The Photographer's Right

[PDL]

Send the link - there are other links to UK and Austrailia there.

http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm

Also check out:

http://photostop.istep.com/Legal/legal.shtml

http://www.freedomtophotograph.com/ (not updated in some time)

http://www.photoattorney.com/

http://www.photosecrets.com/tips.law.html

http://www.asmp.org/commerce/legal.php

PDL

[NonEntity1]

It is very important to know your rights, if you don't know them it is pretty tough to excercise them. I would like to add, as has been mentioned on Roger's thread about recent problems, that a little courtesy can go a long way too. I can't speak for security guards or military but I know that law enforcement gets sent to a lot of "suspicious person/activity" complaints. The goal is simply to establish if a crime is being committed and, if not, say "have a nice day" and get back in service for the next call.

The only camera complaint I can recall my office ever working involved a guy at Wal-mart with a camera mounted in his shoe (pointed up) and he was targeting elementary school girls. Florida does have a statute that covers video voyourism and he took a ride.

Tim

[bilybianca]

My message to you US citizens would be to watch-dog your liberty. In Wacky Rogers thread we have two examples of how the rule of law is put aside for "security" blaming "the terrorist threat".

A major concern is how also the rest of the world is affected by this attitude of the present US government, with Guantanamo Bay prisons, illegal CIA runsecret prisons all over the world and illegal arrests and confinement enforced by US agents. I get the impression that the US media reports very little of this, but be sure the rest of the world is informed. We had a case about a year ago, when four Swedish citizens were arrested in Somalia, handed over to US agents in Ethiopia, then to Kenya where they were kept under harsh conditions and interrogated by white men speaking fluent American English. These menwere not disclosing their names or titles or who they actually worked for. The interrogation methods would clearly be defined as torture. After a few months they were released without being informed about why they were arrested in the first place.

The image of the US as a leadingdemocracy and home of the free and brave have been severely damaged by this in the last 7 years. And only you US citizens have the means to change that. It's in your hands.

Kjell

[a200user]

This is informative and interesting. The only time I was ever stopped from taking photos in the USA was in 1971 while in the US Navy at Pensacola Naval Air Station. I was taking photos of some F4 Phantoms along the flight line with some of my buddies. We climbed right up to the cockpit on one. The Navy didn't appreciate our activities, but after producing Navy ID cards they let us go without even taking our film. We were in the wrong.

I guess this will be viewed as an opposing point of view, but here goes -

I'm going on 60 years old. Laws aside, if someone younger, bigger, and meaner than me tells me to stop taking pictures or else......., I'm probably going to stop, and not even pursuit the questions; who are you?, who do you work for?, yada yada yada. I'm just an amateur photog. and can always go somewhere else. My livelyhood isn't dependent on photography.

To me it's like excersizing my right to walk accross the street when it's within my right to do so even though the guy in the big truckisn't slowing down. I don't want to be right; dead right.

Somethings just aren't worth the hassle. And you know what, I've been stopped from taking photos in foreign countries a lot more often than here in the US, (Taiwan, Phillipines, Azerbaijan, Israel, Egypt). All things considered, I feel more secure here in theUS than anywhere else I've been in the world.

I'm not sure how the treatment of Gitmo Bay prisoners (Waterboarding? Maybe they should have dumped a ton of bricks from the World Trade Center on their heads) or the Sweedish citizens in Somalia plays into my rights to take photos here in the US. At the risk of being accused of sticking my head in the sand, I am still able to excersize my freedoms here in the US better than anywhere else I've ever been.

[bilybianca]

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.


by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945

Rev. Martin Niemoller was protected until 1937 by both the foreign press and influential friends in the up-scale Berlin suburb where he preached. Eventually, he was arrested for treason. Perhaps due to foreign pressure, he was found guilty, but initially given only a suspended sentence. He was however then almost immediately re-arrested on Hitler's direct orders. From then on until the end of WW II, he was held at the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps. Near the end of the war, he narrowly escaped execution. [from Charles Colson's Kingdoms in Conflict]

[a200user]

bilybianca wrote:

The image of the US as a leadingdemocracy and home of the free and brave have been severely damaged by this in the last 7 years. And only you US citizens have the means to change that. It's in your hands.

Kjell

Interesting obsevation from outside the US. As a citizeninside the US, I see wacko's flying airplanes into our buildings asa bigger threat to my freedom than the issues you raise.

Sorry, I'm tired of hearing the bashing - I feel just as free as I did37 years ago when I gavetwo years to serve my country.

Have faith in us - still today in the USA no one's come for the communists, no one's come for the Jews, no one's come for the Catholics or Protestants.And no one's come for the Photographers; just ask Britney Spears. I think we even enjoy the lowest prices and best rebates for a K10D in the world.