Re: Photographing Dams

2001-10-03 Thread David Honig

At 09:04 PM 10/2/01 -0400, The Amphibian Anti Defamation League wrote:
(That's a base canard on frogs, by the way. A few years back some
scientist boiled a frog slowly. The frog hopped out of the water as soon
as it got uncomfortably warm.)



Yes but its so useful its worth keeping around ---like the myth(?)
that railroad tracks have historical 'back compatability' with
roman chariots.




Re: Photographing Dams

2001-10-02 Thread Tim May

On Tuesday, October 2, 2001, at 06:04 PM, Steve Furlong wrote:

 Tim May wrote:

 I know that I if I am ever stopped for photographing a dam or a bridge
 I hope I'll have the courage to tell the cop to fuck off.  If arrested
 on such a bogus charge, things will escalate dramatically and I would
 be forced to Plan B.

 Strong suggestion: don't phrase it quite that way. Don't give the
 jack-booted thug any real grounds for arrest, or even detention.

Fuck that.


 It might be even worse for you, as a Californian, than for most
 Americans. Isn't California one of the states which requires all
 citizens to cooperate with police? With cooperation presumably defined
 as whatever the pig wants you to do.

No. You really have been reading too many of the Happy Fun Court is Not 
Amused arguments and not enough about probable cause, the Fourth 
Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, and the C. in general. There certain is 
no requirement to cooperate.

Where to do otherwise intelligent people pick up these bizarre ideas?


--Tim May




Re: Photographing Dams

2001-10-02 Thread Steve Furlong

Tim May wrote:
 
 On Tuesday, October 2, 2001, at 06:04 PM, Steve Furlong wrote:
 
  Tim May wrote:
 
  I know that I if I am ever stopped for photographing a dam or a bridge
  I hope I'll have the courage to tell the cop to fuck off.  If arrested
  on such a bogus charge, things will escalate dramatically and I would
  be forced to Plan B.
 
  Strong suggestion: don't phrase it quite that way. Don't give the
  jack-booted thug any real grounds for arrest, or even detention.
 
 Fuck that.

Some quick research shows me that some states no longer make it
aggravated harassment to swear at a cop, though it's still an offense in
some states. I couldn't find Indiana's status on that, but it looks like
your method might be successful.


  It might be even worse for you, as a Californian, than for most
  Americans. Isn't California one of the states which requires all
  citizens to cooperate with police? With cooperation presumably defined
  as whatever the pig wants you to do.
 
 No. You really have been reading too many of the Happy Fun Court is Not
 Amused arguments and not enough about probable cause, the Fourth
 Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, and the C. in general. There certain is
 no requirement to cooperate.

shrug I really thought I had come across that in Findlaw or somewhere.
Maybe it was a proposal that was shot down, maybe it's in other states,
maybe you're wrong. I don't see it in a Findlaw search just now, but I'm
not even sure what it would be called. Certainly not the Citizen Bend
Over and Spread 'Em Act, but things like Police Assistance Act and
Citizens Cooperation Act didn't give any hits, either.


 Where to do otherwise intelligent people pick up these bizarre ideas?

Heh. If you're referring to me, events of the past few days argue
against my intelligence.

More generally, it's probably a mixture of laziness, time pressure, the
value of the effort needed to check every fact before posting, and
knowing that something is true and therefore need not be checked.
Posters to mailing lists and Usenet could treat every post as a
submission to a refereed journal, but by the time the fact-checking was
done, the thread would have died out.


SRF

-- 
Steve FurlongComputer Condottiere   Have GNU, Will Travel
  617-670-3793

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly
while bad people will find a way around the laws. -- Plato




Re: Photographing Dams

2001-10-02 Thread Declan McCullagh

I wrote in January about a Capitol Police (federal) cop telling
me I couldn't take a photo of the Capitol building from
a public sidewalk:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-01636.html

Not an urban legend.

-Declan

On Tue, Oct 02, 2001 at 05:47:02PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Aren't there cases of persons having had their film confiscated for
 photographing federal installations from public rights of way or is that
 the stuff of urban/net legends? Is does sound hokey to me.
 
 Mike




Re: Photographing Dams

2001-10-02 Thread Harmon Seaver

Tim May wrote:

 Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, and the C. in general. There certain is
 no requirement to cooperate.

 Where to do otherwise intelligent people pick up these bizarre ideas?


   Probably because of all the heretofore unheard of things happening to
people in the courts these days. My attorneys recently spent some time
explaining to me about the new trend in Wisconsin courts and police. It seems
that if they are investigating a crime, and you become uncooperative in
any way -- not meaning you have to incriminate yourself, just uncooperative
-- they charge you with obstructing an officer, a class C felony. And it
generally sticks. Apparently no one thus far has taken it into fed court, or
at least been successful in getting it overturned, and it's become a real
threat.
Interesting times we live in.


--
Harmon Seaver, MLIS
CyberShamanix
Work 920-203-9633
Home 920-233-5820
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.cybershamanix.com/resume.html




Photographing Dams

2001-10-02 Thread Tim May

There have been several panicky calls that Arabs were seen at national 
tourist spots, including photographing the Hoover Dam. Some on Usenet 
are calling for steps to crack down on these photographers.

This is an article I wrote for Usenet:

This is not the Soviet Union. Anyone may photograph _anything_, except
on a military base or the like. There are no restrictions supported in
the U.S. Constitution supporting bans on photographing, drawing, or
making notes on anything not explicitly forbidden by military
classification laws.

I know that I if I am ever stopped for photographing a dam or a bridge
I hope I'll have the courage to tell the cop to fuck off.  If arrested
on such a bogus charge, things will escalate dramatically and I would
be forced to Plan B.

(Sounds harsh. They're just doing their job. Nope. They don't have
any legal right to stop persons without probable cause. Looking Arabic
is not probable cause. Photographing a dam is not probable cause. Being
suspicious is not probable cause.)

I realize many of the survivalist and gun owner types are now adopting
the My country, right or wrong stance. Not me.

Things are going to get very, very violent if this stampede toward a
police state continues.

--Tim May