Sunday, January 20, 2008

More About the FBI List

About three weeks ago I wrote about my photography friend's experience with the Police and FBI when she stopped on a public roadside to photograph a refinery.

Being put on the FBI List seems to be more and more of a problem. Read this article in the New York Times about Ramek Fazel, a free-lance photographer and an American Citizen.

My reactions are all over the map. Indignant, Angry especially knowing that you can google earth for the sites of refineries, downtowns, Government buildings and see the information several ways, Grief about the loss of Freedoms, Wondering if I would be willing to be the one to draw the line in the sand, Accepting the new security measures as necessary in the current environment. How do you feel about this? Especially if you are a photographer?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have some firsthand experience with this...forbidden to photograph industrial sites, bridges, official personnel, and the like...having film ripped from cameras in the name of "national security". That was 1972 in Russia and Eastern Germany. It pains me greatly that we have become the thing we despised the most.

John W said...

Billie

Some say that it's resentment and anger by those who do not have America's freedoms that were a factor in the attack on the World Trade Center, that an objective of Osama bin Laden and his followers was to destroy those freedoms. It seems to me that they are succeeding; remarkably by getting s to do it to ourselves. I'm coming to believe that the greatest threats to the Bill of Rights freedoms we have enjoyed for so long come not from communists or Islamic hardliners or even random terrorists. The threats come from our own security agencies.