Photography and National Security
So here I was today, at the McPherson Square Metro station (the Metro being the Washington, DC subway system), awed by the cavernous hall of the station.
I pull out my camera with wide angle lens, intent on capturing the scene for posterity, planning a long exposure to capture all the subtle lighting, when a uniformed official comes up to me and (politely) explains that as the Metro is under heightened security, no photography
is permitted.
I grumbled a bit and put my camera away, and as I stewed about not being able to take my picture, the situation struck me as more and more ludicrous. I realized I was only approached because I had a real camera in hand.
After all, with multi-megapixel cell phone cameras now on sale everywhere, it would be very easy for a determined doer of no good to take all the detailed pictures they wanted.
Heck, if they wanted to be truly thorough, a pocket video recorder with a tiny low lux security camera would do the trick. You could even have one person carry the tiny recorder and another handle the small camera transmitting the image wirelessly. Anyone remember the annoying pop-up advertisements for the X-10 cameras? Those thing were wireless and
worked okay at short range.
And what about those darned sketch artists? You don’t need a camera to capture imagery - a notebook and pencil work just fine and add the ability to annotate in real time.
So, as with much of the “official security” I see during my travels, this enforcement in the Metro stations is feel-good from a PR and self-congratulatory perspective, but truly shallow and ineffective when it comes to protecting against truly determined people.
I wonder if anyone will get incensed enough by all this false security and the related ill-conceived and executed policies to start creating photo flash mobs as a form of mass civil disobedience, with all images posted to Flickr for widest distribution.
Imagine a single security guard dealing with hundreds of people simultaneously whipping out their photo cell phones, camcorders, and digital cameras and taking pictures in public places where someone has bizarrely determined photography could be a security risk.
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Update 1 - July 31, 2005 - 17:29 EDT
My experience above reminded me of a similar experience related on BoingBoing a couple of months ago about a photographer in Pittsburgh who was asked to stop taking pictures of a building (non-governement at that) for security reasons. Here’s the link to the blog entry.
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Update 2 - July 31, 2005 - 19:18 EDT
Okay. There must have been some sort of vibe in the air today.
As I read through the last couple of days of BoingBoing postings a few minutes ago, lo and behold, there’s a report of a photography flashmob in San Francisco yesterday, as the result of a photographer harrassed by a security guard for taking pictures in a public place a few days ago.
Photos of the event have even been posted to Flickr here and also here too.
Weird coincidence (mind you I submitted the initial commentary in this entry via my Sidekick II cellphone (moblog) completely unaware of the event in San Francisco - I would have also included a pic from the Sidekick to prove my point but the camera is the Sidekick is pretty crappy and doesn’t deal well at all with low light conditions such as those in man made caverns).
Yay for the concept of photography flashmobs and the first successful implementation! Photographers everwhere should rejoice that their First Amendment rights are being defended.
