"Taking Photos in a public place is not a crime" - Popular Mechanics

[jimpatro]

You may dismiss your own freedom of speech this easily but not mine.

Some of us believe in following the law of the land. In the US we can still maintain freedom of speech and follow the rules. It's give and take. We have endless freedoms and opportunities here. It's not just me, me , me.

 

[jimpatro]

I had a serious issue in a small viallge which is frequented by westernes in India last February:

I was shooting with the HVX from inside a rikshaw on the street when a dirty fellow ( who looked like a beggar) stuck his head into the passenger area and asked if I had a permission, I told him this is open street and I dont need one, he then continued to say I do and talked in Telugu to the driver who after 1 minute drove off....

I shot for about 5 minutes when the cellphone of the rikshaw driver rang and we were told to stop: we were arrested by Indian Secret Service and the beggar was one of them!

I had no time to back up my material, they were in a motorbike behind us, we were arrested, jailed and my material was deleted of all cameras!

Reason given: my material could serve terrorists to peek out further bomb placements!
I told the chief: you can buy dvd´s here where you can see much more than what you deleted...
the pune bomb in German Bakery was just 10 days ago ....
after 7 hrs I was free with all cameras and equipment but the footage was gone! I was not allowed to shoot anymore material in the village!

From that day on I had 2 agents follow me at all times, felt like good old Stasi days.....

And see, the moral is: Public safety takes precedent over your convenience.
Did they ask for money in exchange for you being able to keep your footage? If not, they probably had the best of intentions in destroying the footage.

 

[daveswan]

There can be no good reason for destroying innocent footage. Especially shot in a public place, and a street is public. The only reason is bloody-minded malignancy, sadly all too common among those given authority of any kind.
And you don't need to go out photographing to plan a terrorist attack, Google will do your job for you.
The chances are those goons were breaking the law themselves, or just making it up as they went along.

 

[Barry_Green]

And with that, instead of just publishing a simple article on what your rights are, we've now entered the land of debating politics, so this thread has served its useful purpose.