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]
If you ever have to correct an officer on matters of the law, you better be a really smooth talker! Those folks have enough to worry about and a smug artist is the last thing they want to deal with. It’s always best to cooperate – if they ask you to leave, then just leave. You can always make a phone call to the precinct later and inform them of their mistake. Let their internal affairs people correct them, because nobody likes being told how to do their job. OTOH, if it was for a commercial shoot you would have a permit anyway, which would probably be enough to resolve the situation in a professional manner.
Don’t be a sheep. They shouldn’t have to publish a document to state the rights that we have, this is a free country. Stand up for your rights!
It’s too bad that there are plenty of bad cops out there that are some combination of ignorant, stupid, and malicious when it comes to dealing with photographers.
I saved it as a PDF and sent it to iBooks on my iPhone…..always have it that way.
Thanks Chase for posting this important info… I don’t want to get over political, but it’s such a shame that as a result of 9/11 so many of our rights have been taken away by our own people. The true injustice of that day for sure.
To think they built the federal buildings with our money and we can’t take pictures of them; absurd…
This, of course, covers non-commercial photography only. Photographers shooting for commercial purposes would still need the permission of the building owners to both shoot and publish the images.