Bruce Schneier in The Guardian comes up with one explaination as to why photographers seem to be hassled more and more when trying to take pictures in public places out of misplaced fear of ‘terrorists’
Given that real terrorists, and even wannabe terrorists, don’t seem to photograph anything, why is it such pervasive conventional wisdom that terrorists photograph their targets? Why are our fears so great that we have no choice but to be suspicious of any photographer?
Because it’s a movie-plot threat.
A movie-plot threat is a specific threat, vivid in our minds like the plot of a movie. You remember them from the months after the 9/11 attacks: anthrax spread from crop dusters, a contaminated milk supply, terrorist scuba divers armed with almanacs. Our imaginations run wild with detailed and specific threats, from the news, and from actual movies and television shows. These movie plots resonate in our minds and in the minds of others we talk to. And many of us get scared.
At to this that many of the sorts of people employed as security guards are not exactly the sharpest tools of the box, are poorly-paid, poorly-trained, and recruited through a process that fails to weed out small-minded bullies, it’s not surprising that some photographers get hassled.
And I’m not willing to listen to the sheeple who bleat “it’s better to be safe than sorry” when authority figures overreact to largely imaginary terrorist threats. If we do nothing, our freedoms will be slowly salami-sliced away. If when they came for the railway enthusiasts with cameras and you did nothing, what will happen when they come for you?
Not so long ago our church warden was hauled in by the police for taking a photo of a rare bus double-decker bus going under a particulalry low railway bridge.
So it’s not just the railway enthusiasts who are under threat, anyone taking a photo which happens to have a railway bridge in it is vulnerable.
On a similar theme, someone taking a picture of a model locomotive at my club got an ear-bashing from the mother of a child who happened to be in the proximity. Since it was a digital camera, the peace was kept by deleting the offending photo and taking another, but if it had been a film camera the situation would have been far more fraught.
It seems anyone wielding a camera is a threat to someone. How long before carrying a mobile phone with a camera in becomes a public order offence?