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gigag04 wrote:Actually there a few subject matters that are against the law. Think children...

Asking for useful clarification..... Do you mean any children, or just children under certain circumstances? For instance, when I was last in France in 2005, I was at a little village carnival, and I took pictures of various scenes, including children on a merry-go-round. If that were in the United States, that would be illegal? I obvloulsy understand that child pornography would be illegal (and indefensible under the first amendment because it harms the child's rights among other things). but I have, on a number of occasions, taken pictures of children in public. Sometimes it was a specific child, and done with the parent's permission, and other times it was general "children at play" pictures in public parks and that kind of thing.

Oldgringo wrote:My Heavens! Aren't we testy today? It must be the heat...or something?

It's not being "testy" when you believe that your most basic rights under the Constitution are threatened. I'll talk to cops all day long. I enjoy their stories. I respect the job they do. But I resent that my free exercise of a constitutional right is seen as suspicious and in need of investigation, up to and including my personal detention until some police chief who has no eye for esthetics can determine if my work has any esthetic value. That is an absolutely absurd assertion on the part of the police chief in the article. He does not get paid to assess whether art has any esthetic value. He simply doesn't. And gigag, with all due respect to your expertise, you cannot make a cogent argument in defense of a police chief's authority to decide what has esthetic value, and what doesn't. It simply isn't his area of expertise.

I'm not inventing this. Those were his words in that article. They are indefensible. None of this would be happening if it weren't flowing downhill from somewhere. "Somewhere" is the DHS in DC, run by that toad Napolitano, who keeps finding ways to incrementally get us all under her thumb. By the above mentioned police chief's one words, that is where this stuff comes from. He's already a busy man, and his officers are already busy people. Harassing photographers is not something that would have been on their daily radar if a request to do so had not trickled down from DHS.

In other words, if police suspect I am committing a crime, fine. Arrest me. Charge me. Throw me in jail. I'll go peacefully. Otherwise, bugger off. This is not about privacy. You're right. I have no expectation of privacy in a public place. I DO have an expectation of being able to practice my first amendment right to take a picture without some minor bureaucrat with undersized beans and franks deciding if it is esthetically valuable and thus is protected speech or not. ART IS NOT A CRIME, even art that a provincial chief of police doesn't find esthetically pleasing, unless it is vandalizing someone else's property, such as graffiti. I am not vandalizing anything.

I just got back home 30 minutes ago, having spent most of the afternoon photographing industrial scenes around town, because they are fascinating sources of color and texture. I photographed railroad cars, both up close and far away. I photographed granary towers. I photographed a giant old tower clad in rusting corrugated steel because the patchwork colors of the rusting steel were incredible to shoot. A couple of the shots I took today would be similar esthetically to the picture that the Long Beach police chief found to be not esthetically acceptable. Well, I don't presume to tell him how best to manage his department. He has absolutely no business telling me how to take pictures. None. Zip. Nada. Zero. That idiot would have had me detained. He can go to hades.

gigag04 wrote:Are you guys for real?

No, are you for real? Quoting the article:

Among the non-criminal behaviors "which shall be reported on a SAR" [Suspicious Activity Report] are the usage of binoculars and cameras...

Really? I'm taking pictures, exercising my 1st amendment right to do so, and that is "suspicious activity?" I find it suspicious that you find it suspicious. How do you like that?

At the top of that article, it says:

Police Chief Jim McDonnell has confirmed that detaining photographers for taking pictures "with no apparent esthetic value" is within Long Beach Police Department policy.

Above that line is a copy of the photograph over which the photographer was arrested.........which is actually a pretty good picture, and contains the delightful little piece of irony, "Fresh Caustic." I would have taken the same picture for the same reason. And since when is a police chief the arbiter of what has esthetic value, and what doesn't? That is absolutely not under his authority to make that determination. It is merely his opinion. And unless he has a graduate level fine arts degree, his opinion isn't worth a cup of warm spit.

And further down the story we have:

In response to Long Beach Post's coverage of the incident, the National Press Photographer's Association has written to Chief McDonnell expressing concern "about the misplaced beliefs that photography is in and of itself a suspicious activity."

Are you for real....really? You're way off base on this one.

G26ster wrote:Once again I find my self a bit befuddled. With all the talk on several threads running about "Spidey Sense," Gut Feelings," Smell Tests," etc. I'm surprised that anyone would be upset if the DHS, the local LEOs, or a concerned citizen would want someone questioned for taking pictures of a refinery or other building that seemed out of place. What's the difference between someone taking pictures with "no apparent esthetic value" and the guy asking for a ride at the gas station because his truck was broke down? Or, the guy that got within 50' of a members car in Houston late one night. It was most members opinion that the posters was/would be correct in calling 911, and to let the law sort it out. So what's the difference between letting the law question the photographer taking pictures with "no apparent esthetic value" if they (the law), or a concerned citizen, feel that photography doesn't meet their personal smell test, or they have a spidey sense about it, or they don't like their gut feeling? Personally, I see no difference, because in none of the cases mentioned did anyone break the law . If you want the law to investigate your suspicions, I guess they have the right to investigate theirs, or the suspicions of others. After all, if you calling the law might save someone else a "bad day," the law investigating the refinery photographer might save hundreds a bad day. I don't think we can have it both ways in our society.

[satire]
I find your post disturbing because it seems to justify gestapo-like behavior for law enforcement for things that are eminently none of their business. Please reply to this post by posting your address and phone number so that we can make a determination of whether or not you are trying to be subversive in your speech.
[/satire]

A clumsy attempt, yes, but I think it gets the point across. You will find, if you search my posts here, that I tend to react very favorably to law enforcement, I don't bash cops, and I strongly support my local police. These are documentable by searching my posts. I say this, because I want it to be clear that I am not responding in this thread from a "bash law enforcement" perspective.

Here is my reasoning:

1. That part of our rights which are enshrined in the 1st Amendment enjoy the protections of the Constitution. Every part of the 1st Amendment enjoys that protection. Law enforcement is required to uphold the Constitution, and to ensure the protection of those rights.
2. There are commonly accepted constraints on those rights, which serve the purpose of ensuring that one person's right to be secure in his person or property is not contravened by another person's practice of one his rights. The common example: Contrary to popular belief, it is not against the law to shout "fire" in a crowded theater.....if there really is a fire in the theater. It is against the law to shout "fire" in a theater when there is no fire, because it puts the health and safety of the other theater goers at risk.
3. The decision to prosecute or not prosecute someone for shouting "fire" in a theater can only come after the fact. The DA can make a decision based on whether or not there was actually a fire in the theater, and if the DA decides to prosecute in the mistaken belief that there was no fire, the finder of fact may determine if the DA is right or wrong, and the accused will be acquited or convicted accordingly.
4. Regardless of the outcome of a potential trial and investigation, an LEO may not accost a theatergoer who has not yet spoken, simply because that theatergoer opened his mouth. Said theatergoer may be opening his mouth to insert popcorn. He may be opening it to yawn because it's a boring movie. He may be opening it because he's about to shout "fire" for frivolous reasons. He may be opening because he's about to shout "fire" because there is a fire which the officer has not observed himself.
5. At no point, is the theatergoer required to justify his presence in the theater to an LEO prior to opening his mouth. The only exceptions might be, for instance, if the officer recognized the theatergoer from a "Wanted" poster, or a police APB. Otherwise, a cop who picked out for questioning anybody in the theater who opened their mouths would be roundly abused for the absurdity of his action, and he would deserve it.
6. Let's look at photography..... It is a constitutionally protected right to take pictures. Photography is art, and art is protected speech. There are narrowly accepted constraints encoded in the law on the practice of photography, such as the photographing of nuclear facilities without written authorization. But even then, there are limits to how that law can be enforced. It would be illegal for me to walk around the perimeter fence of a nuclear facility and photograph all the security preparations, the entrances and exits, stuff like that. But there is some point at which it is not illegal, otherwise everybody who ever did a follow up story on Three Mile Island would be behind bars for taking pictures of it at a distance. You can buy pictures on virtually any stock photography website of nuclear power plants. There is nothing wrong with the taking of these images, simply because they do no harm. They are simply pictures of a skyline that happens to have nuclear plant in it.
7. With regard to refineries, the accosting LEO has no knowledge of whether or not I am taking a picture of a refinery because it is a good example of industrial art, or because I like the pretty lights at night, or because I'm actually interested in the boats that are just offshore from it, or because I intend to use that picture as intelligence for a terrorist attack. I am obeying the law, and I am within my rights to take the pictures, unless I am using it for the latter purpose. If the officer is allowed under some legal principle to validate my expression of my 1st Amendment right before I can express it, then he is also allowed to randomly violate all of my rights on any whim he has.
8. Let's extend that logic to other venues. According the principles that "empower" the absurd, an LEO can randomly stop me in my car, even though I have broken no traffic laws, to determine if it is my intention to smash my car into the next bus stop full of people. An LEO can randomly search my house without a warrant and without probable cause, on the odd chance that he might find something he can use against me. He can randomly accost me in a shopping mall, just to determine my need to be there. In all of these absurd scenarios, I have to justify the exercise of my rights, even though I have done nothing wrong.
9. Now, if I take pictures of a refinery, and I then commit an act of terrorism and I used those pictures as intelligence, then by all means, bring that as evidence of my perfidy to the trial, and use it to nail me to a dungeon wall.
10. I assert that that an LEO has no more authority to require me to justify my taking a picture of a refinery, than he has to require me to justify opening my mouth in a theater. Intention cannot truly be determined until after the fact. The determination of intention before the fact is utterly unprovable. If I were a terrorist posing as a photographer, I would take a bunch of pictures of a bunch of different subjects, and put them in a portfolio that I would carry with me on all of my photography expeditions. If accosted, I would simply say, "see officer.......I am a photographer. Here are some samples of my work. I thought the refinery makes an interesting subject." At that point, the officer has no authority to tell me not to take the pictures, because I have "established" a "legitimate" reason. And if he tried to stop me, I could make sure (with all of my limitless Saudi funding) that he paid a vast and above all expensive legal consequence for it. Ergo, it is absurd to belief that A) I have to qualify my right to do anything which is protected speech to any random officer; and B) that the random officer's efforts would actually prevent a terrorist act.
11. But I am not a terrorist, and neither are 99.999999999999% of the millions of other photographers in the U.S, and in defiance of one of the founding principles of American jurisprudence, I now have to prove what I am NOT in order to avoid arrest? Please! This policy is just one more example of DHS spreading its tentacles into every facet of our daily behaviors, and it requires that ALL of us accept a diminution of our constitutionally protected rights so that the 1 or 2 in 300 million who do have perfidy on their hearts might get caught (but probably won't until after the fact). Many millions of people fly in the U.S. every year. How many of them were caught trying to bring a bomb onto an airplane in the last year? Too much liquid shampoo, yes. "Illegal" nail clippers, yes. But bombs? Exactly zero. DHS asks us to spy on one another with their "see something, say something" campaign. TSA is exporting its repression of air travel to the nation's rail system, and it is only a matter of time before they start putting up roadblocks just to check on us as we drive around every day. They've already tried it near the Texas/Mexico border.
12. We are now at the point where I have to justify myself to a passing cop because I am exercising my 1st Amendment right to take a picture? If you can't see the slippery slope, your eyes are not open all the way.

So, when does it stop? You mention "spidey sense." I have used that phrase myself.... but it has been in reference to what I, as a private citizen should notice for my own safety, and that is exactly how I think most of us mean it. If I see a young man loitering about in a black hoodie with his face obscured on a 107º day, I will make a note of it to myself. But, I'm not going to report him to the police because he hasn't done anything wrong yet (re-read the points I made above to make sure you understand them). Now, if I see that guy harrassing passersby, even if he doesn't take a knife out and rob them, then yes, I would call the cops. But for just hanging around? Nope. My own son owns a black hoodie.

I can't make it any more clear that that. DHS does not publicly announce these things. If Janet Napolitano had to go on the nightly news and announce, "From today forward, all people found taking pictures anywhere near a refinery will be accosted by police and detained until a determination can be made for whether or not they are legitimate," you can bet that even the democrats in Congress would beat up the administration until it stopped. And you can bet that republicans would make hay in their campaign ads over charges of "gestapo" tactics by democrat officials. But DHS doesn't publicly announce these things because Janet Napolitano knows full well that none of them would survive a determined challenge in the courts. If professional photojournalists (who, truthfully, probably mostly voted the democrat ticket, just like their reporting and editorial counterparts) found out that they risked detention for the most mundane picture taking reasons, you can bet that all the big names in the legacy media would climb up out of their fever swamp and finally do something in modern times for the preservation of the Constitution.

Despite the above paragraph, this isn't a liberals versus conservatives or democrats versus republicans issue. This is a "Governemnt out of control" against The People issue. We are being slowly boiled alive. It has to stop.

gigag04 wrote:Not a big deal really.

Photography is a hobby of mine. One of my website design clients has a website with an oil refinery in the header graphic. That image was purchased completely legally from a website that sells stock photography. How on earth does a police officer know that I have no probable cause to exercise either my hobby or my profession? Or for that matter, how does a police officer know that the professional photographer who took that oil refinery image has a probably cause to take the picture? That's absurd.