Mind your camera when you’re traveling this summer.
Taking an innocent snapshot in a public area may get you in trouble, even if photography is allowed. It almost landed Ryan Miklus behind bars when he flew from Phoenix to Reno with his parents recently.
When Miklus tried to videotape an altercation between his mother and a TSA agent, another officer tried to stop him. “You are not allowed to film,” the officer says on the video. “You need to go. You cannot film us.”
“Where does it say that?” Miklus asks. “Show me the law. Show it to me, and I’ll stop.”
The agent doesn’t answer but leaves and returns with several airline employees, one of whom tells Miklus that it’s “against the law” to take photos at a security checkpoint.
“Put down the camera!” the employee orders. Miklus continues taping. A police officer later refuses to arrest him.
Such incidents are becoming increasingly common, making shutterbugs hesitant to take pictures that they’re well within their rights to take. They include security guards harassing a photographer shooting in a Los Angeles park and a man being threatened for videotaping a whale in the Florida Keys.
TSA screening areas are a flashpoint for these encounters, with officers sometimes threatening passengers, blocking their view or citing nonexistent rules in an effort to force them to stop taking photos.
“I used to deal with one of these a month,” says Mickey Osterreicher, the general counsel of the National Press Photographers Association. “Then it was weekly. Now it’s almost every day. Citizens are being told that they can’t take pictures out in public — whether it’s a building, a bridge or a train.”
Carlos Miller, a Miami-based multimedia journalist and author of the blog Photography Is Not a Crime, says that law-enforcement agencies have felt threatened by photographers since the Rodney King beating in 1991. It accelerated after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and has spun out of control with the development of social media, location-based technology and cellphones with easy-to-use digital cameras. “Cops feel as if they have to protect themselves,” he says.
And officials sometimes assume there’s a link between photography and terrorism, so anyone taking pictures of airports, screening areas, parks, bridges or any other site that terrorists could put in their cross- hairs becomes a suspect, they say.
The Miklus incident has prompted the TSA to review its policy on photography at screening areas, according to a post on the agency’s website. Many TSA watchers worry the government will try to ban screening- area photography, but the TSA said the statement on the website has been misinterpreted. “We recognize that using video and photography equipment is a constitutionally protected activity,” TSA spokesman Greg Soule told me.
Osterreicher says there are only two public areas in the United States where you can’t shoot pictures: military bases and nuclear facilities. “The warnings are clearly posted,” he says. “Otherwise, if the public is allowed, then so are their rights.”
But officials don’t necessarily agree with that broad interpretation. For example, the TSA’s current policy is that photography at security screening areas is permitted, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the screening process. But what, exactly, constitutes interference? The agency also prohibits photography of its screening equipment, specifically the screen that shows scanned items.
And while it’s OK to take personal photographs in state and national parks, commercial photos usually require a permit.
So, should you stand up for your constitutional rights the next time you try to take a snapshot of your family at the airport and a security agent tells you that it’s illegal? If you’re on vacation, it’s probably not worth it.
Christopher Elliott: , chris@elliott.org
