Chris White, 45, has become the latest victim in a trend in the United States (here) and England cracking down on citizens taking pictures in public. In White’s case, he was simply taking pictures of his daughter at a shopping center in Glasgow, Scotland when he was detained as a possible terrorist threat.
Security guards threatened to confiscate White’s camera when he refused to delete the photos of his 4-year-old daughter, Hazel, eating ice cream at Braehead shopping center. He was specifically held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
The officer only allowed him to retain his camera after recording White’s personal details, including name, place of birth, age, employment status and address.
The mall spokesman notably did not express regret over shoppers being forced to delete pictures and detained as possible terrorist threats. Instead, he said that an exception could be made for taking pictures of your own children. “Like most shopping centers, we have a photography policy in the mall to protect the privacy of the staff and shoppers. However, it is not our intention to — and we do not — stop innocent family members from taking pictures.” So, taking pictures in a mall is now a presumptive terrorism threat unless you can show you have a child in the picture.
The crackdown on public photography is part of a general attitude that more and more conduct must be done by permission as opposed to a presumption that conduct is lawful. It is a dangerous shift for any society when one must take leave or ask for the privilege to take public pictures, including of your own children. The result is a sense of continual control by authorities, living one’s life by permission or leave of the state.
Source: BBC
anon-
It must be an awesome feeling- to know everything there is to know. The downside, of course, is knowing with absolute certainty that you are a giant dickweed.
i use the name pete because pete is my name. i don’t hide behind others and i never say anything on here that i wouldn’t say to someones face.
name a time and a place and tell me that.
chickenshit
You’re still a dumbass Pete, but thanks for reminding us.
The mall DOES have 50 cameras trained on you. And Starbucks may have 5 cameras in their lobby, BUT ONLY ON PLANET PETE and in the land of 24 are those cameras keeping you from being anonymous on the Internet.
You’re such a stupid craptacular dumbass.
Internet anonymity is trivial. That’s why the EFF fights for it. That’s why there are all sorts of technologies that support like Tor, etc.
Retard Gene’s Locard Principle was that it was physically impossible for you to be anonymous on the net. Instead, it is trivial. And so Retard Gene fell back to claiming that in Pete Space there are so many cameras around that you cannot be anonymous.
And that’s a bullshit claim and outside the scope of his claim.
His claim was about log files and physical properties of networks.
His out was about cameras in meatspace.
I don’t expect you can understand the difference.
So there you are Pete surfing porn in the mall again using their wifi, and they have 50 cameras watching 300 people in the food zoo, 25 of whom are using their iphones and laptops. And 10 of those people do not have their screens turned to any camera. There is no way for the mall cops, or the local cops, or the FBI to figure out that it’s your laptop, or which of the 25 laptops is yours. And if you think there is, then fine, at the Starbucks or at the mall, you surf from the restroom, or from the back of a nearby van.
Again, here is torrentfreak discussing which vpn providers keep logs and which do not.
http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/
Yes, you and Retard Gene think logs are some magical thing that are always present and are a function of some fundamental law of the universe.
But for people who actually know how the internet works, we know that anonymity is possible.
Anyway, again, thanks for reminding us what a total ignoramus you are.
anon
1, October 11, 2011 at 7:11 am
And what’s left unstated is that the mall has about 50 cameras in their food zoo constantly monitoring the crowd.
It’s okay for authorities to video you, it’s not okay for you to video anything.
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ya know, i could swear someone made that same point before.
oh, i remember
pete
1, September 30, 2011 at 9:44 pm
anon
1, September 30, 2011 at 6:15 pm
Simple way to be anonymous on the Internet
1. Goto starbucks.
2. Attach to their wifi
3. Make your post
Repeat 1-3, rinse, cycling on Starbucks, Burger King, Culvers, McDonalds, Barnes & Noble, Mall food zoos, airports, libraries….
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you should remember that while at these locations you are most likely under video surveillance.
and i got the reply
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anon
1, September 30, 2011 at 10:16 pm
@Pete,
“you should remember that while at these locations you are most likely under video surveillance.”
I’m sitting at a starbucks, back to the wall, computer screen facing the wall, there are 5 other people there using computers, some with their backs to the wall, some with their computer screen in open view.
It’s 12pm.
After visiting random websites for a random amount of time, while others are coming and going and using the net in the Starbucks, I type in my note threatening Gene H’s collection of adult diapers. After that, I drink my espresso, visit a few more sites and leave.
Later that day across the planet, Gene feels threatened and call up his dad who runs the combined NSA/FBI/CIA joint task force. He explains carefully to them that I have just threatened to cross the streams so they pull up WordPress’ logs with their backdoor, and find the IP address I used which they are quickly able to determine belongs to a Starbucks in Denver.
They then enter AT&T’s networks because they have the backdoor, and use the administrative password to check out its router logs, and sure enough, they find an http request to the jonathan turley blog. So they know I was there and they know my internal IP address, and from Wordress’ log they know what browser I was using and that I was running Windows.
So from there they know where I was and what time I was there.
From there they hack into Starbuck’s security cameras and looking into the lobby they see 5-20 people, 5 of whom are using laptops. 3 others iphones and one a mac.
They zoom in and 2 of the laptop users are on facebook the entire time, and the other three, including me, they can’t tell what we’re doing because our screens do not face the camera.
However, by examining arm movements, they can tell that I and I alone press enter at precisely the time that the message threatening to destroy Gene’s diapers has been entered.
It’s ME! And they have a photograph.
They now switch to the security cameras in the parking lot and they follow me to my panel van. Now they enhance enhance enhance pan left, zoom back, track right enhance, and that’s it! THEY GOT MY LICENSE PLATE.
Shortly after that they capture me just as I was crossing the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge with 2 tons of chili pepper crammed in the back of my van about to release it into an adult diaper laundering facility!!!
And so Pete, what you and Gene are saying is that I am not anonymous on the Internet because we live in a police state in the real world and there are cameras everywhere that the guys down at CTU can hack into.
Okay, yes, given that cameras are everywhere in the real world, we are never anonymous on the internet.
Now coming back from planet Pete, can you specifically tell me how my post will be tracked to me in real life?
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amazing thing these computers, asshole comments just hang around forever.
“…the elites in the US hated Hitler not because he and his regime was evil and monstrous, but because he moved too quickly and thus set their own plans for a fascist state back 30 years. It seemed kinda’ hyperbolic… then. Now, not so much.” -lottakatz
Interesting comment — the whole of it. Regarding a fascist state, we’re moving in that direction. Hopefully, there’s an exit…
Rafflaw: “Disgusting. This is evidence that the terrorists have already won..”
Right you are. But I think the terrorist have always been with us. About 20 years ago I read a rather scholarly tome about the events leading up to WWII including the political climate between the first and second world wars. It was the first time I had heard of the planned coup against Roosevelt. I recall nothing about the book now, title, author etc. except the author’s observation that the elites in the US hated Hitler not because he and his regime was evil and monstrous, but because he moved too quickly and thus set their own plans for a fascist state back 30 years. It seemed kinda’ hyperbolic… then. Now, not so much.
This is absurd, do these property owners really think we are stupid enough or paranoid enough to buy the “terrorist threat” canard.
My own encounter with mall security: http://wfrostphoto.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/barbeque-denied-photographers-rights/
Blouise,
I think the problem is that these guys already are like the enemy. These would be our terrorists if we were in the opposite position. They’re everywhere. It would be great if I could feel that we really are the good guys but this sort of policy and this sort of behavior makes me think; Not so much.
Mohandis Ghandi showed us that the best response to violence is non-violence. The best response to terrorism is increased vigilence certainly but not at the expense of the people you are trying to protect.If we become like them in the process, then all we are fighting for is to protect our goods rather than making terrorism an ineffective tactic worldwide by not allowing it to change us and by using just means to fight it.
Great comment. Protect the privacy of shoppers. It’s always to protect us that they take our rights away. It’s always to save us that they kill us and it’s always to help us that they refuse to help us.
Malls and retailers have been militant about this for a long time. It partly reflects compeitive concerns for retailers and mall security not wanting to be second guessed.
anon and nal……
I think you folks hit this nail with the hammer on the head…..I am getting my bow tie out….
Protect the privacy of staff and shoppers. Why? What are they up to?
It’s not going to work dumb-dumbs … now all the enemy has to do is bring a child with them when casing a mall … good lord, you guys are stupid.
I guess these security dudes figure one has to become like the enemy in order to fight the enemy. The problem with that school of thought for us ordinary folk is that we then have twice as many enemies.
Like most shopping centers, we have a photography policy in the mall to protect the privacy of the staff and shoppers.
Is there a reasonable expectation of privacy in a public shopping mall?
Disgusting. This is evidence that the terrorists have already won because Western society is becoming more accepting of this radical, and unnecessary reduction of our liberties.
oops…’intentionally “record” anything’
Next stop: having to wear blindfolds in public so as not to accidentally or intentionally anything you might witness.
And what’s left unstated is that the mall has about 50 cameras in their food zoo constantly monitoring the crowd.
It’s okay for authorities to video you, it’s not okay for you to video anything.