Today I suffered my first security related smackdown from The Man. I was walking past the Federal Reserve Bank building and took a few shots of their really ornate lanterns. I should have made it a hit and run I guess, but I stood there trying to get a good angle on them. In the midst of photo number 4 a cop car pulled up and told me I couldn't take photos of the building.
"Is that a digital camera?"
"Yes. I was just taking a picture of the light fixtures." I showed him the shots I'd taken, tightly framed so that they were just of the lamps, not the building at all.
"Yeah, you can't have those."
I deleted all the shots, the only ones I'd taken so far.
"No image." I held the screen for him to see, thanked him and walked away.
I wonder if he would have taken my film if I had a regular camera. I wonder how long before America is a free country again. Those in the photo above are the same laterns I was photographing, which makes the whole thing that much more absurd. Oppression for its own sake.
2 comments:
America became a weird country the last few years. There's not much left of all the freedom that was once here. The fact you can't say everything anymore is badn but forbidding to take pictures of lantern posts smells very dictatorial. I think you have more liberty in Iran these days
More liberty in Iran? I voted against Bush but nothing like a broad generalization to really miss the point. The fact that cops are spending their time patrolling for picture takers is sad but what hyperbole to compare that to Iranian human rights.
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