Yet another report that photography in America is becoming illegal. Which is, of course, completely against current commercial trends. Cameraphones are getting better. Handheld video cameras are getting smaller and sharper. Point and shoot cameras are fast approaching the resolution of film, and the size of a keychain. Photography will soon be ubiquitous. It's fighting a losing war to try and police photography, especially when the photography is legal. And whenever someone says Sept. 11 as the excuse, I know to dismiss them as mindless idiots. I know Sept. 11, I was there 12 hours before, I watched it happen, I had the lingers smell of death and horror in my lungs, so don't pretend to lecture me on that subject. I worked with, and continue to work with WTC survivors (people who were trapped inside the towers and would be dead if not for kind strangers and a crowbar), and these people have never expressed objections to my photographing a bridge. In fact, they often express fear that I might get into trouble with a cop over it. Think about it for a second. 9/11 survivors who fear the police more then any potential terrorism. It angers me to no end when the cops do this, because, more then a civil liberty thing, it's a pointless waste of time. Every second a cop jerks off on the power trip they get calling in 4 squad cars and arresting some harmless photographer, is a second not being spent on guarding against actual terrorists. These sleeper terrorists are sent here to blend in, to become ubiquitous, to not stand out. You think they're gonna be toting around a dSLR and a tripod, staying in one location for 40 minutes, taking pictures of an oil terminal in the open?! Don't you fucking know the times we live in, moron?! You're looking for people who are trying to HIDE. The best defense is to shed some light. Actively engage the photographer. Get the ID, run the background check, log notes in the secret database, chat a little. Are they nervous, does their story make sense, are there inconsistencies? And then move on to the next, becuase you have limited resources and you're looking for the needle in the haystack. If you make it easy to take photography out in the open, and you make it easy to monitor the people taking pictures in the open, then it becomes all that much more suspicious when people try to take pictures in a clandestine manner. And those are the people you want to focus on. I'll reiterate, because it is counterintuitive. You want to make it easy for people to take photos out in the open and obvious. You also want to make sure that these people are talked to, and monitored. And then you focus on the people who don't want to be monitored or (much more imporant) who try to hide the fact they are taking photos. It creates a Catch22 for the terrorist. On one hand, they don't want to be monitored; on the other hand it will be obvious they are up to no good if they take pictures in a clandestine fashion. It's a no win scenario. It's all also a red herring. Photographic surveillence is an important part of casing a potential target. But the really valuable information comes from observing the patterns. When do the guards change shifts, how often is there a security sweep, what time are the sweeps done, how many guards to a shift, what is the police & fire response rate. This is the operational intelligence that the terrorists need, and can't get by doing a google image search. This is the information they need to get in person. And that observer is the person the cops should be looking out for. The guy taking pictures of the bridge is no big deal. The guy who's taking notes that there is no traffic between 5:30 and 6:00 AM, and then rush hour traffic fills the bridge bumper to bumper, and the patrol car only comes by at 7:00 AM to check the trucks parked beneath the bridge; that's the dangerous one.
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