Posted on 06/04/2008 10:43:48 AM PDT by billorites
What is it with photographers these days? Are they really all terrorists, or does everyone just think they are?
Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We've been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required.
Except that it's nonsense. 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.
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.
Terrorists taking pictures is a quintessential detail in any good movie.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
They are...especially wedding photographers.
They didn't have to. They used Flight Simulator to repeatedly learn the landscape of their flight path in destination to jihad.
Now they have Google Earth to get satellite maps of targets.
Nerds with power for the first time in their life . They remember you from high school and yes , this is going to take all day .
Except for the middle easterners who are apprehended taking photos of Texas oil refineries and even shooting guards when approached...
He didn't have to. The group of supremacists he was staying with had scoped out the building and made plans 10 years earlier. Some of us are aware that there were more than TWO people involved. Rather than muddle the case, the government went after the two sure cases. McVeigh was guilty. He did not act alone.
I’ll also cite the terrorist cells that have been apprehended with photos and videos shot at the scenes of the targets they have selected.
Is the ban on photography excessive? Yes.
It is no reason to deny that terrorists DO case the location and take photos.
Disgusting scumbag idiotorial fit into the middle of this nonsensical rant.
"When Masood met two people posing as journalists at the headquarters of his guerrilla force in northern Afghanistan on Sunday afternoon, a bomb hidden in a video camera went off, they said."
Masood was a charismatic Afghan leader - successfully fighting OBL and the Taliban and would most probably have been a major asset to us in the war - perhaps even the leader of the country.
Quite so! I didn't notice the author's name initially, and I was surprised to read such competent analysis in a UK paper. I got as far as the movie plot reference before glancing up at the author's name. Schneier is the best writer out there on the subject of security. His blog never fails to entertain and attracts lots of excellent comments.
European countries learned a lot about the value of ground-level photoreconnaisance during WWII.
I know that in the 1980’s in Poland it was still illegal to shoot landmarks like monuments, bridges, certain public buildings.
So you are saying that every one of those cases was an outright government setup?
And why wasn’t the Brooklyn Bridge bombing plot in there?
Doesn’t sound like the governent put together the plot (like Jerry Rivers claimed about Miami and other suggested about the 1993 WTC bombing).
Doesn’t sound like the terrorists were innocent either.
The actual amount of potential damage caused is less worth debating than the effectiveness of those plotting to actually carry it out.
If someone walks in the out door at an airport, they clear the gates.
ANY terrorist explosions at an airport are going to cause expensive delays, investigations, and cause “terror” and “havoc”.
But let’s pretend that there are no domestic terrorists.
And do you have a counter for all of the examples I cited?
In NYC a couple years ago, I found myself waiting a couple hours for someone in a hotel lounge. Bored senseless, I started playing with my video camera, fiddling with controls/menus and taping street activity which might prove marginally interesting. Long story short, I got interviewed by Federal Marshals on reports of “suspicious activity”.
Hysteria run amok...
The leadership of the free world, from top to bottom, has gone brain-dead. Nothing more, nothing less.
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