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Photographers Face Ejection Over Lenses
destinyland writes "Zooomr CEO Thomas Hawk was ejected from a San Francisco art museum because the security guard apparently thought his expensive camera could be used to spy on female employees. Another photographer notes that 'many people consider a professional-looking camera a threat,' and the state of California has even passed a law against telephoto lenses being used to intrude on celebrities' private lives. Hawk is routinely confronting security guards who argue that photographing their buildings represents a 'security threat.' Ironically, four weeks ago while attending Microsoft's Pro Photo Summit, he was told he couldn't even photograph the lobby of a Hyatt Hotel."
The law is clear, in a public place, you are free to photograph anything you want, even other people without their permission. While most police officers are aware of that law, security guards usually are not, and so it is likely that they will give you a hard time about photographing the public facade of a building. Also keep in mind that the law is not clear on photographs where the subject of the picture is on private property but the photographer was standing on public ground.
Palm trees and 8
From the first paragraph of the document you quoted, in bold,
there are no laws prohibiting the taking of photographs on public or private property. If you can be there, you can take pictures there: streets, malls, parking lots, office buildings. You do not need permission to do so, even on private property.
I don't know how much more obvious it could be
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That's not entirely accurate, at least not in the US. The Supreme Court has ruled that shopping malls fulfill the traditional "public square" function, and you are free to conduct political activities on their property, as long as you don't block entrance or exit and don't pollute the area with excessive noise or trash. That's why you can set up a table outside of a grocery store to get people to sign a petition, and when the manager tells you to leave you can tell him to call the cops and have you arrested. Which he won't do, because the police won't arrest you.
I know, I've done this many many times in my younger, more active days, when I tried to get pro-marijuana laws put on the ballot in California.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
If that was true, then you couldn't set up any meaningful kind of CCTV security system.
That is NOT true at all, see Arrington v New York Times Co., 434 N.E.2d 1319 (N.Y. 1982). There isn't an expectation of privacy in public. Shopping malls and other private areas can have restrictions, but they can't restrict taking pictures of the building from a public area. You only need permission and a model release if the photograph is going to be used commercially, which excludes news and "fine art" usage. That means that you can even photograph children in public and sell the picture to a newspaper without anyones permission. If a cop stops you, they can't require that you either show them your pictures, or to delete pictures. Don't trust me, ask a lawyer.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
I worked as a security guard all through my undergrad years (worked dorm security for the university I went to). For the most part it was a great job (quiet and great for study time), but the downside was that you were a total fall guy for your boss's stupidity. They would come up with some inane policy (or just tell you in private "Don't let people do such-and-such") and you were expected to enforce it, or get fired. But you could also get fired if you did enforce it and someone complained about the stupid policy. Most of the security guards I worked with had been "fired" at least once (and, almost always, promptly rehired 2 months later). The worst part was that we got blamed by the public for enforcing the stupid policies (as if we came up with them). I had people yell at me, get in my face, even had a few guys take a swing at me (watch out for the little guys, especially when they're drunk).
So before people blast the guards, they should realize that guards often get conflicting messages and stupid directives from the top. They're just trying to keep their jobs.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Um, no, it's not. That's just one of those things that everyone THINKS is illegal, including cops etc. Airports, at least the big ones, are public property, and as such it is explicitly NOT illegal to take photographs in them, because even if a law saying otherwise was passed tomorrow, it would absolutely fail on the basis of unconstitutionality.
What IS illegal is taking photographs of essentially anything in order to commit a crime of any sort. In fact, there are very few things that one can do to plan a crime that isn't illegal because we have laws against conspiring to commit a crime. If the security guard legitimately believes you are planning a crime, he is welcome to file a police report so that it can be properly investigated. After the 8th or 9th time the cops have to deal with nothing reports, they'll probably just tell him to chill.
Remember, if you actually aren't breaking any laws, it is your civic duty to require all government agents to comply with the laws they are supposed to uphold. If cops are stopping every car on a stretch of road and requesting to search cars, make them get a signed warrant from a sitting judge before they get so much as a glance at the glove compartment. The authorities violate our rights for just two reasons, the first is that they think they can, and the second is that the people giving the orders don't realize how much work it would be if they actually had to do their jobs. Make every cop get a warrant for every search, and I guarantee you'll see a lot less searches (which is the whole point, in case anybody missed it).
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