Objections to TSA's Anti-Photographer Poster

Rigatoni Rooster

1. When citizens lose their love of liberty and are unwilling to object to government's usurpations, no law book, no Constitution, no judge, no court, can save that kind of citizen from themselves.
2. TSA [Transportation Safety Administration] is distributing a poster that insinuates that photographers are terrorists or suspects who citizens should sic the cops onto and against.
3. I experience this poster to be an inept, misguided, counter-productive, despicable, demonization of photography and photograhers, consistent with police state scare tactics, which forshadows making photography a crime, which threatens freedom and photographers' vital interests.
4. Consequently, I wrote a 27 page letter to Janet Napolitano, Secretary, Dept of Homeland Security, which I mailed to her yesterday, 27 Sept 2010.
5. I tried to attach a copy of that letter to this thread but SmugMug's system rejected it because it is too long.
6. To read my letter, please do this: A) go to my Internet site, www.cloud9photography.us ; click on my Blog; and C) look for a line that deals with TSA's anti-photographer poster.
7. Assuming you value your liberty, you are well advised to read this letter and to follow through by writing and sending your own letter, objecting to this poster, and to talk this up among yourselves and others.
8. Please forgive me for preaching "Liberty" and restoring the real Constitutional Rule of Law. I do not intend to preach but, if you do not value your liberty, you should. This is because liberty is at least as important as good health and a good reputation that is well deserved.
Kindest regards to all.
Thanks.
-- Peter J. Mancus

Angelo

Peter:

Thanks for sharing. I know several people here share your passion for preserving liberty and individual rights.

I see you're a Smuggy! some really great images on your site.

Hope you come visit us here on the GRIN more often.


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Andy

Rigatoni Rooster wrote: »

4. Consequently, I wrote a 27 page letter to Janet Napolitano, Secretary, Dept of Homeland Security, which I mailed to her yesterday, 27 Sept 2010.
5. I tried to attach a copy of that letter to this thread but SmugMug's system rejected it because it is too long.

When I emailed you from our help desk, I said you'd have to have the letter hosted somewhere like google pages or dropbox. We don't do 27page attachments on Dgrin

Making it easy for people to see your letter is KEY to viewership, Peter. Just give the link:

http://pmancus.powweb.com/blog/objection-to-new-tsa-poster/

or even easier: Download the letter at this link.

Sam

Rigatoni Rooster wrote: »

1. When citizens lose their love of liberty and are unwilling to object to government's usurpations, no law book, no Constitution, no judge, no court, can save that kind of citizen from themselves.
2. TSA [Transportation Safety Administration] is distributing a poster that insinuates that photographers are terrorists or suspects who citizens should sic the cops onto and against.
3. I experience this poster to be an inept, misguided, counter-productive, despicable, demonization of photography and photograhers, consistent with police state scare tactics, which forshadows making photography a crime, which threatens freedom and photographers' vital interests.
4. Consequently, I wrote a 27 page letter to Janet Napolitano, Secretary, Dept of Homeland Security, which I mailed to her yesterday, 27 Sept 2010.
5. I tried to attach a copy of that letter to this thread but SmugMug's system rejected it because it is too long.
6. To read my letter, please do this: A) go to my Internet site, www.cloud9photography.us ; click on my Blog; and C) look for a line that deals with TSA's anti-photographer poster.
7. Assuming you value your liberty, you are well advised to read this letter and to follow through by writing and sending your own letter, objecting to this poster, and to talk this up among yourselves and others.
8. Please forgive me for preaching "Liberty" and restoring the real Constitutional Rule of Law. I do not intend to preach but, if you do not value your liberty, you should. This is because liberty is at least as important as good health and a good reputation that is well deserved.
Kindest regards to all.
Thanks.
-- Peter J. Mancus

Hi Peter,

It's obvious where your political views are, but if you want to get peoples attention, and present a view, 27 pages are way too much.

While I too am afflicted with the notion that the Constitution, and the rights provided by the writers are critical to our way of life, I couldn't even read to whole 27 pages.

I will go out on a limb here and say that Napolitano, or anyone at her office will not read you letter. Even if they read it they won't understand it or take any positive action.

Feel lucky if you get a "Thank you for your concern, and rest assured we here at homeland security are doing everything possible within a politically correct insane illogical policy to make you semi, sorta safe."

Sam

Glort

I agree 27 pages is way too long.
Champion effort though! I thought some of my letters were novels at 3.5 pages!

I think you are more in a marketing scenario here than that of a legal brief or Commissioned report.
In that respect, I'd be trying to keep the letter to 2-3 pages of the very most significant points and then maybe refer the reader to a PDF of all the issues where the document is hosted online.

I aslo think that as a one person letter, it's unlikley to have much weight. you need to get a mass of people organised as polititians listen to critical amounts of voters, not the ones off which they will probably consider to be nutters anyway.
Maybe you would have some luck contacting a newspaper or Current affairs TV program. If you can spin it the right way, they may be interested.
Maybe send them something like a press release with a title like, " If you own a camera, you might be considered a terrorist".
That will probably get your cause at least noticed because it would encompass everyday Mums and Dads, not just pro photographers.

The US strikes me as a very funny place. You have rights and entitlements we don't have but at the other end of the scale, some of the rules imposed upon you seem quite draconian.
Unfortunately we tend to ignore the freedoms but use your laws and restrictive rules there as models to undermine the rights of people here.

angevin1

Pardon me for always coming at things from another direction...but

The TSA blog post.

I haven't yet found the resultant photo/poster they intend to use. If it is the one Andy Linked, fine and dandy, it looks like a GWC hoodie Terrorist of sorts. But for me the first thing I thought of is; Great! They want us taking photos!

TO be continued...still reading.

angevin1

Oh Man...some of the Blog posts comments are a hoot!

basflt

where is the poster ?

r3t1awr3yd

r3t1awr3yd

r3t1awr3yd

Apparently fear mongering has taken over the whole world!!

I didn't read all 27 pages but I get the gist of the writeup. I'm always amazed at the thoroughness of lawyers.

basflt

thats it ?
what a fuzz

1 post in two years , and then start this

Angelo

r3t1awr3yd wrote: »

Apparently fear mongering has taken over the whole world!!

so true. and the more we allow our rights to be trampled the more we deserve to lose them!


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Sam

Angelo wrote: »

so true. and the more we allow our rights to be trampled the more we deserve to lose them!
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While I think you and I are political polar opposites, we can agree on this!!

(We can probably agree with even more than the puppet masters would be comfortable with)

Sam

BradfordBenn

I did not read the document. But I have seen the posters before; remember it is an election year for 1/3rd of Congress; don't forget your elected officials would be very happy to talk to anyone right now. I know when I saw this poster on Flying with Fish I already contacted my Senators and Congresspeople.

Angelo

Angelo wrote: »

so true. and the more we allow our rights to be trampled the more we deserve to lose them!


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Sam wrote: »

While I think you and I are political polar opposites, we can agree on this!!

(We can probably agree with even more than the puppet masters would be comfortable with)

Sam

if we can agree on this, those poles can't be located too far apart.


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Sam

Angelo wrote: »

if we can agree on this, those poles can't be located too far apart.


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It depends on what you call far. The poles are actually 12,416 miles apart.

As to the other kind of polls, the distance is dependent on the pollsters not any objective criteria.

Sam

gecko0

On a funnier note, I think it's hilarious that they assume the guy with a HUGE OBVIOUS CAMERA is the terrorist taking pics. If someone wanted to take photos for evil purposes, you'd think they would try to be a bit less open about it. Maybe one of the nice new superzoom models with 34x optical? I'd lose the hoodie too.

cab.in.boston

gecko0 wrote: »

On a funnier note, I think it's hilarious that they assume the guy with a HUGE OBVIOUS CAMERA is the terrorist taking pics. If someone wanted to take photos for evil purposes, you'd think they would try to be a bit less open about it. Maybe one of the nice new superzoom models with 34x optical? I'd lose the hoodie too.

No no no... bad guys don't operate that way. They're not smart enough to conceal their activities. You can safely assume that if you don't see an obviously nefarious character out in plain sight that they're not interested in that particular target.

It's similar to the increasing reports we are seeing regarding building security. I know some people (and have read of others) who are interested in architectural photography. So they set up their tripods and spend 10-15 minutes getting the composure and exposure all set up, out in plain sight. Of course the security will come over as soon as they notice and claim "security concerns" or even "copyright of images of the building" and try to shoo off the photogs. As you say, if they were interested in doing bad things, they'd likely be a lot less out in the open, probably just searching online for existing pictures and/or any existing blueprints/plans of the buildings... But getting the security guards to see this side of the story (or recognize 1st Amendment rights of photogs in public places) is a little difficult sometimes.

Art Scott

gecko0 wrote: »

On a funnier note, I think it's hilarious that they assume the guy with a HUGE OBVIOUS CAMERA is the terrorist taking pics. If someone wanted to take photos for evil purposes, you'd think they would try to be a bit less open about it. Maybe one of the nice new superzoom models with 34x optical? I'd lose the hoodie too.

I would be more worried about the person sending gps info with a phone cam...........