Shortly after 9/11 I was working with a small crew shooting an advertisement for Microsoft Mobile on a street corner in downtown Seattle directly across from the Federal Building. Within minutes of breaking out a couple large reflectors and clicking away a few frames, two armed officers came over and shut down our operation saying “you can’t photograph federal buildings”. I assured them the building was not the subject of the image. Nonetheless they shut us down. And in the many years since 9/11, we’ve of course seen and heard numerous incidents/reports/cases of cops unjustly and illegally harassing photographers for similar stuff.
Although this approach was systematically the standard for almost a decade, that treatment was officially laid to rest between August and October 2010 with a settlement between the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Feds that stated it was okay to photograph Federal Courthouse buildings. TODAY however, the NYTimes Lens Blog reports that the NYCLU has received a redacted and updated version of the directive that was sent to all law enforcement agencies nationwide indicating that it is officially legit to photograph ANY AND ALL exteriors of federal buildings from “publicly accessible spaces such as streets, sidewalks, parks and plazas.”
I encourage you to download and print this updated version of the directive and keep it in your camera bag in case you ever get hassled.
In addition to illustrating that you can photograph buildings from public spaces, it mandates that “absent reasonable suspicion or probable cause…officers should not seize the camera or its contents, and must be cautious not to give such ‘orders’ to a photographer to erase the contents of a camera” as this constitutes and illegal seizure or detention.
Good news for us all.
[via the NYT Lens blog]
About damn time. That crap was getting ridiculous.
Now buy the T-shirt: http://photographernotaterrorist.org/
Whats the situation with photographing bridges? I was in NY on holiday in 2008, took some photographs of Manhattan from a bridge we were on in traffic (fast moving traffic, foggy day!). A cop at the toll booth saw the camera, demanded it, deleted the (blurry!) photos (after becoming very aggressive that the pics were only showing on screen for a second!) and threatened to keep the camera. We were told what we were doing “was a threat to national security and that we couldn’t take a photo from, on, or of a bridge”
This document only pertains to federal buildings, which I am sure are the biggest problem. My question is how much further this can be applied, whether in court or practically when you actually show it to an officer when you were photographing something besides a federal building. This might be a knife in a gun fight, but at least you would have something.
nice one chase!