my enthusiam for drawing and photographing buildings and bridges and such rivals my enthusiasm for satellite imagery, and i’ve had people call the police to report me. twice. i’ve taken to carrying around copies of this with me.
not that i don’t blame them. i loathe being photographed myself.
]]>The area I spent most of my time in at NSA looked like an office park. If you didn’t turn in and drive down you wouldn’t notice the fences or armed guards. There were trees and plants that shielded it from view.
It was probably part of his television show.
]]>Even Moore had no idea about the office; he was there filming for some other purpose altogether. Someone with a better memory than mine can surely supply the details.
]]>They had to move everything because of all of the people showing up to take pictures. There was no elaborate security, because it hadn’t been necessary until that article ran and got picked up by a wire service. They moved for safety reasons as people could accidentally drive on to the runway trying to find the field and there was no money to build fences or roads.
The FBI would have been safe in general ignorance until someone decided to get officious.
Aren’t those the smoke bombs on a chain? 😉
]]>I’ve taken a lot of photos of downtown Houston, and to date no one has hassled me. For a while, the owner of a local skyscraper, not downtown, tried to control rights to photograph the water-wall fountain outside the building, but found it difficult to control photographers standing on adjoining property as they took pictures.
I can’t help thinking of the scene in one of Michael Moore’s movies, in which police tried to stop him from filming in the vicinity of what turned out to be a building containing FBI offices. Before they stopped him, no one on the street had any idea there were FBI offices there; now, the world knows. Great security move, guys.
“I also recognize the the photo sensor.” – Bryan
Shouldn’t that be “censor,” Bryan? 🙂
]]>I’m not sure exactly what a police officer would actually learn from seeing a photo ID, or exactly how pictures are supposed to help plan an attack. You can get the information you really need from a transit map, and would have to visit the site personally before you could decide on a location if you were trying to collapse something.
The KGB insisted that all published maps of the Soviet Union, except theirs, be inaccurate, and all of the road signs were deliberately wrong. That would be an interesting concept to introduce in the US.
CG, I could see it, if it was a film crew that was going to disrupt something or needed to block streets or walkways, but a couple of guys trying to take pictures of NYC, is just another reason to go somewhere else. Living in a tourist area, I can tell you that this is not a message you really want to send to visitors.
]]>All in all my dealings with the NYPD were quite efficient and cordial. In my senior year a project I was the production manager on required a police presence as we had a replica firearm that was integral to the storyline. A unit was assigned to us. They mostly sat in their squad car and probably were grateful for such a light day. We bought them coffee and fed them.
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