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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.
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"....
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.
They should just stick to the upskirt pics. That's not illegal in most places.
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?!
The article mentions being 'hauled away by security' for taking photos inside Eastland shopping center. Well, that one's understandable. The shopping center is private property... can't take photos without the property owner's permission.
That the article fails to mention the difference between photots inside someone's property, and from outside the property, is poor journalism.
Not sure which makes more sense though.
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.
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.
This is from a few weeks ago and more careful examination showed that it was a storm in a tea cup. A few people were warned by an individual officer. They were not stopped from taking photos and it is not police policy.
It was simply one police office making a comment.
It must be a slow news week.
"Do you think we could wipe out world hunger forever if scientists figured out how to make AOL's Free CD's edible?"-
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.
We've got to stop and ask ourselves 'How many photographs do we need?'
Trust me, I work for the government.
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.
"... after he photographed gas storage cylinders at the city's Shell oil refinery" This seems to be sensitive and could have caused trouble if such pictures land up in the hands of terrorists. I have seen terrorists blowing up gas pipelines at oil-refineries in my country, and believe me, it is really an issue. But the fact that were told not to photograph industrial installations seems too stretched. The police don't have the right to ban public photography anyway.
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
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.
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.
He should have called the police, filed a report for false arrest and sued the company for destruction of property.
The actions of a private security force are not the responsibility of the government, and they are restricted by the same laws as the rest of us. This isn't the government cracking down on terrorist bogeymen, this is a private security force that needs to be informed they aren't cops.
Learn your rights, and stand up for them.
Now this is, of course, assuming your friend wasn't doing something illegal while taking the pictures like tresspassing, which is illegal and would get him in trouble. This would actually be what I would suspect, given my past experiences with such things. I've had a number of "rent-a-cops breaking the law" stories related to me in my life, most in person. Initally, it always sounds like the security force was in the wrong and, of course, I advocate standing up for one's rights as always. However it then usually comes out that the person involved was doing something they shouldn't have: Tresspassing, shoplifting, whatever.
Either way, my advice for the future: If private security tells you to stop taking pictures while you are on public land, tell them to get lost (do make sure you are on public land, not their property). If they try to detain you, get your cell phone out and threaten to call the police, while backing away. If they push the issue, make the call. If they do detain you and take your property, file a police report, and contact a lawyer about a civil suti. It IS illegal.
Security forces can temporarily detain a person only under very limited circumstances, such as if they are on the private property they are hired to protect, and they have witnessed the person comitting an illegal act (like shoplifting). Otherwise, they are just civilians in a silly uniform. If they try to grab you for something like taking photos on a public street, they'll lose their jobs at the very least.
They lend a helping hand to what they are interested in.
Err, your point?
The NRA lends a helping hand when they are interested too. If I have a problem with my gun rights, I'll call the NRA. If I have a problem with my freedom of speech or illegal search and seizure, I'll call the ACLU. If I want a pizza, I will call Dominoes (actually, I just walk over to the pizza shop next door, they are much better).
What exactly is your point? That the ACLU isn't all things to everyone? Oh, okay. One point for you. Is the ACLU the go to place for freedom of speech and illegal search and seizure issues? Absolutely. One point for me.
Oh look, we would have tied if we were playing the same game.
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.
Prior to WWII, back when Russia and Germany had relatively friendly relations, a lot of German 'tourists' visited the USSR and had their photographs taken by various strategic landmarks, such as bridges and tunnels. The photographs intentionally included the nearby signs, which provided important parameters such as clearance and maximum allowable load. Once this information was systematically compiled, the Germans had an unprecedented knowledge of their future enemy's infrastructure, enabling them to plan troop and weapon deployments with an incredible level of detail.
Procrastination Man strikes again!
Apparently it looks exactly like an innocent tourist video, which proves that it's really a cunning tradecraft terrorist video. Yep.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Because if it was private security, the first thing your friend should have done was call the police and have the security guards arrested for theft and/or destruction of personal property. It is not legal for them to do that. They can ask you to stop taking pictures and if you actually are on their property then you must comply, but they cannot take your film. Well, at least not without a court order.
Check out the Photographer's Right.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
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.
Prosecutors claimed that this was part of an ongoing economic jihad. I really wish I was joking.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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.
You've never been warned by an Australian copper, have you ?
And of course a matter of definition.
If you kill an innocent, it's murder.
If the gov't kills an innocent, it's collateral damage.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Whilst I don't condone the boring nature of what they were doing, I thought this might interest people outside the UK or with medium term memory loss.
Plane-spotters 'ignored warnings'
"They were held in prison for almost six weeks, before being released on bail and allowed to return to Britain."
Brocklesby Park Cricket Club
It wasn't a "Police ban" or "restriction".
Some cops just warned them against it. They can photograph all they want and theres not a damn thing the police can do about it.
It's called a chilling effect.
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
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
You can't photograph the Eiffel Tower either. At least not at night.
This is just yet another nail in the coffin of freedom, in another (once democratic) country.
Won? No-one can WIN in a cold war, because it's more of paranoia than war. US is in the edge of new cold war, this time against terrorists. And the definition of terrorist is growing day by day.
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
This madness has occurred in the U.S. too, in the fall of 2003 to cartoonist Wes Oleszewski, who does an aviation comic strip called Klyde Morris. Klyde is the first ant who becomes a commercial pilot. Just as with Doonesbury, the strip often shows well-known buildings with balloons of the conversations inside.
Oleszewski wanted to be able to draw a better representation of the FAA's building.
Oleszewski tried to take pictures of the FAA headquarters building in Washington, D.C. but was told photographs were forbidden for security reasons.
The inital series of three cartoon strips on what happended start here. There's a follow up on the story here.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
just said "Don't do that again".
When a cop says 'Don't do that again', how do you interpret that? Do you say 'up yours and do it again'? What happens then? Does he smile and say 'I'm just warning you, have a nice day'? Or does he say 'I told you not to do that! You are under arrest for disobeying an officer! You are getting beaten with a night stick for resisting arrest! You are being shot because I fucking feel angry at your resistance to my orders!'
Here is a video of a police office in the United States shooting a man three times while the man is obeying the officer's orders! Do you think that this is the first time that this has happened? And yet you seem to think that it is insignificant when a policeman gives a warning against legal activity! Are you fucking stupid?!?!?!? When a cop gives you a warning/order you are taking your life into your own hands if you disobey. A warning from a police officer, legal or not, is a direct threat to you and if there is no legal grounds for that threat and you are not outraged by it, then you deserve the night sticking that so many others have gotten!
>...by the FAA, not buy the first guy with a camera to ask. Title 14: Aeronautics and Space PART 91-GENERAL OPERATING AND FLIGHT RULES Subpart C-Equipment, Instrument, and Certificate Requirements ...
(b) No person may operate a civil aircraft unless the
airworthiness certificate required by paragraph (a) of this
section or a special flight authorization issued under
91.715 is displayed at the cabin or cockpit entrance so
that it is legible to passengers or crew.
And the guy said he was a passenger on that flight, so it's gotta be where he can ask to take a look at it. You just failed your written test...don't cry, you can take it again after you get your CFI to give you an endorsement saying he's given you some additional training...time for you to hit the Gleim books again...
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.