This video which seems to have been released by Houston Mayor Annise Parker as a part of the…ahem… Run, Hide, Fight series is nuts. I understand the need for awareness and diligence toward creeps (not just in the USA and not just terrorists) but this ummm “awareness” is over the top – particularly with regard to photographers.
After watching the video and others in the series, there are basically two groups that appear to be the focus.
1) people planting bombs – a multitude of examples including vests, backpacks, people trying to gain access to do this; and…
2) people taking photos – of public spaces? and exits? and… huh?
Seriously? Those are the two groups we should fear? I’m particularly referring to roughly the 1:45 mark where the specific vilification of photographers or “people with recording devices” is a big WTF.
So, in short, yes Mayor Parker we should keep a collective eye out for nutjobs. I’ll all for awareness, but I hate fear mongering. And pull your head out.
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Wanna know more about photographers rights? Check out this post or this post AND… very importantly…tune into the next chasejarvis LIVE episode on August 29th in collaboration with ASMP.org where I’m hosting a world class panel that’ll discuss the current and future state of photographers rights…the good, bad and ugly about some changes in our landscape.
(Thx Trey for link)
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Let’s flag the video for BULLYING!
“If you see people wearing bulky clothing not appropriate for the season, they could be concealing a bomb.”
Or, they might just be homeless.
This vid smacks of 50s era red scare crossed with some of Paul Verhoeven’s tongue-in-cheek-but-not-that-far-removed-from-reality commercials in movies like “Robocop” or “Total Recall”.
The Threat Is Real. We Are Vulnerable.
Solution: Don’t trust anyone else and rat out others incessantly. Nothing like false alarms to tie up capacity-constrained first response assets, eh?
WAKE UP AMERICA… YOUR GOVERNMENT HATES YOU. IT IS OWNED BY THE BANKSTERS, WEAPONS MANUFACTURERS AND BIG PHARMA. YOU THINK THOSE DRONES WERE JUST FOR THE AFGHANI’s???
seriously… you people are whining. Making a big deal out of nothing… First, a small portion of the video was about video/photo devices. It wasn’t a stab at photographers at all… I guess if you call anyone who takes a photo a photographer, then you are right….She “actor/terrorist – not a photographer” was obviously collecting information about a “target,” granite hokey or propaganda like… but any awareness videos portraying domestic terrorism will look like that.
1. Make the call, turns out to be nothing – go about your day
2. Make the call, stop something terrible – Drink beer in celebration
It’s posts like this that make me come back to this blog less frequent. Chase you know well that you are making this more an issue than it is… if any. Especially in light of the recent acts of domestic terrorism.
I was stopped to many times when I was taking architecture pictures with DSLR and tripod. Security personnel asked me to delete pictures for “security” reasons!!! What is about the “security” these days?
Thieves are usually running so lets stop all the joggers.
“Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.”
Yea, I shoot architecture a lot. When I first started I kept getting stopped. Some nice, Some not. You don’t have to delete any images as long as you are on the sidewalk and not on their property. Government buildings are different though… If there is a great building that is worth the shot, I go into the building itself and talk to the receptionist and or security about getting on the property to photograph. You’d be surprised at how co-operative they get. One guard took me to the roof to shoot surrounding buildings. I sold an image from that shoot to a law firm in Atlanta GA.
Be solid and confident in your rights and there is no problem.
Jon,
I agree with you 100%. People here are making this more of an issue than it is. You people missed the part where they say if you see someone photographing exits or security report it. They didn’t say “if you see someone photographing a family or a flower report it”. Hey I’m aware of us slowly losing some of our freedoms and I’m not happy about it. And we should stand up to protect our freedoms. Yes sometimes you have to push back but the fact of the matter is, there are people out there attempting to commit acts of violence depicted in the video. Oklahoma City and the failed attempt in Time Square are two that come to mind.
It’s not living in fear, its just living in a world where this stuff happens.
Oh yeah what did you want the photographer to look like? If I recall correctly the female Russian spy who was deport was rather hot but I guess she couldn’t be a threat to this country since she was hot, right?
Time to have civilized and intelligent discussions not a bunch of knee jerk reactions like most of the posts here.
Why didn’t someone call the cops about the videographers who captured the footage in public spaces for this video? Wonder if they got model releases from every individual in this video no matter where it was captured?
What we get when a bunch of nincompoops create videos.