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". Assuming the pigs didn't lie, that Indiana man who was arrested for burning a flag and tossing a firecracker at the pigs screwed up. He should have gone along peacefully, then sued their asses off for false arrest, misuse of legal process, and whatever else he could think of. (Actually, he should have killed them for attempted false arrest, but in today's climate that would only have gotten him killed. The best he could do, today, is sue them.) 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".
(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.)
Things are going to get very, very violent if this stampede toward a police state continues.
I hope so, but I'm afraid not. So long as the heat is turned up only when there's plausible cover, the frog will stay in the pot. (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.) SRF -- Steve Furlong Computer 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