Everyone's a spy

Here is an excerpt from an article in the Christian Science Monitor (no, I don't subscribe). It seems that film is a powerful tool in planning catastrophe:


(May 23) -- "If you pull out a camera on a New Jersey train, you will have company - law enforcement company. If you size up a shot on the New York subway, you'll probably be questioned by security and told to keep the lens cap tightly on. Even if you plan to snap some innocuous bank building from a public sidewalk, you might find guards telling you it's not allowed.

"Is photography becoming illegal in the United States?" asks Jim McGee, in a column for the online photo magazine Vivid Light Photography.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that heightened sensitivities over security in the wake of 9/11 have put a crimp in photographers' freedom to shoot in public, even if the laws remain largely unchanged. News that Al Qaeda operatives canvassed targets with cameras has made taking shots of federal buildings, bridges, power plants, and the like seem less innocent.

Last year, after the Madrid train bombing, New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority proposed a ban on photography on its subways and buses (New Jersey already had a ban in place). Public protest was such that now, more than a year later, the proposal has stalled."

I suppose that every tourist at DisneyWorld is now a potential threat to blow up Cinderella's Castle. And we better watch out for those angry snapshot takers at the Grand Canyon...you never know which one of them will come back one day to line the walls with charges and fill it in by the devastation. I guess I'd better destroy my shots of Mt. Washington before I'm found out...

AOL News - Watch Where You Point That Camera