My fellow criminals...

The reason a bicyclist is of interest, is that there have been a couple of other bombings in NYC by bicyclists. The Mexican and British consulates were the past targets.

Steve
 
Al Patterson said:
Yes. I used to be a liberal when I was younger, but then I grew up.
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When I was a student living with my wealthy parents, having no need to work for a living and no understanding of the real world, I was a staunch conservative Republican. Since graduating from college, and seeing how the world really works for those not born into wealth, I have "Grown Up" and become a liberal.
 
Security tasks is for Ministry of Defence.

General People should
Keep_Calm-original.jpg
 
Al Patterson said:
And when the Liberals are in charge, all will be sweetness and light?

Bullsh*t...

Whoever is in power will use fear and the media to get their agenda across.
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Exactly. Liberals scream the loudest when innocents are killed due to lack of vigilance. Just as long as you pull as many old ladies with white hair named Smith as you do guys named Achmed at airports, then their conscience is clear it seems.
I'm kind of dark myself, Sicilian-Canadian, with a short beard. Got a bit of a more thorough questioning myself just going to a Sabres hockey game in Buffalo from Canada.
I wasn't pissed off at all. Actually, I felt more secure entering the US than I did re-entering Canada, where political correctness seems to trump the safety of my wife and kids.
Mike
 
Al Patterson said:
Yes. I used to be a liberal when I was younger, but then I grew up.
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Dear Al,

Interesting. My life has followed exactly the opposite trajectory -- though I was always pretty liberal, and indeed joined the Young Liberals when I was 16. The older I get, the more liberal I get, when I see what happens in illiberal societies.

There is of course an enormous difference between the use of the word 'liberal' in English and American. In English (and indeed in most European languages), 'liberal' is a term of approbation. In American, it has acquired negative connotations, for reasons I do not understand.

My wife's late aunt, a lifelong democrat and someone whom any European would regard as politically liberal, took pains (when arguing for some liberal viewpoint) to say, "But I'm not a liberal or anything..."

And of course non-Americans would mostly take 'illiberal' at its OED face value 'not befitting or of the nature of a free man . . . not generous in respect to the opinions, rights or liberty of others; narrow-minded; bigoted . . . not free or generous in giving .'

Sorry: ir's a bee I have in my bonnet about the appropriation and perversion of a perfectly good word.

Cheers,

Roger
 
bmattock said:
Dancing and squirming and pounce-trifling do, however.


Very good. Your compatriots have stated in so many words that people who are not trained observers should stifle themselves and not make such reports. I gave them a real-life scenario that happened today and involved a real bombing and away they dance, twirl, and avoid actually answering the question. Because not one of them is willing to actually say 'Yes, I believe the witness should not have reported the suspicious bicyclist, because he is not a trained observer.'
.
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Dear Bill,

First of all, try to stop making inflammatory nationalist remarks. To do so merely invites cheap, easy tit-for-tat criticism of your own nation. This rarely advances any argument.

Second, I saw no dancing, twirling or avoidance of the question.

As I said, I didn't see the bicyclist. I assume you didn't either. Neither of us knows, therefore, whether we might have thought him/her suspicious.

Surely, ANYONE who thought they saw something suspicious would be inclined to report it. That's why I didn't bother to answer your 'simple question'. I took it as rhetorical, and I am sure most others did too.

All that many of us are questioning is the nature and reasonableness of ''suspicion' and the way in which fear can be whipped up and then used as a political and law-enforcement tool to make people accept a surveillance society and the loss of of their civil liberties. And indeed how this fear was used to 'excuse' the murder by police of an innocent man on the London Underground.

Cheers,

Roger
 
JoeV said:
I'll revert back to my previous post: real terrorists don't need to go out in public and "act suspicious" in order to plan a future attack; they use Google Earth. Coincidentally, I just saw this news article on Yahoo, about the Pentagon not allowing Google to video the roads inside military installations:
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I don't suppose you've met many terrorists or spent much time trying to prevent terror attacks. Google Earth is not a great deal of help for terrorists trying to establish the field of view of surveillance cameras nor the patrolling patterns of police or security officers, to name two examples of things that a terrorist would need to establish by observation. In reality, elderly satellite imagery is not a lot of use in planning anything needing precision: you would be better off using Google maps.

Going back to the main thrust of this debate: if there was any suggestion that photography in public places was going to be banned or criminalised then I would be opposed to this as much as anyone. There isn't: the campaign is simply to raise public awareness that terrorists might be carrying out reconnaissance in public, and that photography might be an element of it; there has been no change in the law, nor is there any attempt to change it. It remains the right of the British Citizen to take photographs wherever he or she wants within the existing law. It seems to me that the real paranoia here is being exhibited by those claiming that this is somehow an illiberal measure: in reality it's reminding the public of their duty as citizens.
 
Ade-oh said:
. . . the campaign is simply to raise public awareness that terrorists might be carrying out reconnaissance in public . . . in reality it's reminding the public of their duty as citizens.
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That's one interpretation. The other is that it's scare-mongering. An external enemy is always a useful way to make people rally behind their government, regardless of their opinion of that government.

It also makes them easier to herd, which is why chief constables are always demanding more powers; powers that are more easily granted in a climate of fear. The police have an entirely natural desire that their job should be easier. So do we all -- but it's easy to lose sight of what the police are there to protect, viz., a free society.

I much prefer the WW2 'Keep Calm -- Carry On' attitude summed up in the poster.

Cheers,

Roger
 
Nick De Marco said:
As I said on the Leica users thread we should be organising a protest about this. A mass photography session outside parliament or something. We could get all the press photographers to join in and get some good coverage, and photos. Anyone know who to contact to try and pull this off?
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Sorry that would contravene the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act you could be arrested.

You don’t need worry however the police can only lock you up for 28 days, they must then charge you or let you go.
:angel:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4096194.stm
 
Boy....I really feal for everyone trapped in the UK We used to have a prison island out in the middle of SF Bay....if things get any worse you guys may need to swim for it. And yet if anything did actually happen in the "Tube" or other locations....it would be the images or video from some person who just happened to get the only proof of who, what, where, and when. This is begining to sound like "Orwells" long lost Volume 2. When I was in Germany recently the Bahn Police were very keen to talk to anyone with a camera.

All I needed to do is say...Oh you like my Leica? It wasnt long before every day they would say...did you get any good shots today?

I make the Swiss unpack hand search my film...after 20 or so rolls of film they see put stickers on my film to show it had been searched before.

This is all so crazy.....besides anyone who is doing something for the wrong reasons will be using a cell phone.

Maybe you could get an Email response....pile a few million angry memos by putting out the email address of the "PM's"

Just a thought.....good luck
 
Oh cheer up you people. The shift in public perception of photographers from pedophiles to terrorists might be actually considered a positive development!
 
Hm.

Rover, by moving this thread to "off-topic" you have stopped it appearing on the active threads list on the front page.

Well done... That's one way of stifling debate...

Regards,

Bill
 
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cosmonot said:
Why don't they tell EVERYONE to carry cameras, and instruct EVERYONE to photograph EVERYTHING that is suspicous? Wouldn't that be better? Photo classes in elementary and junior and high schools could be underwritten by the Department of Homeland Security, or whatever the British equivalent is. Wouldn't that be GREAT?

Who wants to live in a world where only criminals have cameras?
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I proposed a more capitalist (and therefore probably more efficacious) solution in my 'Matter of Opinion' column in Amateur Photographer magazine in the UK in (as far as I recall) October 2005. I have recapitulated it in a new 'Philosophy of Photography' thread called 'encouraging street photography' (initially mistyped as 'atreet photography').

Cheers,

Roger
 
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The CTSA are concerned about this. They would be classed as the police 'experience officers'. That is, they are not your average bobby. They are concerned with people noting down CCTV positions and sussing out blind spots in CCTV to important/busy buildings (amounst other things. However, taking a photo of your local Woolworths should not fall into that category.
 
There are several civil libertarian problems with this campaign.

1. It won't work. None of these kinds of "awareness" campaigns work, for the simple technical reason that there are too many false positives. Supposed a tiny fraction of one percent of the people in London called in about suspicious photographers. Virtually none of those "suspicious" people (actually, probably none at all) would be real terrorists -- the police could spend thousands of hours investigating nothing, when that time could be spent investigating something. Mass call-ins are useless.

2. It inflates an improper authority. The poster implies an authority to suppress photography, and smooths the way for police officers to use their authority essentially for any reason at all : "He was suspicious." Define suspicious? "Well, we can't -- he was just suspicious." Well, how? "For one thing, he was photographing the Houses of Parliament." You mean, duplicating the postcards that can be bought at the kiosks across the street, five for a pound?

3. It's stupid. To really appreciate how stupid this is, go to Google Earth, and look at the Houses of Parliament from a satellite view. You can see every detail of the buildings and the surrounding streets and bridges, and you can use the measuring devices to determine how far each one thing is from another. You can do it while sitting in a coffee bar in Mecca -- no need to risk recon in London.

4. It sets up artificial and misguided criteria as to what constitutes "suspicious." Photography is suspicious? How about walking. I bet more terrorists walk, than photograph. In fact, I don't think the tube bombers were photographing anything, but they have pictures of them walking. Here in the US, around the inner-city ghettoes, there is a "crime" called "Driving while black." It refers to cops pulling over black drivers just to see what they're doing, and maybe shaking down the car in the process. Because they're "suspicious." In fact, it's nothing more or less than the discriminatory suppression of a part of the population. Hate to see that go to Britain -- we're just getting rid of it here in the states. At the height of the IRA campaign, did you Brits have a presumptive guilt law called, "Driving while appearing Fenian?"

So, what should the police dedicated to suppressing photographers actually be doing? Well, how about suppressing traffic accidents. Something between 3000 and 4000 Britons, including many women and children, die in road accidents every year. Britons would be far better off if an actual crime, like drunk driving or speeding, were heavily suppressed, than some fictional crime like "suspicious photography." What, you don't care about children who are dismembered in car accidents?

This "suspicious behavior" campaign is nothing more than a frightening campaign, to convince people that something needs to be done, and that the government is doing it, when, in fact, this does nothing at all to increase anybody's security, because it *can't.*

JC
 
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