Educated Guesswork has posted a couple entries over the last couple days about photography being stopped in public places, the first covering an incident in Chicago's Millenium park. This one is very interesting, as it cannot be disputed that this is public property, nor is there any ordinance against taking photographs while in the park. It is only because there was potential copyright infringement by reproducing an image of the sculpture for commercial purposes that security guards intervened (apparently completely unaware of the "fair use" doctrine). To add insult to injury, the exhibit itself is nothing more than a large metal kidney bean, and I am reminded suddenly of the story of the high school that had a "modern art" sculpture out on its front lawn that was mistaken by the cleaning crew for scrap metal, and taken away to the dump:
The second entry covered a situation in somewhat more of a grey area, but with much more disturbing results: San Francisco Municipal Railway fare inspectors attempted to cite a photographer for taking photographs, only to be forced to admit that there are no codes, laws, or regulations prohibiting this. San Francisco police officers even got involved — and more disturbingly, after being told that there was no law against photography, bluntly told the photographer that they had no interest in allowing him to have his day in court on the topic of whether or not he had a right to photograph, but instead threatened to arrest him on a trumped-up charge of trespassing, so they could put him in jail for something without allowing the actual reason to show up in court. Without charging him, the police officer implied that his name would be placed on terrorist watch lists, so he can look forward to being hassled when he goes into airports.
The photographer's draft complaint to the SFPD is remarkably mild. In my mind, there's very little worse than a corrupt cop, and I would have called for an investigation, and published the officer's personal information in as much detail as possible. This situation is a grey area only because the Muni could be considered private property, and what is allowable on private property is almost entirely up to the owner. Since it's a public transportation system, however, different rules may apply, and most significantly, the rules actually on the books did not forbid it. What happened was that some low level representatives of the owner, not necessarily acting on the owner's behalf, attempted to enforce a law that doesn't exist, not even taking the out of arbitrarily refusing service to the photographer, and the police assisted in violating a citizen's civil rights for this nonexistent law.
This is ostensibly in the name of security, and this is certainly not the first time a photographer has been hassled without being charged for taking pictures in a public area, but it's well worth pointing out that there is absolutely no security value whatsoever in stopping professional photographers — anyone who wants photographic record of the layout of train stations can get them much more easily with cheap hidden cameras or simply by searching the web for existing images. More importantly, if the city does want to attempt to increase security this way, it can attempt to make a law out of it, with all the public scrutiny that this entails. In effect, San Francisco has just managed to do an end-run around the democratic process. I hope someone sues the city for it.
