"In the Meantime, the Police Have Managed to Stop the Person from Photographing"
The War on Cameras -- an evergreen topic here at Reason -- has attracted the attention of The New York Times. From an interview today with Mickey H. Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association:
Q: What's caused this?
A: It's been a perfect storm. There's 9/11, and now photojournalists who traditionally worked for newspapers are losing their jobs and becoming freelancers who may not have the backing of their news organizations. You have Occupy Wall Street, where police didn't want some of their actions to be photographed. And now everybody with a cellphone is capable of recording very high-quality images. And everyone has the ability to upload and share them almost instantly.
The law is on the photographer's side, Osterreicher stresses, but police often get away with evading the law:
What we're seeing is photographers being charged with disorderly conduct, trespass and obstruction of governmental administration for doing their job. I call it the catch and release program. Almost always the D.A. will drop the charges immediately. But in the meantime, the police have managed to stop the person from photographing.
And then there's this reminder that a right many officials would deny to the public is one that the state has no qualms about claiming for itself:
If you're in public, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. That's the difference between what is public and what is private. It's the reason that all those security cameras that are on every city street are allowed to photograph us, because when we're out in public we have no reasonable expectation of privacy.
The whole conversation is worth reading.
Update: Make that worth reading again. Looks like Lucy Steigerwald already blogged this. Apologetic apologies for the redundant redundancy.
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"a perfect storm"
Somebody bury this phrase please. In a deep vault. Or the Earth's core.
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Hopefully, at the end of the day it'll be buried.
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Agreed, it should make the year-end list of phrases that need to be retired. Which I may be the only person to read, and it drives me crazy.
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First on the list: gate.
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Damn you squirrels. with your inequality hatred!
First on the list: /scandal/gate.
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alypse/geddon
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You mean, "The fucking -gate suffix" doesn't work?
I'm so glad I'm not the only person who hates it (and if you're read H Et-Zeichen R long enough, you've probably seen some of my comments bitching about it).
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Q: What was the Nixon scandal called?
A: Watergategate!
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Is this different from Lucy's article three posts down?
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This was written by a man.
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Diversity!
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Where's my sandwich?
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Where you left it.
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You didn't bring it to my desk? You monster!
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Something else has been posted in the meantime; Lucy's article is four posts down.
The other thing I'd point out is that on the main H Et-Zeichen R page (not the individual articles), the photos are all grey.gif instead of what they're supposed to be. The title-text is there, however.
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White men are always keeping the women down.
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In Minneapolis, the cops are fine with being recorded. In fact, a woman on the mall complained to a cop that some stranger had taken her picture. Cop say there is nothing he could do about it adding that he is photographed and videoed all the time. The woman seemed surprised by this.
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But in the meantime, the police have managed to stop the person from photographing.
And as there are zero negative consequences to the police officer, his supervisor or the department head, why not do it? Why not violate constitutional rights? Over and over again.
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It's the reason that all those security cameras that are on every city street are allowed to photograph us, because when we're out in public we have no reasonable expectation of privacy.
Such quaint naivety. The "reason" is because of who controls those cameras. It has nothing to do with what/where they're pointed.