well - a good step would be to get rid of the wankers currently in control and then (hopefully...?) get people running things who actually know what they are doing.
I have a very good friend who regularly lectures and runs seminars at Quantico for senior FBI officials on counter-terrorism.
He has been actively involved in the field for 30 years (as was I at that time, when we first met - well, 28 years ago for me)
We spoke a couple of weeks ago and his experience is still that in most cases they basically haven't got a clue what they are doing - especially the higher up the ladder you go. Tried and tested policies and strategies, backed up by quantifiable results, get ignored while ideology takes the lead.
He related how the best of these people know that and yet their hands are tied.
So much of what is being done is actually demonstrably counter effective in making N.America safe - yet that is simply ignored
(as an aside, one senior agent came up to him at coffee at his last seminar and asked him "have you ever met a terrorist face to face and talked to them?" (which if he had actually read his CV would have been obvious) response - "Jesus man, I went to school with terrorists - what do you think!")
You'd be amazed how small the demand is for pictures of trees... - Fred Astaire to Audrey Hepburn
www.photo-muse.blogspot.com blog
Lets look at your rather misleading example of the oil refinery because it's specifically about photography.
There is no law on the books which prevents you from taking pictures of most oil refineries from a public place. In fact your right to take such photography is probably actually protected.
And yet people are not only questioned for doing so, they are actually prevented from doing so, have been told to move on, have had their equipment confiscated, even taken into "custody" and so on.
Now, in times of true national emergency the Government has actually suspended those rights and made it illegal to take such photographs.
So why - in the current state of affairs when some quite draconian laws were being introduced as a result o 9/11 and almost anything could have been passed wasn't that done. In fact NO laws restricting photography were introduced at all?
Taking such photographs remains entirely legal and permissible. And yet people are regularly (and illegally) prohibited from doing so on the basis of some imaginary and illogical beliefs and reasoning.
You'd be amazed how small the demand is for pictures of trees... - Fred Astaire to Audrey Hepburn
www.photo-muse.blogspot.com blog
This might be worth printing and carrying around with you:
http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf
there is that
my vote goes to Obama Girl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU
You'd be amazed how small the demand is for pictures of trees... - Fred Astaire to Audrey Hepburn
www.photo-muse.blogspot.com blog
I did something similar. I was in Hershey, PA at my Mom's last year. I made the mistake of thinking the public works buildings were fair game for viewing by the public. They actually thought that a 20 year old kid with a hundred year old 5x7 and ugly brass lens was doing devious, homeland-endangering work.
-Chris
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