Photographing Dams

[Steve Furlong]

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