Is it really news when someone points cameras at a possibly secret government facility and is then told by government security that they're not allowed to do that?
Everybody gets in a dizzy when some bill may or may not infringe on the 2nd amendment, but the same response is noticeably absent when it comes to photographers' rights.
Even though photographers are legally allowed to photograph a government building from public property, why the dismissal when the government is in contempt of her own laws?
The steady erosion of personal rights and laissez faire attitude towards government behavior is what lead to the PRISM situation to begin with.
We shoo away photographers who are mapping out the gates to our military bases as well. The U.S. Embassay bombing in Lebanon is only one of many, many examples of why there is a valid security interest in not having people map out your physical security vulnerabilities if you can avoid it.
isn't "if you can avoid it" the crux here? there's a trade-off between freedom and protection. and the idea was, i thought, that people decided that together, as a community, and created laws that reflect it.
but what's happening here doesn't follow any law. it's extra protection, and less freedom.
and what's so weird is the way people like you come out of the woodwork as apologists for this process.
when are you going to stop?
the usa already has laws so "protecting" and "un-freedom" that it seems the nsa can assemble huge databases on your communication. if you hadn't noticed, there's a huge fuss about that right now. yet the best you can come up with is to argue that less freedom than the current law provides is a great idea?
it kind of boggles the mind. how little freedom do you actually want?
Unless I'm mistaken there is a law, FISA. It even uses warrants with judicial review, and FISA itself has been publically known for awhile, so it's hardly some fait accompli. The people have bought in, whether on purpose or not.
So, people aren't complaining that this is illegal, per se, they're complaining that there shouldn't be that law at all. Didn't you watch the Daily Show clip from the other night?
P.S. When are people going to stop calling those with a view not 100% aligned with their own "apologists" and acknowledge that there might even be different conclusions that reasonable people can reach on a topic?
It kind of is, considering modern times. The concept of a "secret" government facility is not an unknown thing anymore. Everybody in the area, and possibly anyone interested in such things, knows the building is a government building. People may not know what goes on in there but it's a known government building. Shooing people away from taking pictures of the entrance doesn't really do anything other than annoy people. Unless they are chasing down every person who might have taken a picture and seizing the film then it is a pointless exercise. Chances are you can get all the info you need from Google Maps, especially if the street view was done to the area.
It's like the humorous attempts of the government to keep Groom Lake a secret. I lived in Vegas for a time and it seemed obvious that everyone knew for years something government was going on out there. From the unmarked white planes that left the airport, the special gate at the airport that only certain people could use that had guards that refused to answer any questions, the spot overlooking Groom Lake itself that was open to the public for years that allowed you to see everything, the photographs of nuclear mushroom clouds in the distance with the Strip in the foreground (people even had parties based around the bombing schedules!), and the modern method of using Google Maps to look at the area to see the runways and bomb craters.
My favorite example is the old movies where characters believed you were a spy if you happened to know that the CIA was headquartered in Langley, VA. Come on, everybody knows that.
Shooing people away from taking pictures of a nondescript entrance to a nondescript building is just a show of force and authority.
There are several such events every day, where someone is hassled, arrested, or assaulted for photography. They're carried on the blog "Photography is not a crime"
http://photographyisnotacrime.com/
It probably shouldn't be applied in this case( there seems to be little sensitive information in a photograph of a building, though maybe they didn't want personel identified) , but it can be.
I can see concern of people being photographed entering and leaving the building, but even then it's silly. If someone wants to know something of these people then just follow them from work. If the person's identity and involvement of what's going on inside needs to be secret then they shouldn't be seen at all entering or leaving the facility.
Also, it isn't that photography "is" a crime but that it "can" be a crime.
What's with the weird arrangement of what appears to be traffic cones in the old parking lot to the east of the building? Plus, why did they build a fence that cuts the east parking lot in half?
Next article, please.