Dan Gillmor noted on his blog about the MTA's attempt to ban photography from the subway system, ostensibly due to the ever-prevalent hysteria about terrorists. Should this rule be implemented it will just be one more incursion on civil liberties inflicted on ourselves since 9/11.
At some point when I'm not completely exhausted and can managed to construct a coherent, grammatical sentence I may comment further on why there are strong negative First Amendment implications by this prohibition, but for now see what others have noted.
But I will note having seen a similar atrocious policy enforced on a city-bound New Jersey Transit train. Some passengers had a camera and were snapping pictures like any tourists might. The conductor barked at them to put it away. I think he would have thrown them off the train if they hadn't.
This evening I spent at least an hour with a Lexis rep trying to find where it was written that cameras couldn't be used on trains. The only thing I could find was a single mention in the Bridgewater, NJ Courier News (July 16, 2004 Friday, A-SECTION; Pg. 1A) talking about how during the Republican Convention "[p]hotography on NJ Transit property will be prohibited without a permit."
What's alarming is not just the rule itself, but that there was absolutely no mention in the public record about implementing it (nor any record in any code or statute that it had been implemented at all.) Thus raising another problem. Not only are rights slowly being eroded through overzealous limitations, but they are being chipped away at secretly, taking away citizens' rights without giving them a chance to affect the decision-making.
(The horrors of trackback - a double-ping back to his site. Thanks to lousy MoveableType documentation and the strange architecture to the feature, I'm an Internet polluter. *sigh* I'd delete the duplicate, if only I could.)
Comments (1)
My husband had a similar situtation on our vacation last weekend to Baltimore. He was taking video movies of the light rail near Camden Station. Two transit police detained my 60 year old husband for over 20 minutes while they checked his identity on the national criminal database claiming he was suspicious by videotaping trains. They claimed he was suspicious Needless to say, we will never ever return to Baltimore.
Posted by Nancy Roney | June 20, 2005 1:06 PM
Posted on June 20, 2005 13:06