Slashdot Mirror
Ban On Photographing Near Gulf Oil Booms
boombaard writes "The day before yesterday CNN's Anderson Cooper reported that, from now on, there is a new rule in effect, which de facto bars photographers from coming within 65 feet of any deployed boom or response vessel around Deepwater Horizon (official announcement). The rule, announced by the US Coast Guard, forbids 'photographers and reporters and anyone else from coming within 65 feet of any response vessel or booms out on the water or on beaches. In order to get closer, you have to get direct permission from the Coast Guard captain of the Port of New Orleans,' while 'violators could face a fine of $40,000 and Class D felony charges. What's even more extraordinary is that the Coast Guard tried to make the exclusion zone 300 feet, before scaling it back to 65 feet.'" Read below for the Coast Guard's statement on the new rule.
"The Coast Guard Captain of the Port of New Orleans has delegated authority to the Coast Guard Incident Commander in Houma to allow access to the safety zones placed around all Deepwater Horizon booming operations in Southeast Louisiana. The Coast Guard Incident Commander will ensure the safety of the members and equipment of the response before access is granted. The safety zone has been put in place to prevent vandalism to boom and to protect the members and equipment of the response effort by limiting access to, and through, deployed protective boom."
What's the problem? Not like anything interesting is going on around there.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
how exactly is this a ban? 65 feet seems a more than reasonable safety barrier and what photographer is going to say "shit, 65 feet, better leave as can't take photos at that range".
What a crappy title. 65 feet ( 20m ) doesn't bar photography "near" a boom, it keeps idiots from bumping up against it. Unless photographers are using 1970 Instamatics, this should provide no obstacle to any serious photographer.
From the submitter's own link of the official announcement:
NEW ORLEANS - The Captains of the Port for Morgan City, La., New Orleans, La., and Mobile, Ala. , under the authority of the Ports and Waterways Safety Act, has established a 20- meter safety zone surrounding all Deepwater Horizon booming operations and oil response efforts taking place in Southeast Louisiana.
Vessels must not come within 20 meters of booming operations, boom, or oil spill response operations under penalty of law.
The safety zone has been put in place to protect members of the response effort, the installation and maintenance of oil containment boom, the operation of response equipment and protection of the environment by limiting access to and through deployed protective boom.
In areas where vessels operators cannot avoid the 20-meter rule, they are required to be cautious of boom and boom operations by transiting at a safe speed and distance.
Violation of a safety zone can result in up to a $40,000 civil penalty. Willful violations may result in a class D felony.
Permission to enter any safety zone must be granted by the Coast Guard Captain of the Port of New Orleans by calling 504-846-5923.
For information about the response effort, visit www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com.
There's no mention of photography, camera, or anything of that nature. If you get your vessel within 20m of a protective boom, you're a total moron regardless of whether or not you happen to have a camera.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
The reports of journalists being more unofficially banned from beaches where BP contractors are "cleaning" up the oil or from flying over the affected areas of the gulf.
which de facto bars photographers from coming within 65 feet of any deployed boom
Which bars ANYONE from coming within 65 feet of any deployed boom so that they dont break the boom.
FTFY
That's odd, none of the official documents say anything about photographers. The poster even fits in a quote mentioning photographers explicitly, and words it so that if you're not paying attention it implies that it's an official quote. This is sensationalist journalism at its best. Why are photographers trying to get that close anyway? With my consumer-grade camera I can take a close-up portrait of someone from rather further away than that.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
This would be a great time to start updating those satellite photos of the gulf
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
I'm a hobbyist photographer and videographer, and I've been hassled for ID before when shooting in a public place. I read plenty of stories about photographers being harassed improperly, and reading the article I don't think this is one of them. They started at 300ft, which was silly, and scaled it back to 65ft when called on it. Leaving aside the who and why, 65 feet doesn't make this stuff hard to photograph. Even with a 200mm lens on a digital SLR (especially crop sensor) you can get very serviceable shots of "what's going on" at 65ft. Professional press photographers on assignment usually have a healthier complement of lenses than that, before considering telconverters, cropping in on the subject and so on.
If the story is something highly specific to do with equipment and handling of it then perhaps you need an even bigger lens or to be closer to the subject. But if you're taking shots of how they're laying out booms, who's involved and so on, 65ft isn't a big deal at all. Seems like a not unreasonable tradeoff to keep people from getting under the workers' feet. The subjective standard I'm applying here is does the restriction make it likely we'll not find out something that the public interest demands should be disclosed? No, it really doesn't.
President Hayward asked congress today to pass his new budget before the summer recess
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Really? This is a /. worthy story?
Starting to be ashamed to be a member. What happened to tech stories and stuff?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
I dislike pretty much everything the Obama administration is doing, but I have to say that here the simplest answer is most likely the correct one.
I think the no-fly zone (which applies only to flight levels below 3000') is more likely to prevent mid-air collisions from casual sightseers getting in the way of coast card and BP aircraft, and from every inattentive rubbernecking pilot who just wants to go check it out. It may require a bit more intelligence to get a flight certificate than a driver's license, but common sense and intelligence are all too often independent from one another.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
or Daily Kos, or any other news outlet that isn't owned by Rupert Murdoch: This is being used to hassle anyone coming near the site, 65 ft or not.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
But this is a common sense distance.
65 feet (20 meters) is an entirely reasonable safety margin for this situation. A good current could push you 20 meters faster than you can respond, causing you to crash into the equipment (that would be Bad [TM]).
Any photographer (professional or dilettante) who can't capture a picture of this equipment from that distance is an utterly hopeless moron. All the more reason for not allowing them even closer.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The no fly zone isn't a no fly zone.
It's a don't go under 3000 feet or you might hit someone trying to fix this mess and kill even more people.
They have telephoto lenses. They can get perfectly usable pictures from beyond 65 feet. It seems perfectly reasonable to keep people away while cleanup personnel are trying to do their jobs.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The official announcement was that the exclusion area was 20 metres, not 65 feet. I would have thought that most people reading Slashdot would be able to do the conversion -- if not, go ask a six year old how to do it. Good too see that the US forces are starting to think metric.
The title of this article is an absolute embarrassment. This is beyond inaccurate, it's inflammatory. Photography is not banned. A reasonable safety margin has been set around the response equipment and boats - and it's about fucking time. Scuba divers and other special activities are routinely given a 75 foot (more or less) safety margin, and it seems absolutely reasonable to make everyone stay clear while these people are trying to work. Frankly, 300 feet would have been completely reasonable. It's bad enough this "news" is already ancient (par for the course on /. lately), but now we have to deal with mind-boggling bias... is this /. or Greenpeace?
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Professional photographer had access to more powerful lenses than what's on an iPhone.
I can only imagine this being the end of photo-journalism as we know it.
Flickr is as good as dead
Coast Guard
Because we all can't be seamen!
I take from this that you don't live within 1000 miles of a body of water deep enough to float a rubber duckie.
Except that is made kinda difficult when they're all housed in BP housing, transported to and from work sites on BP transportation, and probably not wanting to lose their BP monies for chatting with Anderson Cooper.
You can photograph the booms. This is preventing issues that were happening when booms were first deployed: boaters going over booms, for example. I like my solution better: intentionally or negligently damaging a boom is punishable by a hole in the hull of your boat. Would work great so long as there aren't so many Boston Whalers out there.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
So, if you accidentally get too close to a boom, beach or oiled up critter, you're in the same category as someone who encourages minors to engage in obscene sexual acts? Just the same as said perv, you may be labeled a felon, and you could also stand to lose rights such as the ones below?
It all seems a bit excessive to me. If people really are out there being mischievous and endangering the safety of vessels and workers, fine. But, the government doesn't really need new rules to lay the smackdown on random troublesome assholes, do they? There are already laws which could be applied, so, one really can take this as a limitation specifically designed for journalists.
* Well, I could see how going through a felony conviction like this, for something so innocent, would make you want to shoot the SOB(s) who thought this was a good idea.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
I mean, seriously - 65 feet? You think that will stop somebody from taking a picture? That's bloody trivial, even with cheep lenses.
Even their original plans for a 300 foot ban would just mean the photographers would need to bring a different lens.
There is no integrity here. It's a Kdawson post.
How does this go on and on and on with these terrible misleading summaries etc. out of him?
Why is getting closer than 65ft bad enough to be fined $40K or slapped with a Felony?
What's the problem as long as long as nobody touches the boom?
Scary much?
That's like a friggin electric fence that blows your life apart.
I'll take care of my own safety, thank you, and I'm not talking about interfering with the boom, so spare me the straw men.
Why so harsh?
What if I walk along the beach, some of the poorly installed boom has washed up and I accidentally get closer than 65ft?
Can a pencil neck prosecutor who needs votes for a close election take my life apart?
Nah. Never happen.
I don't play Lacrosse.
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
What a crappy title. 65 feet ( 20m ) doesn't bar photography "near" a boom, it keeps idiots from bumping up against it. Unless photographers are using 1970 Instamatics, this should provide no obstacle to any serious photographer.
I beg to differ, I had planned to do a series of night shots of booms with a Holga and an LED flashlight. I insight my "right" to engage in dangerous night missions that may lead to equipment damage be respected!
Hey, some serious photographers use Holgas...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Are you saying that their supervisor isn't going to notice them giving an interview in front of a journalist and camera crew in the middle of the clean-up site, but will notice if they duck off away from the work zone for a minute? I suspect BP might also notice if they're on national TV from the clean-up site giving an interview, so it won't matter if Anderson Cooper interviews them inside or outside the exclusion zone if they're worried about losing pay over it.
Where the hell is the editorial review? The title and summary of the slashdot article have nothing to do with the linked article. Do you people not read the linked articles? What a waste of time.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6496749n
That's video shot by a national news outlet, of a US Coast Guard officer, threatening the news crew with arrest if they don't comply with a BP policy. Color of law, anyone?
More: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=bp+photographers+blockade
Search youtube, too. A lot of people with video recorders are getting harassed by local cops and sheriff departments.
Please help metamoderate.
If only there were some sort of optical technology that would allow photographers to "zoom" in on things 65 feet away. Some sort of "telephoto" thing.
It may not be just the journalists, who are aware of the issues and careful with what they do, but how about the hordes of rubberneckers out for a spin? Those booms do not sit high in the water, so it does not take much of a wave to push oil over the top of them. I could just imagine a tourist motoring along at half-plane, looking at the oil, inadvertently washing most of it over the top of the boom in his wake.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Of course the purpose of the ban is clear to anyone with a brain cell (BP and your government are in bed together in wanting to cover up the real results of your governments failure to protect its citizens)
And what does a whopping 20 metre distance do to aid a cover up? Hell, we've got footage of a pipe under the sea pumping out gallons of oil, but you think they're doing something else that's not only worse, but also visible only up close?
I isn't their job to be making official statements, and they know nothing more than the job they are doing - "I'm picking up this oily mud and putting it in that bucket, but you knew that already so stop bugging me!"
The journalists should be kept out of that type of work area, for everyone's sake.
Oh, and here's a statement - by me, not anyone else -
"Support the clean-up - Buy BP."
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
If a photographer can't get the picture they want from 65 feet away, they need to find another line of work. I just play with cameras, but I've got a lens that, on a clear cold night, can get a decent picture of the flipping moon. No, didn't cost a fortune. Less that a grand actually.
Photo bans can be even worse, see this one in which photos of the Miami metro were blocked by rent-a-cops:
http://carlosmiller.com/2010/07/01/we-were-permanantly-banned-from-the-miami-dade-metrorail-for-taking-photos/
Why is this an issue?
If journalists want to get pictures of oil, it's all over the fucking place.
I want to see pictures of a nuke being loaded up on a ship so we can get this well plugged, PRONTO.
If ever there was a good reason to use a nuclear weapon, this is it.
Eh, well, I confess, using a TV journalist wasn't a great example...it was just fresh in mind from TFS. Better example: if a newspaper journalist is able to talk to a lot of workers, they might be able to pry loose useful information. Said newspaper reporter can usefully offer anonymity that isn't very feasible for the TV reporter doing on-the-spot reporting. Since they're not showing the source on camera and have spoken to many workers, firing them all would probably be untenable. So I do think functionally keeping journalists away from workers does present some real difficulties. The question is, what is the right level of access. If this were at a company facility, there'd be no question in my mind that the access can be as limited as the company wants. What makes it a little troubling for me is that this is a disaster taking place on a tremendously large expanse of public property. Declaring large swaths of public property off limits to journalists bothers me a bit. Likewise, many of the workers aren't making a career of working for BP. Rather, they're people who have had their livelihoods destroyed by the actions of BP, and they're doing the work that they're doing b/c they want to try to get back to normal and because they don't have any other way to make a buck. Hearing their stories and what they make of their work and the clean-up effort seems like an important part of the narrative of what's taking place. But if they're de facto un-interviewable b/c of rules like this, well, that also bothers me a bit. I don't really believe BP deserves any protection from what its victims might say about it, regardless of whether or not said victims are currently getting money from BP to help out.
20 meters away from booms, no problem.
20 meters away from "booming operations?" Hm, what's the definition of that? How large is a "booming operations" area? 500 meters? 1 kilometer? 1 mile? I suspect it's "Whatever the BP guy tells the local enforcement folks it is," which I'd have a problem with. Does "booming operations" cover the employees doing the booming when they're off-duty? "Congratulations, you've just tried to interview a someone who was laying boom 6 hours ago about the ban on respirators, here's your Class D Felony indictment."
fencepost
just a little off
65 feet away you can still snap a 50000 km2 spill...
So, I don't really see the problem.
There are plenty of cover-ups going on near that oil spill, but this isn't one of them. Also, it is the coast guard making the rule, not BP, making it less suspicious to me :-)
Instead of saying "the day before yesterday", i find it easier to say, "two days ago"
This concept can be applied to other statements, such as;
The day before the day before yesterday becomes three days ago.
Thanks
Slight of hand is about distraction with one hand while doing something with another. The booms are the distraction, who cares about the booms? These four words are the meat and potatoes of this; "and oil response efforts". I watched the CNN guy's report and he was discussing how reporters weren't allowed near a med station treating workers. They were also shooed away from the shots of the birds. "Oil response efforts" is a pretty broad brush and I am sure it covers workers. It's probably hard to interview someone from 20 meters away.
Again, I say, forget the booms. Why would they not want reporters around the med station or the birds? This is a Democrat ran administration, and classically Democrats have lots of touchy-feely tree huggers who seriously love showing such events so that they can punctuate their political goals. Anything less that 100% transparency on this, especially to the "Clinton News Network", seems a bit out of character to me. If they use this to stonewall reporters from other things, this should be alarming to us. If it's just about the booms, who cares? Staying 20 meters away something named a "Boom" sounds like a good idea and I don't even know what one is. One could run up and bite me and I wouldn't know it. But staying out of one's way sounds like just good sense. But is that just the slight of hand?
What I find more interesting is the motivation to do any slight of hand to begin with? It's not like we haven't seen oil spills before, so what's the big deal? It's not like it's a cover up, it can be seen from space and we have known about it for months. I think the clue is a.) keeping them away from the med station and b.) keep them away from the gathered wild life. This makes me want to ask, is there something screwy going on with this particular oil spill in regards to how it's effecting the wildlife and those working the spill? Has any independent labs/scientists/geeks gathered up any samples of the wild life effected? Or done any tests on this oil that is washing up?
What is the worse that could be happening? Is there some ancient bacteria in this oil that is now released into our ecosystem? Is there some new toxic hell in this stuff that will present us with some new nightmare to deal with and they just want to keep us all from panicking? Or is this just about the booms and perhaps BP with all of it's money trying to keep from looking like the douchebags that they are? All of the above? None of the above? What?
Take the Red Pill.
See BP Fails Booming School 101 (mirror one, mirror two)
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Boats? Fine. Why are they banning photographers from taking photos from the shorelines?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
1. Rent a hot air baloon.
2. Get a good zoom lens.
3. Pick a safe echelon and fly over the blooms.
4. Avoid being brought down by military / AF.
5. Photograph.
6. Profit. News could certainly benefit from good quality aerial photography of the incident.
Yep, the tin foil-hatters are having a field day with this one. They're saying the next step is FEMA concentration camps and microchipping.
Seriously, this does seem like a real civil liberties violation. But imagine 20 TV news teams swarming cleanup workers on beaches on in their boats...
I can't look anymore.
The Admin and the Engineer
You do not have a constitutional right to hit me in the face with a frying pan.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The US Government likes the metric system, it is the US population at large that doesn't care about it. I'm not interested in getting in to an argument about that, it simply is the case. Also, the US begin a republic with strong democratic underpinnings, trying to force people to switch if they don't want to is a non-starter.
However internally, the government uses metric near exclusively. When I was a surveyor's assistant everything was in US units, of course, for normal construction jobs. We'd get the plans from the design firm, load them in to our gun (computer controlled digital theodolite) and go. Measurements were taken in feet. However we did a government job at one point. That was all meters. No problem, we told the gun it was to operate in metric mode, uploaded the job, and measured in meters.
There's actually quite a bit of metric in the US, it is just average, day to day, stuff that is largely not.
Why the fuck should a journalist be allowed to interfere in other people's work and cause a safety hazard, jsut because they have to have close up immediate access to someone at a particular time? Can they not interview people when they've stopped working?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
...is to file for copyright on millions of images and thousands of hours of video of oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico. Followed shortly by hundreds of lawsuits against news agencies for copyright infringement.
Oh take the tin foil hat off. The "no fly zone" (TFR, temporary flight restriction) is very common with all incidents that require lots of low level flying, for example firefighting. You can still overfly the area, just not at an altitude where you're mixing it up with all the helicopters and aircraft that are engaged directly in monitoring the disaster. You can still go as low as 3,001 feet and take as many photos or as much video as you like.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
No ones figured out why this is a problem yet? I'll spell it out for you... The majority of the damage being done is to small barrier islands off the coast of Louisiana. Those islands are completely wrapped in boom. If you can not come within 65 feet of the boom and the boom completely wraps the island, you can't go to the island at all.
I thought that was the location of the reset button.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I like the bit about being allowed to get close to the ground for landing. So considerate. Goverment press releases, they can't help but make you smile.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This is pretty scary...um http://www.helium.com/items/1864136-hohttp://www.helium.com/items/1864136-how-the-ultimate-bp-gulf-disaster-could-kill-millionsw-the-ultimate-bp-gulf-disaster-could-kill-millions
Real men don't need signitures!!!
Class D Felonies:
Maximum prison term: Less than 10 years but 5 or more years.
Maximum Fine: $ 250,000
Maximum Supervised Release Term: 3 years.
Special Assessment on Conviction: $ 100
Federal A: Life or Death
Federal E: More than 1 year but less than 5 years.
Classes of offenses under United States federal law
Since 1790, the Coast Guard has served as America's principal "law of the sea" agency. Originally established by Alexander Hamilton as the Revenue Marine, the Coast Guard began with the mission of enforcing import tariffs. Since then its maritime-security responsibilities have expanded exponentially...to include the enforcement of all federal laws at sea--from stopping terrorists and pirates to enforcing vessel-safety regulations and fisheries conservation laws to interdicting drug and migrant smugglers. Missions - Maritime Security
I spent 7 years as the Disaster Preparedness Officer for the National Guard. I can tell you that one of the biggest issues we dealt with was all those people "who have a right" to go around barriers, into restricted areas, places where they can get killed, and generally get in the way of the recovery effort.
I had a guy argue with me for a while, all the time yelling at me that he "had a right" to go into the restricted area - we had leaking propane on top of everything else and our job was to make sure no one got blown up while cleaning up the mess. I finally told him that I had a right to shoot his ass with my M-16 if he didn't back off right NOW! And to get out of our way before I had him thrown in the brig.
Things go wrong in a recovery effort; they always do. You are working 20 hour days, with too few resources, with equipment scraped together, and the last thing you need is the press or some local wanker telling you what you should be doing differently.
These suck up resources that could go towards the recovery effort. It's no fun to be out there on the front lines while some know-it-all tells you all the things you are doing wrong, without actually contributing one iota towards the effort, and pissing off the men and women trying to do their job. Join the Guard if you want to help; otherwise STFU!
who does the coast guard think they are? Nazi Germany?
what a terrible law that should be repealed.
photographers aren't killing the coast, they're just reporting on the atrocities.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Wonder how long it will take for the geniuses in the field to figure out that if you create a barrier out of booms, along the width of the beach, you've now effectively blocked off the entire area.
You could effectively totally block several miles of beach by the simple placement of a few 100 feet of boom on either end. No different than a police barrier or crime scene tape. "Do not pass".
Except that's not what they're selling us here, supposedly. 65 feet my ass.
Except this is not a "photo ban", it's a "everyone ban". They want to just keep everyone at least 20 meters away from everything for safety. That includes photographers and non photographers alike. So it is nowhere near the same thing at all. As always it's about creating Shock factor in the headline.
Three words:
Safety
Zoom Lens
This isn't surprising at all. All it takes is some idiot to get his prop tangled in one of those, or an angry idiot to vandalize it, to make it even more useless. There are a ton of zoom lenses capable of spanning 65 feet to get a picture.
Climb up high on the boat, put a zoom and polarized filter on (to get through surface reflections on the water) and take the picture.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
From the actual release:
FTFA at NewsBusters.org:
This is not about reporters and photographers. This about preventing accidents. It sounds to me like Cooper and company are pissed that they are not getting special treatment and are required seek permission and access like everyone else.
I notice that there was no mention of CNN or any other news organization applying for access to an area, let alone being denied access. Did they bother to apply, or did they just start whining that they had to follow some rules to help ensure the safety and security of everyone involved?
Sounds to me like Cooper et al. are whining because some safety rules have been set up that inconvenience them instead of inconveniencing or endangering those who are actually doing the clean up and the equipment being used.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I cannot be as pissed off as the people having to directly live with this oil spill and cleanup debacle but I'm pretty po'd at the whole thing.
HOWEVER, keeping idiot "photographers" 65 feet away from operating equipment in my opinion isn't even far enough. You're in the water, you're subject to tides, waves, current, winds, etc and so is the equipment they're trying to "photograph". Equipment operators have a bad enough job and now they have to deal with "paparazzi"? You cannot hit the breaks in the water. 65 feet is pretty much nothing. Should be at least 200.
Well, that's kind of the point: you don't want people messing with the booms, and if they try to get over the booms to the island, it seems pretty likely to me that they might be damaging them. I mean, how is a boat going to cross the boom without damaging it?
Ya! right! Lets hide disaster, out of sight, out of mind, that what it is about !!!
When I was a student journalist in high school and college 30-some years ago, we had a thing for the camera called a telephoto lens. I guess photojournalists don't have such a thing any longer. So much for the advances of technology.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Maybe they are also working with the Miami-Dade Police Department and a private security firm to set a precedent...
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
Exactly! All it takes is some idiots to screw something up and rules like this are made to try to deter them. Idiots are quite ingenious so this will not stop them much but it will provide a legal means to get back at them in a vengeful way which likely will not be anymore effective than just yelling at them. (Unless they are fools and need something more blunt to make an impression.)
The problem is that these sort of laws are like designing software for idiots; you end up causing more trouble for the majority trying to make something fool proof that the fools will still cause troubles with; increasing the complexity just adds to the troubles (which in law helps employ lawyers who are arguably the biggest lobby.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
65 feet is only a couple of boat-lengths. That's pretty close. If I was working those booms, I'd be worried about any boat that close running over or afoul of the boom.
So photographers are limited to 65ft. How close can other people get? Is that still 300ft? My guess is that reporters are belly-aching because they can't get close enough to dip a gloved hand into the oil and show it to the camera.
Um... you overlooked FAR 91.119a. You need to be able to land "safely" if the engine fails. This doesn't necessarily mean that you need to be able to glide to shore, but you do need to give yourself time to react. There's no set limit, but you should be able to justify your choice in a little room with a bright light.
Please correct the blatantly disingenuous headline. There is no ban here. The headline writer should be modded down to obscurity. Sheesh!
Anderson Cooper is ADMITTEDLY CIA, and he is the heir to the Astor
Fortune! This guy is part of "Operation Mockingbird".
"Anderson Cooper Admittedly Is CIA. His Mother Is Gloria Vanderbilt. Cooper is Next In Line To Inherit The Vast Vanderbilt And Astor Fortune."
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/120962
"Anderson Cooper has long traded on his biography, carving a niche for himself as the most human of news anchors. But there's one aspect of his past that the silver-haired CNN star has never made public: the months he spent training for a career with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Following his sophomore and junior years at Yale--a well-known recruiting ground for the CIA--Cooper spent his summers interning at the agency's monolithic headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in a program for students interested in intelligence work. His involvement with the agency ended there, and he chose not to pursue a job with the agency after graduation, according to a CNN spokeswoman, who confirmed details of Cooper's CIA involvement to Radar."
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2006/09/anderson-coopers-cia-secret.php
Is Anderson Cooper CIA?
http://open.salon.com/blog/billmeradeia/2010/03/26/is_anderson_cooper_cia
"Anderson Cooper was admittedly in the CIA and is part of the elite Astor family"
Alex Jones Behind the Scenes of CNN's Attack Piece
http://www.infowars.com/alex-jones-inside-cnn-attack-piece/
Operation Mockingbird: CIA Media Manipulation
http://www.prisonplanet.com/analysis_louise_01_03_03_mockingbird.html
MOCKINGBIRD The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA
http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MOCK/mockingbird.html
Operation Mockingbird
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=anderson+cooper+Astor+Fortune&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=36ec6be010d257f
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=anderson+cooper+CIA&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=36ec6be010d257f
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=Operation+Mockingbird&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=36ec6be010d257f
The Truth is a Virus!!!
ASK THE COAST GUARD FOR PERMISSION BEFORE POTENTIALLY INTERFERING WITH A CRITICAL OPERATION.
Interference doesn't and shouldn't include presence within 65 feet of booming that's essentially being put along every damn mile of gulf shoreline. Don't touch the booming? OK. Don't get within 10 feet of the booming? Sure, I can understand that, a little buffer zone is fine. Don't get within 20 feet? Sorry, once you're past 10 times most people's actual reach, you're going to have to come up with a very specific and watertight explanation about how getting that close constitutes "interference" for me to believe that it's really about that instead of a photography blackout.
If they deny requests from 95% of "photographers", half of whom are from the "mom picked up an SLR and now she's starting a photography business with it despite no knowledge of shutter speed and aperture", I'm still all for it.
While we're at it, let's also make sure that there's a minimum bar for commenting on the internet. Could help us cut down on noise from would-be fascists and BP shills.
Tweet, tweet.
The word you're looking for, and the one missing from the helium.com piece, is clathrate a naturally occurring lattice or cage construction consisting of two disparate molecules.
Methane clathrate, prevalent at ocean depths, and in areas with low temperatures, is commonly known as the ice that burns.
It's also being touted as the new alternative energy source, with Russia, Korea, and many others seeking ways to extract this resource before rising temperatures release it naturally.
The only rub is that clathrates are highly unstable, and it doesn't take much to break the lattice, releasing both molecules, oft times quite explosively.
Truth be told, when DWH blew, the first thing that crossed my mind was that they'd accidentally released a pocket of clathrate and that set this whole disaster in motion.
New Scientist had an excellent article on this subject last June, unfortunately it's not made it past the pay wall to be cited.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Hell, we've got footage of a pipe under the sea pumping out gallons of oil, but you think they're doing something else that's not only worse, but also visible only up close?
As one example, there have been numerous stories of additional large oil/gas plumes forming underwater near the ruptured well. However, it seems that getting near enough to these plumes to figure out what's going on will be difficult when there is an Exclusion Zone set up for a large distance around them.
The cynic in me notes that proper estimates of the leakage into these plumes could increase the official tally of the amount of oil/gas escaping into the Gulf and thereby increase BP's financial liability.
Home of the brave ... hahahahaha.
After many years, decided to finally register and and clarify my ^^^ post ^^^ for all /. Landlubbers.
When you've got a 1,000 foot long, 200 foot wide ship bouncing around the ocean, they tend to not notice small craft in close proximity. 65 feet in the open sea is about 1 foot on land. Consider this a 'do-not touch' sign on a cattle fence. Let me clarify, boats do not have breaks.
Anderson Cooper does not own the oil booms, he does not own the water, he does not have the right to touch or interfere with property at sea.
This is to prevent stupid Richy-rich journalists from borrowing a boat and getting keel-hauled under 1,000 feet of tanker. This is to prevent do-gooders from getting tangled up in an oil slick and drowning, forcing ALL NEARBY CRAFT to LEGALLY come and rescue them, abandoning whatever efforts they were currently exerting to stop the mess.
You see, to us old salts, these types of people are just annoying pricks who will sue you for crushing them, breaking them, or drowning them after they screw up and wreck your boat, your property, and your life.
I couldn't agree more.. 65 feet seems really close, probably a bit on the unsafe side, and closer than needed for photography of the spill.
And let's face it, if you can't get a fantastic shot of something large (i.e.: a giant oil spill, not a flea) from 100 feet away, you're either badly equipped or lacking in talent. Getting closer will not help you much.
Of course, we're quick to assume this is impinging on freedom of the press, but the last thing we need is some idiot reporter getting his boat hung up in the boom and damaging it because he was 5' away and a big wave pushed his boat into it.
-Matt
OK. Pre June 28, team of photographers went to gulf. They presented their trip at TEDx Oil Spill conference in DC, along with other speakers. Afterwards chatted with Darron Collins (WWF, one of that team). He definitely confirmed that at beaches, anyway, BP asserted legal jurisdiction, had "blackwater" looking security guys hanging around - AND KEPT THEM 100 FEET AWAY FROM WATERS'S EDGE. Also, fishing boat captains who took up BP's offer to sweep oil, manage booms, etc. had to sign a gag order agreement on talking about anything and could not take non-BP-approved journalists along. All clearly intended to control information that would make BP look bad or not be "on message", to adopt a bushism. They managed to find one guy with a skiff who had no love for BP to run them around some. Also a seaplane was hired for aerial photos. I imagine that BP wants more restrictions imposed after an early flurry of "unauthorized" media coverage - but a FELONY? Anyway video of conference here http://tedxoilspill.com/live/#Session1 - look at about 32 minutes in and go on from there. Also from that conference was impressed by slide of Blue Crab Larvae with accumulations of oil/dispersant? (orange blobs in words of researcher at Tulane who sent slide to Darron just before conf. Screen captures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/fly_geyser/sets/72157624410128020/) Potential economic impact, not to mention crimps on "shrimp on the barbie" events of basic food chain life forms, is significant for American food supply. We are talking the biggest food marketing system on the planet here - VERY good reason to control the flow of info if you can't control the flow of your crude blowout. Sir, we/ve established motive.
...that's the beauty of time travel...bye
I loathe the oil industry in all its incarnations, but 65' (would that be 20 meters?) is VERY close to operational heavy machinery in a marine environment. And yes, with a decent lens you'll be reading the "Mom & BP" tattoos on the roughnecks.
These are not the droids you're looking for.
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
Considering most fire trucks display a warning to stay FIVE HUNDRED FEET back, 65 feet seems pretty close. Think about the number of seats in any sporting venue that are way more than 65 feet away from the action. A fair percentage of seats in a movie theater will be more than 65 feet from the screen.
Really, we're talking 22 yards here. That's pretty close.
0.0123106061 miles.
I honestly can't think of any group that would have a motive for deliberately sabotaging the booms. Environmentalists wouldn't want to do it because it would make the ecological damage worse. Teabaggers might relish the idea of doing more damage to the environment, they would never interfere with the activities of one of their corporate masters. Someone out to hurt BP wouldn't get any mileage out of this because the government fines they'll eventually pay are based on the amount of oil coming out of the well, not the amount of oil that hits the beaches, and it would only serve to make BP look like the victims rather than the perpetrators. Who's left? Terrorists? Likely such an action would have a very small impact on what is already a very large ecological disaster anyway.
I pronounce 'metre' met-re when in New Caledonia, and meat-ter when in an English speaking country (or a close semblance, such as 'Stralya).
We can tell the difference between a Newton-metre and a Newton-meter. One is a unit of torque and the other is a force gauge (yes, there is a 'u' in gauge) that reads in Newtons.
At least the meter/metre thing is minor in that there are the same letters - the hood/bonnet, trunk/boot, fanny (quite different meanings!) are much more amusing. What non-US English speakers don't like to let on is that we understand the US English words just fine because of TV and movies - it is much more fun to be an arse about it (which is quite different to being an ass - hee haw).
Sort of like Bush saying "we don't torture" when they were actually using an old Chinese torture manual on how to waterboard false confessions out of captured American troops during the Korean War. Only now, it's the Obama administration speaking out of both sides of it's mouth. On one hand, they're promising open access to the press, but with they other they're acting as hired goons for BP.
Have they recovered the sudden rash of exploding heads around their office? Must trash Obama...but must suck corporate cock! Must trash Obama...but must suck corporate cock!