I’ve heard that it can sometimes be a problem taking pictures of privately held properties in the USA, especially since it’s not always simple to tell private property from state owned property. Rent-a-cops may approach you and ask you to leave and even worse, you might get arrested if the pictures you took are showing details of important infrastructure (bridges and so on). All this since the threat of terrorism increased after September 11 2001. But I thought that this was something exclusively american, considering their new legislation and their Department of Homeland Security and so on.

But now it turns out that a photographer was arrested in England – Europe! And this guy wasn’t even taking pictures of something vital to the society (unless you think a fast food shop is the worlds most important thing). Anyways, here’s the link the to article published by The British Journal of Photography. Reading his own blog post about the event reminds me of a film I saw about the issues developing in regards to personal integrity vs. threats of terrorism. Sadly I can’t remember the films name right now, I’ll update the post if I remember it again.

—

Update: With the help of my girlfriend I got hold of the films name: Taking Liberties (since 1997).

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 08:44 and is filed under Photography, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.