Are you in the Homeland Security database?

[cyrus]

no one said living in this world was perfect

And no one said you had to just sit there and take it either.

Do we really have to wait until blackshirts are goose-stepping down main street?

[tim atherton]

ok - straight up - what are you going to do about it?

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!")

[tim atherton]

People get stopped for photographing oil refineries and I'm not surprised. Say you produced a product that a society relied on and there were people photographing (in whatever manner) the operation you are responsible for worth trillions. You have no way of knowing how that information will be used. It could be analyzed for political purposes like destruction, it could be a nice print of some pretty lights. The actual property belongs to the oil company.

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.

[Greg Lockrey]

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.

Just where are you going to find these?

[paulr]

This might be worth printing and carrying around with you:

http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf

[tim atherton]

Just where are you going to find these?

there is that

my vote goes to Obama Girl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU

[BrianShaw]

Start by complainiing about it on this board. Perfectly good reaction. Talking about things helps more than remaining silent.

I'm not too convinced that this approach will lead to a solution that any of us will see in our lifetimes, but I do feel better educated on the breadth of opinion on this topic.

[BrianShaw]

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.

I once heard that you "can't take the politics out of politics". This problem is true in law enforcement as well as in many other parts of the military-industrial complex. If it's not ideology that alters logic, it is greed... and sometimes plain old stupidity.

[Greg Lockrey]

there is that

my vote goes to Obama Girl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU

I read somewhere that's she's not for Obama after all.

[C. D. Keth]

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.