So where does that leave oour "rights" with the proliferation of CCTV systems everywhere? G

You're screwed in both directions.
'They' can do what they like with your image, pity help you trying to capture 'their' image, well unless you pay some hefty fee. Funny how public safety is a tradeable commodity these days.
What to video a scene with our Opera House, no sorry, public safety. Make a big donation to the Mayor's Ball and you can fly a copter down the main street of the CBD all day.

Bob.

Has anyone in these forums actually had their equipment or media confiscated simply for taking pictures in public places? Does anyone even have a reliable second-hand account?

I don't deny that, in the pursuit of greater national security, we have gone a lot further towards "1984" than I personally feel comfortable with, complete with security cameras all over the place. However, I am reserving my outrage and I certainly am reserving doing anything about it until I actually see and hear stories of bad things actually happening.

I don't doubt that SOMEONE somewhere has had their equipment or media taken, but I sure don't know anyone and haven't talked to anyone who knows someone, and haven't seen any legit news stories about people, minding their own business, suddenly being whisked away for taking a picture of the Washington Monument.

We all sure need to be vigilant as personal freedoms get compromised in the name of security, but the article in this link doesn't get me very excited or worried.

Then again, if two or three people here come forward and tell me some chilling first-hand stories, I'd be willing to change my mind. Lacking those stories, this sounds like yet another alarmist trying to get us all worried about their pet peeve.

I guess I am in semi rant mode here. Sorry. I guess I got tweaked by reading the article because I just had two Jehovah Witnesses at the door today. I spent ten minutes with them, listening to how we are nearing the end of the world. In my mind I wanted to tell them about the endless predictions of the second coming we've had over the past two millennia: Each generation thinks everything is going downhill, and the world has never been in such horrible shape. What I wanted to say, but didn't, is what would they have thought if they lived during the Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Crusades, the 1918 flu epidemic, Cambodia under Pol Pot, etc., etc.?

I have come to the conclusion that some people actually seem to feel better by trying to make others feel miserable. Strange ...

John, as I said above, I've had this happen to me--been hauled into a security office at a mall and grilled. I was on the sidewalk video taping for some B-roll material.

Here are some other examples:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/02/13/muni_cops_and_sfpd_e.html
http://michaelw.net/Articles/ThePhotographersRight.html

Jay, interesting.

The only time I was taken to task was by a "charming" "lady", a wee bit worse for a dram or two, with the question,

"What the &*^% d'yah think yah doing here - then?" -

I got over this by showing my official release to video. Didn't help. Next moment there is a security guard approaching me and I repeated the release thing. That worked!

But, my most recent "experience" was an approach by a "chap" wearing a suit, a hardhat and if he had a clipboard I wouldn't have been surprised - yeah? I'm shooting in a public and safe place. As I'm focusing and getting my levels right,

"What are you doing here?"

I mentally snap, but firmly and politely respond,

"Like you, trying to earn a living! And what are you doing?" The guy is banjaxed!

So, this is going to be my favourite response, until I get a better one - lol!

Bottom line you stick a camera up somewhere and people are naturally interested. Nobody here been wanting to approach a film crew they've seen on the streets, and wanted to ask, "Hey mister? - Wathca doing mister?" - hell I have! And I really need to pull myself away .. lol ! - I reeeeeally should've been a groupie . ..

Grazie

I wouldn't be too down on the doomsday merchants, we did evolve in a world where getting eaten was a very real prospect so it's natural that we're fine tuned to sense impending disaster, be it real or imagined. I'd also add that many of the bad things that might have happened have been averted because enough of us screamed long and loud about them.
And then there's our own government that's in the process of enacting laws that ban sedition. What a quaint concept. Banning sedition to protect democracy, something just doesn't add up there. Oh, but there's an out in this wonderful bit of legislation, an allowable defence is that you acted in good faith, well anyone care to name one gun totting, bomb throwing lunatic who didn't think they were 'acting in good faith'? I'd go so far as to say the more they think they're acting in good faith the more dangerous they are.
Bob.

Jay,

I was unable to find any mention, in "mainstream media," of either incident in the two links you provided. I searched sfgate (the SF Chronicle site), Google News, and ProQuest (a paid news service search) for the first news item. The SF papers would have been all over that story, and I am certain I would have heard about it, because I get the Bay Area news feeds here. Any personal rights issue in SF would be BIG news and would not be spiked.

I didn't find one item mentioning the "incident." Not one peep.

I also did not find any reference to the other incident in the Philadelphia newspapers, nor did I find it on the two professional search engines I mentioned above.

Both the links you provide are to blogs. The first one is very well known and linked to a lot, but that doesn't make it reliable. The Internet is the ultimate alchemist, turning crap into fact, and unfortunately many people believe what they read without questioning.

So, I don't believe that either story is true: they are either made up from whole cloth, or they are significantly exaggerated versions of something that was so minor as to not interest the local papers or other media. We all need to be very careful believing what we read on the Internet from these "do-it-yourself" sites, from Matt Drudge on down to these bloggers.

One

BYU did it two

Fox News on Three

Even rodeo fans have troubles

Look at articles 39-41"

Paragraph Four

Charlotte, NC

California cops

The left wing does it too



Police in Ohio don't like it either

Nor to the Sacramento National Guardsmen

All that said, it's very obvious that it doesn't happen very often at all, and likely will be happening less, rather than more. In the case of the BYU incident, the confiscated taping was caught on a different camera, and that's what got the campus police in trouble. In other words, while they don't like cameras watching them, they are probably now aware more than ever that there are cameras watching the cameras if that makes sense.

My feeling is folks get way too up in arms over this. It's part of life now. According to the FBI, it's difficult to walk more than 100 feet anywhere in populated America without having your image taken somewhere, somehow. On the converse, the "watchers" don't like to be "watched" while they're doing the watching. But interestingly enough, the watchers are being watched by other cameras, and if they try to prevent someone from watching them...that likely will be captured as well. So, we should all be paranoid if we're not carrying cameras anyway, right? :-)
If any of the above made sense to you....you need to get more fresh air.

Banjaxed? Grazie, care to define?

Just reminded me of an incident many years ago down here.
During an anti US demo the police who were acting very illegally smashed a camera and beat up the cameraman for catching their actions on tape. Seeing as how the cameraman was from our national broadcaster there was quite a bit of a set to over this.
That night the police commissioner appeared on said network to deny the whole thing as yet another reds under the bed story from our left wing government sponsored TV network.
Only problem for him was that another news crew had captured the whole thing, they put the damming footage to air with him watching in the studio, priceless!
Bob.

Spot,

Interesting links. Thank you.

There were only two that really get at the heart of the issue Jay brought up: The Chrarlotte NC link and the last one from Sacramento. All the rest are pretty standard journalist vs. police issues that have been around forever, and were brought into sharp focus with the Rodney King beating tape. There were also quite a few links having to do with academic freedoms, an oxymoron worthy of another discussion at another time. I would also point out that in many of the links, the person doing to the taping was in some sense being provocative or just not using very good sense. This includes one of the two interesting stories, namely the one from Sacramento where the guy takes his camera out at an airport security point, takes a few snaps, and then goes the other way.

The Charolotte NC incident (which I didn't have time to confirm is real, but it sounds legit) is the one that gets at what I think we're all concerned about. If the press cannot record what security personnel are doing, and these people are allowed to operated without public supervision, then that gets scary real fast. Thanks for the link. I'll keep an eye out to see if I spot anything further.

Kinda like the American version of "FUBAR" :-

Thanks for the clarification... never heard that one before. I can't really see them saying that on "Saving Private Ryan" :)

j razz

I've had no hassles as a videographer (yet---though I constantly expect it) but I've had more than one uptight chucklehead hassle me when I was shooting with my still camera.

"What are you doing!" one guy asked. This was after I'd been hassled a number of times and had prepared a good comeback.

"This device I'm holding is called a 'camera.' When I press this button, called a 'shutter release,' light enters the front, here, through what is called 'the lens.' The light then strikes a small section of a perforated strip, called 'film,' and a latent image is recorded there. After immersion in a series of chemicals, the latent image becomes visible, but only in the form of a 'negative,' which must then be---"

By this time the guy understood what a stupid question he'd asked because, uh, wasn't it OBVIOUS what I was doing?

There's no reason for alarm, Jethro. I'm just a guy with a camera. Settle down and take your meds....

(Spot - when I used your link/connection for me it is "banjaxed" - lol)

When I used "banjaxed" I was thinking more along the lines of this Sunday Herald article.

I've heard it being used by Irish friends of mine in connection to when someone is confused, befuddled and baffled to the point of total exasperation.

I think the Private Ryan analogy may actually have closer connection than you may originally thought - for the reasons that this word is often employed, informally by Irish men and women - hence your Private Ryan comparison - to explain something being "broken" or "ruined".

Grazie

As the guys on B-Roll constantly say, if someone starts causing you hassle keep that camera rolling!

There was one incident where a police officer tried to stop a cameraman from shooting something. The cameraman was perfectly within his rights to be doing what he was doing. The PO(S) started to really lay into the camera guy and eventually knocked him to the ground. Unfortunately for said PO(S) the cameraman was rolling the whole time.

One reason I always have my tally light switched firmly OFF, just in case!

John, you sound very much like a doubting -Thomas. It would appear that you don't want to believe it's happening. And that's fine.

It would appear that you don't want to believe it's happening.

I don't want to believe it's happening, not because I have my head in the sand. Rather, I don't want to believe it's happening because there is no evidence that it is. I have already documented that in my earlier replies.

What IS happening is what has happened as long as I've been alive, namely that people that film or photograph in risky situations are not always welcome. Just ask those that filmed the 1968 Democratic Convention.

My point is -- and this was the reason for the lengthy rebuttal -- that some people want to believe that there has been a decline in civil liberties, especially under Bush II. I agree with some of this, especially when it comes to inspections at airports, tall buildings, sporting events, etc. You might be surprised to know that I'd like to stop all of these completely. Unfortunately, and paradoxically, I think you'd find that people from ALL political backgrounds would object to such a laissez-faire approach.

I also object to the search of lockers and cars at our local high school campus, searching for drugs. Seems to totally violate the fourth amendment. This, however, is not the product of the Patriot Act, nor of the Bush administration, but is instead the misguided "war on drugs" which has been waged, once again, by both Democrats and Republicans with equal vigor.

However, I see absolutely NO evidence of some new, significant threat to photographer's rights. I took my daughter to NYC and Boston in the summer of 2004, and we took pictures of every tall building and famous landmark. We were not hassled in any way, nor were any other people we saw. My experience taking pictures was exactly like it was when I first visited those cities in the late 1950s.

So, if I can see the problems with the high school searches, and the X-ray searches, I maintain that I have proved beyond any doubt that I am NOT a "Doubting Thomas," but rather, as always, someone who strives to use his engineering education to evaluate each case on the verifiable FACTS, something that was sorely lacking as the underpinning for the original post.

... who strives to use his engineering education to evaluate each case on the verifiable FACTS,...

Had I know you were an engineer that would have explained everything! Every engineer I've ever know felt like only they had the answers and that the rest of us are dolts.

Every engineer I've ever know felt like only they had the answers and that the rest of us are dolts.

Yes, that is true. I can prove it.