[IP] Watch Where You Point That Camera
Begin forwarded message:
From: EEkid@xxxxxxx
Date: May 23, 2005 5:13:31 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Watch Where You Point That Camera
Watch Where You Point That Camera
By Susan Llewelyn Leach
(May 23) -- If you pull out a camera on a New Jersey train, you will
have company - law enforcement company. If you size up a shot on the
New York subway, you'll probably be questioned by security and told
to keep the lens cap tightly on. Even if you plan to snap some
innocuous bank building from a public sidewalk, you might find guards
telling you it's not allowed.
"Is photography becoming illegal in the United States?" asks Jim
McGee, in a column for the online photo magazine Vivid Light
Photography.
AP
The USA Patriot Act's broad definition of "suspicious activity" has
added to the confusion about how to interpret people's motives when
taking photos of public spaces, such as California's Golden Gate
Bridge (above).
Anecdotal evidence suggests that heightened sensitivities over
security in the wake of 9/11 have put a crimp in photographers'
freedom to shoot in public, even if the laws remain largely
unchanged. News that Al Qaeda operatives canvassed targets with
cameras has made taking shots of federal buildings, bridges, power
plants, and the like seem less innocent.
Last year, after the Madrid train bombing, New York City's
Metropolitan Transportation Authority proposed a ban on photography
on its subways and buses (New Jersey already had a ban in place).
Public protest was such that now, more than a year later, the
proposal has stalled.
But "just because it's not law yet, doesn't mean there aren't people
trying to enforce it," says Alicia Wagner Calzada, vice president of
the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA).
Part of the problem, she suggests, is police officers and security
guards who are uneducated about the law.
The USA Patriot Act, with its broad definition of "suspicious
activity," has cracked the door wider to individual interpretation.
Ms. Calzada offers the example of a small-town photojournalist in
Victoria, Texas, who was taking shots of potholes for a newspaper
story last year when a police officer drove by several times.
Finally, the officer stopped and questioned him and, even after
running an ID check, bluntly declared the photographer's actions
suspicious and intimated he'd be keeping an eye on him, the
photographer recalls.
In most cases where photojournalists have been accused of shooting
illegally and detained, they have been released without charge,
Calzada says.
If security is sometimes overzealous, the rules themselves can also
be vague and ad hoc. Overlapping law enforcement agencies, new
restrictions imposed by local municipalities, and beefed-up security
have all added to the murkiness.
"Just because it's not law yet, doesn't mean there aren't people
trying to enforce it."
-- Alicia Wagner Calzada, Vice President, National Press
Photographers Association
"TSA [Transportation Security Administration] and [the Department of]
Homeland Security have put a whole 'nother layer of protection and
concern and a level of bureaucracy to what journalists used to see as
free rein," says Kenneth Irby, visual journalism group leader at the
Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla.
In general, photojournalists have no more rights than ordinary
citizens to take pictures.
If you're standing on public property, you can shoot anything the
naked eye can see, explains Ken Kobre, professor of photojournalism
at San Francisco State University and author of one of the seminal
textbooks on the subject.
What you can't do, he says, is use a telephoto lens and take shots
through office windows or into private residences, where people would
have a "reasonable expectation of privacy." That would be like
eavesdropping or surreptitiously taping someone, he says.
But if a story is newsworthy and in the public interest, then taking
photos even on private property is usually permissible, he adds.
Photographing the outside of buildings - schools, hospitals, and even
government buildings - is also legal. It's when you go inside that
you need permission.
In most cases, Professor Kobre says, people are evicted for
trespassing rather than invasion of privacy.
What surprises him, though, is the logic behind preventing people
from taking pictures of building facades. "I haven't heard of an
example where it makes any sense to stop anyone," he says, "because,
almost in every case, you can walk a block away and use a longer lens."
Whether the logic is compelling or not, law enforcement has knocked
heads with photojournalists for decades. The apparent tightening of
access during recent years is less a function of more run-ins with
the authorities, says Mr. Irby, who has seen no evidence of that,
than the media's increased coverage of those encounters.
"In the past, when photographers were detained and even arrested, the
news organizations would likely contact the commanding officer at the
precinct ... and everything would be settled," he says. Now, in a
time of heavy national security and greater public interest in press
freedom, "those stories become stories."
Despite that higher profile, most incidents, Irby adds, are connected
less to the war on terrorism than to the standard traffic accident or
homicide scene.
Other factors play a role as well. During the past 10 to 15 years,
police and even bystanders have become less tolerant of
photojournalists, Kobre says. "The public really reached its apex of
being fed up" with paparazzi after Princess Diana's death, he says.
And the distinction between paparazzi and mainstream journalists is
disappearing as celebrity journalism seeps into all areas of the media.
The bigger issue Kobre sees is privacy and the ease with which
individuals can take clandestine photos with cellphone cameras.
"Before, you had to go to some trouble to hide the camera," he says.
"Now you look like you're making a telephone call and boom! You've
got [an embarrassing] photograph of someone." If that ends up on a
blog, can the subject sue? Kobre asks.
In terms of the general public, he says, this "is going to explode as
a problem."
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