dep
Excellent idea. We should all do this.
Great advice. Might work to make small talk with them and introduce yourself (use a phony name) to try to get their names.
Are they likely casing these places for a truck bomb or some other kind of attack? Here is a thread about the missing 25 to 35 Arabs with big rig driving skills and possibly potential hijackers of trucks.
Yep. Even one of the small disposable ones is better than nothing.
I have a small disposable camera and a little spiral-bound notebook in my purse or backpack now wherever we go. About a week after 9-11 my kids and I went to the local Wal-Mart. As we were walking from our vehicle through the parking lot, I saw two young Middle Eastern guys, twenty-somethings, walking out of WM toward us. They had no bags from the store. They had nothing in their hands at all. But in the 10-15 feet width of space between parked cars, they were walking like they were joined at the hip, with their arms pressed together and their heads down, kind of a "let's hurry up and get out of here before someone sees us" kind of exit.
I turned around and watched them walk past, narrowed my eyes, thought about it for a few seconds, then walked into the store. I WISH TO GOODNESS I had followed them to their vehicle, taken a picture of them, copied down a license plate number, and phoned it in. I didn't have anything to write on or a camera with me, so just went about my business. (What better place to unleash a bio-threat than inconspicuously sprinkled on the shelves of a local store patroned by thousands of people daily?) There are no community colleges or universities nearby which would draw foreigners to this little town--but that parking lot at Wal-Mart was barely two miles from the main gates of a large army post (where we live). There are a LOT of army personnel and families who shop there, and it's not uncommon to see dozens of uniformed soldiers picking up a can of shaving cream or a basket full of sodas and treats.
Needless to say, I'm watching my surroundings like a hawk these days, and I'm rapidly losing my PC "don't want to harass anyone who might be innocent" inclinations, too. Be ever viligent!