Photography Is Not A Crime

[mad]

Don't take any holiday pictures if you're visiting the UK.

At a Downing Street news conference earlier this year, Gordon Brown found himself flummoxed by a question from a foreign journalist. He was asked what impression the rest of the world was getting of civil liberties in Britain now that tourists could be arrested for taking a photograph of a building. Mr Brown responded: "I don't accept that is the true picture of Britain at all." He then moved on, having dismissed the question as beneath contempt.
But actually, it is a true picture of Britain; and it is threatening to cause this country great harm in the eyes of the world. Last week, Jeff Overs, a BBC photographer, was stopped under counter-terrorist laws for taking pictures not of a secret military establishment, or a nuclear power station, but of St Paul's Cathedral at sunset.

These are not isolated incidents. In the summer, Alex Turner, another amateur photographer, was arrested after he took pictures of Mick's Plaice, a fish and chip shop in Chatham, Kent, evidently a building of great strategic importance to the jihadi godfathers in Waziristan.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/philipjohnston/6724053/Photographers-and-anti-terrorism-The-holiday-snaps-that-could-get-you-arrested.html

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Watched Cops Are Polite Cops

This summer, after a civil suit challenged the New York City Police Department's notorious program of patting down "suspicious" residents, Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of the Federal District Court in Manhattan imposed an experiment in which cops in precincts with the highest reported rates of stop-and-frisk activity would be required to wear video cameras for a year.

This is a really good idea.

Small cameras such as the AXON Flex from Taser International can attach to an officer's sunglasses, hat, or uniform. Earlier this year, a 12-month study by Cambridge University researchers revealed that when the city of Rialto, California, required its cops to wear cameras, the number of complaints filed against officers fell by 88 percent and the use of force by officers dropped by almost 60 percent. Watched cops are polite cops.

In addition to protecting the rights of citizens and encouraging good behavior by cops, cameras can protect cops who are accused of wrongdoing by people they bust.

 

[tuk tuk Joe]

Ironically the mafia also does not allow themselves to be photographed...

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Via PINAC's Facebook page:

The drop in complaints to the department could be police behaving better and/or people filing fewer bogus/frivolous complaints. These little cameras can protect cops as well as citizens.

 

[Saorsa]

Via PINAC's Facebook page:

The drop in complaints to the department could be police behaving better and/or people filing fewer bogus/frivolous complaints. These little cameras can protect cops as well as citizens.

I'm sure it's both. Quite often folks who complain about the police STFU when the video shows their actions. Likewise, the police are less likely to push the edge when they know they will be found out.

 

[mikewof]

Via PINAC's Facebook page:

The drop in complaints to the department could be police behaving better and/or people filing fewer bogus/frivolous complaints. These little cameras can protect cops as well as citizens.

I'm sure it's both. Quite often folks who complain about the police STFU when the video shows their actions. Likewise, the police are less likely to push the edge when they know they will be found out.

Aside ...

Is the video from those cameras considered public property? If so, how long before the television shows start filling our screens with it?

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

I was wondering about that too, Mike. Seems to me that any images they record should be protected. They are going to have people identifying themselves, giving out their addresses, and possibly revealing other personal information in the course of interacting with the public. Just because I told a cop my address does not make it public info.

 

[Saorsa]

Via PINAC's Facebook page:

The drop in complaints to the department could be police behaving better and/or people filing fewer bogus/frivolous complaints. These little cameras can protect cops as well as citizens.

I'm sure it's both. Quite often folks who complain about the police STFU when the video shows their actions. Likewise, the police are less likely to push the edge when they know they will be found out.

Aside ...

Is the video from those cameras considered public property? If so, how long before the television shows start filling our screens with it?

Bad boys, Bad boys, what ya gonna do, what you gonna do when they come for you.

 

[Saorsa]

I was wondering about that too, Mike. Seems to me that any images they record should be protected. They are going to have people identifying themselves, giving out their addresses, and possibly revealing other personal information in the course of interacting with the public. Just because I told a cop my address does not make it public info.

You can bet your ass that somebody is going to file FOI suits to get the videos and distribute them.

It already happens with just about every other piece of evidence.

 

[mental floss]

Came across this site today:

Photography Is Not A Crime

The usual question asked when people like me challenge our surveillance society is: what do you have to hide?

OK, what do our government officials have to hide? Some of them seem to be really unhappy when a citizen points a camera at them. They're just doing their jobs, right? They should be proud of it, yet that site is full of incidents showing the exact opposite.

Really? Do government folk sometimes overstep their authority? Maybe we can get an amendment to the constitution that will allow us weapons to defend ourselves.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Third cameraman crucial in photographer abuse case

Take a look at the photograph above. It shows a former police officer in an orange jumpsuit making a court appearance to face a felony charge of evidence tampering, as well as misdemeanor obstruction and theft. I hope that police around the nation will see this image (which comes from here) and realize that this is what can happen when they try to seize and destroy photographs or video taken by others.

The charges arise from an incident—now subject of a lawsuit by the ACLU of Nebraska—that started when a man, Octavius Johnson, questioned why his family’s cars were being towed, and ended up with excessive force, a warrantless search and seizure, and the charges mentioned above. Although two of Johnson’s brothers filmed the incident, it may well have never come to light had not a third person, filming from an upper window in a house across the street, also recorded the incident (YouTube video

I agree, it's a shame that people fear the government. They really just need to get over it.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

The official PINAC Batmobile

Stop him when on your best behavior ONLY!

Richard Rynearson has gone all out in his to protect himself from police abuse. Rynearson’s black bulletproof Mitsubishi Eclipse comes equipped with SpectraShield fabric inside, bulletproof glass, and a RadioShack worth of recording devices. The car has a wide-angle camera in the front, back, and under both side view mirrors with separate microphones that feed into a hard drive in the back of the car. And that’s just the start of the recording devices in Rynearson’s batmobile. The car’s hard drive not only streams everything it records to an online server, it records how fast the car drives, it’s GPS position, and whether the turn signals are on, the doors are open or the car is braking.

All because he did NOT want to roll down his windows.

His orneriness knows no bounds. Gives me hope.

 

[Regatta Dog]

Here's a story about a SWAT team raiding a home to execute a search warrant for credit card fraud - http://whotv.com/2014/02/03/raid-filmed-ankeny-police-traumatize-family/

Interestingly the cops ripped a camera off the front of the house and covered another one inside.

If citizens are forced to live in a surveillance state, law enforcement should accept the same reality.

 

[mikewof]

I was wondering about that too, Mike. Seems to me that any images they record should be protected. They are going to have people identifying themselves, giving out their addresses, and possibly revealing other personal information in the course of interacting with the public. Just because I told a cop my address does not make it public info.

You can bet your ass that somebody is going to file FOI suits to get the videos and distribute them.

It already happens with just about every other piece of evidence.

True, but the affected (effected?) parties get to redact.
I guess the video equivalent of redaction will be beeps over parts of the audio and those blur bubbles over certain faces.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Note to police: lying on arrest reports is not it was like the old days

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Baltimore Police Sgt Thinks Video Recording Means You Lose Your Right To Speak

Seems to hate cameras showing him at work. Wonder why he's ashamed of his work?

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Massachusetts: where you can't secretly record the cops but you can secretly record the crotches

It needs a punchline, but kind of is one. I'm not sure where to go. Little help?

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Yee, doggies... this case is about guns. And here I was ready to convict. I may need to rethink my position here. This man might deserve the benefit of the doubt.

For Tom - it's always the gun. Reminds me of the saying, when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail, which reminded me of this...

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/70ca308603/it-s-not-about-the-nail

Always!

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

A brief history of the Photography Is Not A Crime website/media outlet. Freelance photographer Carlos Miller decided to take pictures of some police making an arrest, got himself arrested, and a new career was born:

Protecting Citizen Journalism

“In 2007, I had had enough of the dry heat, immigration vigilantes and smalltown newspapers, so I returned to Miami, moved in with my Colombian mom and planned on earning a living by taking pictures for travel magazines and publications,” Miller explained.

It was during one of his photography assignments in 2007 that Miller’s life took an unsuspecting turn. While he snapped pictures of the new, burgeoning businesses cropping up on Biscayne Boulevard, he also decided to take a few shots of an arrest being made across the street.

The random pictures of the police that night in 2007 changed the course of Miller’s career and life.

After he took a few pictures of the incident, officers asked Miller to stop it and move along. After years of avoiding trouble, even though many times he knew the law granted him the right to snap pictures in a public place, Miller decided that night to defend his rights by disobeying the cops’ orders. The incident led to Miller’s arrest, which he eventually beat in court as he has done on two subsequent occasions where similar charges of defying orders have been brought against him.

“I discovered the power of the blogosphere when I received thousands of messages of support as I posted pictures of my first trial,” Miller told me.



Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/04/11/4054242_protecting-citizen-journalism.html#storylink=cpy

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

No Charges Against Philly Cops Caught on Camera Shaking Down Citizens Before Shutting Down Surveillance Cameras

The shop owners were all legal immigrants. None had criminal records. Nor had they ever met – they hailed from four corners of the city and spoke different languages. Yet the stories they told Daily News reporters Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman were identical:

A Philadelphia plainclothes narcotics squad had barreled into the immigrants’ bodegas, guns drawn. They had cut the wires on the stores’ video surveillance systems, robbed thousands of dollars from the cash drawers, stolen food and merchandise and then trashed the shops on their way out the door.

One bodega owner even had footage of the cops cutting the video wires.

You’d think that would have been enough to get the cops busted. Or, at the very least, fired.

But this is Philadelphia, where, a disgusted veteran officer tells me, “The only way a cop can lose his job in this city is if he shoots another cop during roll call.”

The pretext for these raids was apparently the sale of plastic baggies. You know, drug paraphernalia.

Without the War on (Some) Drugs (Mostly Marijuana) it would be a lot harder for corrupt cops to find a pretext.