When I visited the Soviet Union, nearly 30 years ago, we were warned not to take photographs of places like train stations, bridges, or government buildings. Naturally, being a wiseass 19 year-old American, I went out of my way to take snapshots of such places, my great prize being the Lubyanka.1
Thankfully, we live in a democratic country, where people are free to take photographs in public places without fear of being harassed by the state security apparatus. Or most of us would like to believe. But, as Antonio Musumeci and Julian Heicklen learned the hard way, the post-9/11 USA has, in ways generally unprotested by the Tea Party set, taken on some of the characteristics of the pre-Glasnost USSR.
Last November, Musumeci and Heicklen, libertarian activists, were arrested, and Musumeci’s camera confiscated, for video-recording outside the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan (the charges were dropped in March). This was but one of a series of similar incidents in which amateur and professional photographers have been hassled and arrested in the name of “homeland security”.
Now, the New York Civil Liberties Union has brought a lawsuit on behalf of Musumeci, seeking a court order to ensure that people don’t face police harassment or arrest for the simple and harmless act of taking photographs in public places. It would be nice if some of the reactionary blowhards who routinely lambaste the ACLU and have spent the past 9 years cheerleading for the trumped-up “war on terror” would pause in their rants against chimerical tyrannies like expanded access to medical care, and instead recognize and support this challenge to very real infringements of constitutional liberties. But I’m not holding my breath.
1I’d reproduce the photo here, but it lies buried in a box in my garage along with my other memorabilia from that trip. Someday I’ll dig out those photos and have them digitized.
Filed under: Bleak House | Tagged: civil liberties, homeland insecurity, photography, police state USA | 1 Comment »






















