War on photography?

Recently I was denied entry into Scotland because my camera (accidentally) was placed at eye level with an immigration official.

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Seen in granddesign home page (?)

wow, that is harsh!

on zooomr there was a big discussion on this. a problem is lack of public knowledge over the legality of public photography in different countries. plus, the increasing privatisation of public space means you don't often know there are other rules in place.

All of this hysteria not only seems to invade the heads of our officials, but also all kinds of nutheads in our cities who find a pastime harassing photographers using some perverse assumed authority as "protectors of the public":
www.ipernity.com/blog/tschnitzlein/73539#commentlist

I'm much more worried about vigilantism than of uninformed officials.
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Seen in tschnitzlein home page (?)

I had a similar incident as tschnitlein, see my post about exactly this situation (including the common "man on the street", and not only authorities...

thanks
very interesting

I really like Bruce Schneier for his sensible approach. He cuts through all the security posturing that goes on. A subject that ties in to his work is the whole take on the politics of fear that is permeating our society not only since 9/11 but goes back quite a ways. But the amount or tenor of the fear campaign seems to have deepened. I won't go as far as to say hysteria is greater now than before because there have been many notable episodes of so called public outcry that was orchestrated by the media. Even today I find it funny to see our local newspapers hawk this so called "outraged citizens" stuff. They manufacture the outrage, fuel the fires and then point to the aroused citizenry.

I was stopped and (politely) forced to erase a picture I had taken of a barrier at the APEC summit in Sydney last year. It wasn't even of an official buildung (a bank), and it wasn't regular police, either - just private security. I certainly is a matter that should be taken into the public focus...

Thank you all for the great comments. For you US photographers, here is a page on the regulations for photography permits which was new information to me. Maybe some of you will find it useful:
http://www.largeformatphotography.info/photo-permits/.

Here's a related post to slashdot which appeared yesterday:

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Photographers Face Ejection Over Lenses |
| from the control-freaks-dining-out dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Friday August 15, @09:20 (Censorship) |
| yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/15/1233238 |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[0]destinyland writes "Zooomr CEO Thomas Hawk was [1]ejected from a San
Francisco art museum because the security guard apparently thought his
expensive camera could be used to spy on female employees. Another
photographer notes that 'many people consider a professional-looking
camera a threat,' and the state of California has even passed a [2]law
against telephoto lenses being used to intrude on celebrities' private
lives. Hawk is [3]routinely confronting security guards who argue that
photographing their buildings represents a 'security threat.' Ironically,
four weeks ago while attending Microsoft's Pro Photo Summit, he was told
he [4]couldn't even photograph the lobby of a Hyatt Hotel."

Discuss this story at:
yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/08/15/1233238

Links:
0. www.destinyland.org
1. www.10zenmonkeys.com/2008/08/14/thomas-hawk-versus-rent-a-cops
2. query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B04E5DB1E38F936A35753C1A96E958260
3. thomashawk.com/2006/04/photographing-architecture-is-not.html
4. thomashawk.com/2008/07/boycott-hyatt-hotels.html