on or face prosecution. I was 15 at the time, what is a 15 year old with a pentax mx going to do with a picture of a gas cylinder...really?
Hmph. For such a small community to join in this totatlitarian stance dissappoints me to say the least.
Something needs to be done! The govornment encourages education, but how am I supposed to become educated when what I am trying to educate myself in classifies me as a terrorist!?
g00p.
"Railfans" i.e.e people who love Trains and Railroads and take a lot of pictures have had this problem since Sept. 11. I wish I wasn't at work (for a lot of reasons) because at home I have an article from Trains Magazine about how some railfans have had their photo equipment confiscated. Some have even been arrested (but later had charges dropped). These arrested railfans were photographing from public places, and not trespassing.
Police need to use common sense- if people are wearing dark clothing, and hiding in the woods taking long range telephoto lens pics of stuff, then maybe they are suspicious. But my friends who are railfans are at least as non threatening and gee geeky as my tech friends, and when asked by police they always tell them that what they are doing.
What's next- banning tourists from taking pictures in Washington D.C.?
And by the way, what about maps.google.com????
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Then the police should keepd there nose out of it. If it is not in their mandate as an officer then they should not be doing it on the job. It is my tax money (yes I'm Australian) that pays their wages and I pay them to uphold the law, not dispense advice. Secondly, as they are an authority figure they should be more wary of what they say. It would be inappropriate for them to give the impression something is legally reprehensible when it is not.
Last summer, I was harassed for taking pictures of city buses in Ottawa (federal capital of Canada). Here's my account of the... incident:
I was being hassled by OC transpo security types for taking pictures of buses in the street.
One of them, a woman, was practically in tears about "don't you know what happenned in London", just as if photographing buses would make them blow-up. Poor little creature. I almost wanted to hug her to calm her fears (but she looked too much like whe queen of England and I didn't want to smear myself)...
The whole thing got ugly when they demanded to see some identification; I refused flatly, on matters of principle. Nothing illegal was done; then we went through the usual "if you don't have nothing to hide, why don't you give us some ID" bullshit arguments we always hear.
They then said that they would have to call the police on me.
-- Are you arresting me? I asked.
-- No, you're free to leave.
**BINGO!**
This was a dead giveaway that they are security types, not constables. They cannot arrest and detain somebody for nothing...
So I left at once; but less than a block away, I was intercepted by a fuming policewoman whose demeanor was quite arrogant and disgusting. She neatly parked her car blocking the reserved bus lane on Albert, between Bronson and Commissionners street, a most inconvenient place for buses, right as rush-hour was beginning.
As I was walking calmly, she started to yell at me:
-- "Hey, buddy"!!!
Well, I'm sorry, but that's not a very polite way to introduce yourself. So I ignore her and keep walking slowly up the hill. That girl has to be taught a lesson in respect.
She caught up on me right when I was about to arrive to where I was staying. Never before I have seen such a tremenduous display of fury and nastyness. 120 pounds and 120 decibels of pure, hot and tanned unadulterated flaming bitch. She would be perfect on ALT.FLAME.
She was yelling at me, demanding to see identification.
-- Are you arresting me? I asked again.
-- No, I am detaining you.
Not to take chances (what the fuck "detaining" legally means???), I started to dole out information on a piecemeal basis; like a Québec birth certificate, a perfectly legal, yet totally unknown document.
-- You don't have anything with your address? she hysterically blurted, expecting the standard, run-of-the-mill sacrosanct driver's license, which I don't have...
-- This is all I have (heavily implying "this is all you'll get").
As we argued, three transit security types came about (including the slimy one who said that "I can leave", but the sad girl was gone, though), as well as two city cops came to watch the fun go by.
The two cops (guys) were much nicer (which is easy to do, given the terminal nastyness of the first - I guess even Genghis Khan would seem nice compared to her).
She then asks me for my address. Just as I finish saying the number and the street, before I say "Montréal", she disgustingly blurts out "is this in Gatineau???", like if I was living in a toilet bowl.
As I said "No, Montréal", she demanded my address in Ottawa. So I gave her my friend's address, not wanting to be arrested on charges of homelessness (you never know what slimy dirty trick the pigs will pull on you - during all that time, I carefully stayed on the sidewalk alignment so I would not be charged for trespassing), some 20 feet away - because of this, my friend got in trouble; he was told by his condo administrators that he was "put on probation for bringing-in people who cause trouble", as the whole scene was witnessed by about 30 construction workers working on the condo... But this is a matter for his lawyer, though, and not on topic here.
-- "It's right there, pointing at the condo main door"
-- "I don't believe you, you just made that up!!!!" then blared out of the high-pitched decibel emitter. I suppose I could have borrowed some earplugs from nearb
Having read a newspaper story about the magnificent christmas lights decoration at the US Army housing area not far away, an elderly couple takes a walk to take a look. Too bad they also tried to take a picture. A couple of security guards (not soldiers) come to take the film and look at their ID. The couple refuses, and are forced to wait 45 minutes out in the cold until both MP and local police arrive at the scene. IIRC (from the local news paper article) they could keep their film but the local police checked their IDs and gave the info to the MPs. Guess they will have a hard time getting a visa for the US - if they ever want to go there after this. And all this happened on a public road, no fences, no signs.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Back around 1993 or so, when I was in school working on my civil engineering degree, I had a project that involved, in part, designing a concrete structure for an elevated transit line. My project partner and I decided to take a field trip out to the Brookhaven MARTA station in Atlanta, which has a transit line elevated on a concrete structure, just to see if our design was feasible in a ballpark kind of way.
It was night, and we were in a grassy area beside the parking lot, looking through the fence at the rail line and sketching a few details, and the MARTA police came out to see what we were doing. We assured him that we were engineering students (my scale and scientific calculator seemed to be sufficient proof) and he just told us to finish up and move along. So I guess this sort of thing isn't particularly new.
Post-9/11, we were shooting some video for a project here at work and needed some footage of a water treatment facility. We sent out a couple of co-ops to an Atlanta water treatment facility with a public road running through the middle of it, and they set up the camera (a big, professional camera) to record a bit, but the cops came out and chased them off.
JRjr
If this were last Friday, I'd laugh at that.
Trouble is, last Saturday I was on the ass-end of this exact situation.
I was shooting photos of various houses, and long story short, police come out an do everything but arrest me, as I was doing nothing illegal.
I'm not going to say where, since I'm considering legal action against the other side, but people are f***ing stupid in this country when it comes to security.
"We must get National Security Money to protect our town's Giant Wax Donut from a terrorist attack!!"
Look lady, no one give's a burning rat turd about your pathetic one-horse town's insignificant monument to kickbacks, ok? Hell, news about it is only now reaching Cleveland, and you've had it there for twenty-five years!
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
I'm into B&W analog photography and on one of the message boards I frequent(apug.org) I've heard stories like this from serveral people. In the US it tends to be security guards, park officials, and small town police that are the most problimatic. Some will try to take your film or worse your equipment and don't understand the concept that they don't have the right to do it. In the U.S. you can photograph anything provided you are standing on public ground, with the possible exception of millitary installations and nucular facilities. Alot of photographers have taken to caring pamphlets with them that detail local and federal laws that pertain to photography.
The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum. - O'Toole's Corollary