The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has reported on a new SPD policy that makes it clear that onlookers to police incidents have the right to gawk, shout, and photograph– as long as they don’t “interfere” with officers.

According to the P-I blog, the new policy says that officers can take action against bystanders if:

1. * The safety of the officer or suspect is jeopardized.
2. * People interfere or violate the law.
3. * People threaten others by words or action, or they attempt to incite others to violate the law.

Related forum thread (thanks Roger!)

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has decided to venture into the video game industry, she announced at the recent “Games for Change” conference: “If someone told me when I retired from court that I’d be talking at a conference about digital gaming, I’d think they’d had one drink too many.”

O’Connor’s game, currently titled Our Courts and due next year, is an educational role-playing title where gamers assume the character of figures in the US court system - judge, attorney, etc. — the goal for students will be to “teach them how to think through and analyze problems, take action and voice opinions to their elected representatives.”

What does this have to do with PhotoPermit? It’s expected that the game will deal with educating students about their First Amendment rights, using real-world example cases like Tinker v. Des Moines and Morse vs Frederick (aka “Bong Hits For Jesus”).

O’Connor said that she is “encouraged” to see young people becoming involved in political campaigns through the net. “E-mailing, blogging, networking on Facebook — they can take leadership, make their voices heard through tools that belong to their generation. We need to give them ownership to allow them to interact with the material.”

That’s the title of today’s Guardian story by Bruce Schneier, who also writes on Security for Wired. As Schneier points points out:

…The 9/11 terrorists didn’t photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn’t photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn’t photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Photographs aren’t being found amongst the papers of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IRA wasn’t known for its photography. Even those manufactured terrorist plots that the US government likes to talk about — the Ft. Dix terrorists, the JFK airport bombers, the Miami 7, the Lackawanna 6 — no photography.

And reminds us to remind the haters: prohibiting photography was something we used to ridicule about the USSR.

Thanks Mac for this somewhat comical story (that is, if it weren’t thuggish and creepy) of McGill University security guards in Montréal, who wanted to stop him making photographs of the campus from the side facing busy Sherbrooke Ave:

The guards radioed their superiors, and soon someone else came out from campus. This did not take long… When he arrived, he told me I could not take pictures there, and that if I did not stop, he would call someone. By this point I was wondering what action, beyond calling someone ELSE, these people would take if confronted by someone truly intent on harm, and not merely confronted by someone whose only offense was to legally wield a camera. So, again, I encouraged him to make the call. He did, someone else came out, and the someone else told me that I had to stop taking pictures, and that if I didn’t he would call somebody. Once again, I said I was in the right, that they could not prohibit me taking pictures in a public space, and I asked him to please call somebody else in…

The “somebody else” ended up bringing out a video camera of their own — apparently feeling that it’s not absurd to record someone while telling them that photography is not permitted. Or maybe a taste for hypocrisy is a job requirement.

Mac has clearly done his homework here, and his post contains some useful info on Quebec legal precedents too. Why? As Mac writes:

McGill tried to prevent me from taking photographs in a public space; I have an obligation, I believe, to stand in opposition to what I would characterize as an authoritarian mentality. I also have an obligation to publicize McGill’s behavior as widely as possible. This, unfortunately, is how too many institutions and their security apparatuses behave, and they will continue to do so as long as they feel they can get away with it. That is, they will continue for as long as we fail to offer opposition. And we cannot offer opposition if such behavior remains unpublicized.

Related forum thread.

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, the Washington DC Fox-TV affiliate interviewed photographer Joel Lawson about harassment by security guards in DC’s Union Station. Fox News also visited the flickr dcphotorights group, and then went down to the station themselves.

Channel 5 interviewed the head of Amtrak’s department, who assured them that there are no laws or rules against photography in this iconic public building.

But then who should appear on the scene, during the interview, but a Union Station security guard, who demanded that the channel 5 crew stop photographing — even after they told him who they were interviewing, and the statements of this senior Amtrak official, the security guard insisted that they stop, citing a “policy” which he subsequently refused to identify.

(Video Clip)

Related forum thread 1 and forum thread 2.