Be Careful What You Wish For
Jack at the Grumpy Forester has a piece about libertarians in his neck of the woods dealing with the realities of this administration. They have most of what they feared would happen under Democrats brought to reality. Many now have “buyer’s remorse” about the people they have been voting for to protect their right to be left alone.
It isn’t just in the Pacific Northwest. The mayor of New York City is at it again, with the never ending assault on individual rights. CNet’s Social blog is reporting on Photo, video freedom under fire in NYC. Apparently they want you to get a permit and register if you are planning to take pictures or videos in New York City. This isn’t about film companies, this covers two or more people, and using a tripod to take pictures. Apparently they’ve never encountered an Asian group tour. Get in their line of sight and you are apt to be washed in the light of so many xenon flashes as to alter your genetic make-up.
They did this in the Soviet Union.
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The transit police in Boston have now decided (warning, .pdf) that you can take non-commerical, personal-use photos of the transit system without a permit — Woo Hoo! :-/
But, if challenged, you must produce photo-ID to prove who you are.
Sigh.
Of course, we are scared of LED-based signs up here as well.
Having grown up in Manhattan and attended film school there I became very familiar with the laws concerning filming in the city. Even then you were not allowed to film in the subway system without special permits. This was mostly a holdover from the Cold War. It was actually sort of a game among film students to see how much filming you got could away with before the transit police caught up with you.
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.
Jim, I plead guilty to immediately recognizing the flasher circuit on your signs. It’s in a Radio Shack “cookbook”, but I also recognize the the photo sensor. I guess it would have been tough in the Boston area to find anyone with electronics knowledge 😉
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.
Hmph. What an attitude. A good friend took many pictures in NYC a few years ago (but post-9/11, perhaps in 2004 or 2005), and one of them, a nontraditional but breathtaking shot of skyscrapers viewed from the street, won a prize in a major local contest in Houston, and was on display in a prominent place for quite some time. I don’t know whether anyone goes as a tourist to NYC based on a photo, but this one almost made me want to go there… the local tourism bureau and/or chamber of commerce should be grateful.
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? 🙂
That’s like the local report about one of the auxiliary fields having a collection of Soviet aircraft that were used for evaluation. Most were acquired by defecting pilots being their aircraft with them in low level flights. This had been going on for years, but then someone in the publicity office thought it would boost interest in the base.
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? 😉
So it’s true, Bryan… processions really are led by priests swinging censors? 🙂
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.
Yep, I checked – those brass balls are censors. 😈
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.
brass balls
I actually owned a couple of small censers for a while, before I discovered that with my allergies, it is best if I do not come within 500 feet of burning incense. Whether that means I qualified as having brass balls, I leave to others to judge. 😈
When it comes to incense and advice -er and -or are used.
steve, if you need some hypoallergenic replacements…
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.