Photography is not a crime. We need to keep reminding the police

Police have again determined that it is illegal to record them making arrests even when you are not up close or in any way interfering. From such an event in Boston, things have spiraled way out of control, as described to me by STL photographer Ed Crim, who read of this travesty and has issued this invitation to protest:

"Carlos Miller, of Miami, Florida, has been charged with witness intimidation by the Boston Massachusetts Police Department because he urged readers of his web site, Photography Is Not A Crime (PINAC) to call the Public Relations Officer of the Boston PD and protest the arrest of a videographer whose only offense was recording a public arrest. If you believe, as I do, that a Public Relations Officer should be willing to talk to the public about police policy, take a look at the petition and help protect our rights as photographers."

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Elizabeth Warren’s war on opacity

I am in Washington DC for the national conference of the National Consumer Law Center. Our special guest today was Senator Elizabeth Warren. In a blistering plain-language talk, delivered to an audience of approximately 900 consumer lawyers, Warren took aim at lobbyists, courts and the campaign finance system. [more . . . ]

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Scotland Yard attempts to criminalize journalism

Read this quote prepared by Scotland Yard in consultation with the MI5 slowly and carefully: "Additionally the disclosure, or threat of disclosure, is designed to influence a government and is made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause. This therefore falls within the definition of terrorism..." Glenn Greenwald's contention is proven true by the above words of the British Government. Greenwald is contending: "For all the lecturing it doles out to the world about press freedoms, the UK offers virtually none...They are absolutely and explicitly equating terrorism with journalism."

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Dangerous Intersection supplemental posts over at Facebook

I'm working on some longer articles for Dangerous Intersection at the moment, though I'm not publishing at DI as often as I did several years ago. However, I have lots of plans to address quite a few exciting topics here. This will be the location for extended commentary and my own substantive articles. In the meantime, I've been posting many links to worthy articles over at my Facebook page. I'm publishing some of those materials only at Facebook, not here at DI. If you are interested in tapping into those very short articles and links, simply send me a Friend Request at Facebook.

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Epitaph for the tomb of modern journalism

Glenn Greenwald takes issue with a recent comment by U.K. "journalist" Chris Blackhurst: "Edwared Snowden's secrets may be dangerous. I would not have published them." This leaves Greenwald in a state somewhere between seething and despondent:

What Blackhurst is revealing here is indeed a predominant mindset among many in the media class. Journalists should not disobey the dictates of those in power. Once national security state officials decree that what they are doing should be kept concealed from the public - once they pound their mighty "SECRET" stamp onto their behavior - it is the supreme duty of all citizens, including journalists, to honor that and never utter in public what they have done. Indeed, it is not only morally wrong, but criminal, to defy these dictates. After all, "who am I to disbelieve them?" That this mentality condemns - and would render outlawed - most of the worthwhile investigative journalism over the last several decades never seems to occur to good journalistic servants like Blackhurst. National security state officials also decreed that it would "not be in the public interest" to report on the Pentagon Papers, or the My Lai massacre, or the network of CIA black sites in which detainees were tortured, or the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program, or the documents negating claims of Iraqi WMDs, or a whole litany of waste, corruption and illegality that once bore the "top secret" label.

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