A friend of mine in a photography class was harassed by a security guard when he took a picture of the building the guard worked at. Bearing in mind that my friend was standing on the sidewalk when he took the photo, what would have happened had he decided to stand his ground? If the police were called, what would they or could they do? My attitude is that displaying anything in public can be considered permission to have its photo taken. Is there anything wrong with this interpretation?
IANAL but to the best of my knowledge, Yes you may take photos as long as you are not trespassing.
When I was a Real Estate Appraiser I had to take photos of all comparable sales (from the street)…there were a few times when the homeowners were squeeked out by it but typically i explained and they were cool…twice the homeowner called the police, both times the police said “no crime” as I was on the street and did not trespass onto their property.
tsfr
This has been dealt with here before. The answer, as usual, is “it depends.”
In the post 9/11 world, if the building was a government facility, whether it’s strictly legal or not (and for all I know, the USA PATRIOT act may have made it a capital crime), it’s probably best not to challenge a security guard on this point, unless you don’t mind spending a night in a cell, or possibly being disappeared forever. 
If the building is private property and the security guard is just a rent-a-cop, he probably doesn’t have the law on his side. There are situations in which the use of a photograph of a building might not be permitted: for instance, the use of a picture of a recognizable corporate headquarters in an ad to create the unauthorized impression of endorsement by the company. But such potential misuses would have to be settled in civil court and do not give anyone authority to stop you from taking a picture in the first place.
Of course, if you are standing on private property, the owner of the property (or his representative) has the authority to kick you off it.
But AFAIK (and IANAL), there is no law preventing someone from taking of a building that is visible from public property. But that wouldn’t necessarily prevent someone (under orders or on his own) from trying to stop you.
A few years back, a photographer was sued by the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, for photographing the building and selling posters of it. I don’t recall all the details of the trial, but the photographer won.
I sell prints of my photography, some of which are of famous buildings. The only time I had a problem with anyone, wasn’t architecturally-related. I had received several strongly-worded emails from the lawyers representing the estate of Keith Haring. One of the prints I had for sale was of a sculpture that Haring had designed, which was an AIDS memorial in a church in San Francisco. Since I hadn’t sold any prints anyway, I withdrew it from my site, in order to avoid a possibly expensive legal experience.
I’m glad to hear you were polite about it. Shortly after we bought our house, a guy pulled up in front and started snapping pictures. I wandered out and asked “what’s up?”, he replied “fuck off”, jumped back in the car and sped off. I asked a cop friend of mine about the encounter and he confirmed that the photog was a known appraiser in the area and that he wasn’t breaking any laws, despite his less-than professional attitude.
This is about the most idiotic thing I’ve ever read. So what’s next? Well they give you a beatdown for looking at a building?..
Every day, tourists stand outside the White House and the Capitol – two of the most likely objects of a terrorist attack – and take photographs. I’ve never heard of security personnel or police tell them to stop doing this. So why would they stop you taking a picture of the Federal Office Building in some two-bit town, that the potential terrorists have probably never even heard of?
I hate to have to ask. Is your friend, perchance, non-white?
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/crimprof_blog/2005/01/pakastani_man_w.html
A non-government building might hold some government offices. But “since 9/11” it appears that pictures of skyscrapers & landmarks are also suspicious. Although tourists tend to take pictures of skyscrapers & landmarks!
Even being of Mexican or Italian descent might scream “terrorist” to the small-minded.
But Bridget Burke’s Pakistani was not convicted of taking pictures of government buildings, but of immigration offenses, including having false papers. Taking pictures aroused suspicion, but would not itself have been a crime.
IANAL.
I was threatened with arrest (by a rent-a-cop) once while photographing a bank (for its architecture). I was told I was breaking some federal law. I don’t remember which one. But as I was young I left without contesting.
Heh. Some places the “fuck off” would have gotten you a disturbing the peace charge.
Seems like this happens a lot to people who shoot architecture:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/06/10/photographer_grills_.html
http://thomashawk.com/2005/07/one-bush.html
http://thomashawk.com/2006/04/photographing-architecture-is-not.html
I take pictures of power plants. I take a lot of pictures of power plants. I have been questioned, but never harassed, by security, police, and the sheriff once. In each case where someone questioned me, all I did was show them my Engineering license wallet card and they immediately backed off and let me go about my business. (Plus I’ve been told that I look very innocent and non-threatening…YMMV)
Oddly, I can’t see to find any law that says I cannot take a picture of a power plant when I’m not on their property (and I always have permission when I’m on their property). I do know that at one specific power plant the police did arrest two 20-something guys taking pictures of the plant while off premises (I was working there at the time and asked why there were 5 police cars surrounding these guys by the fence). When I asked under what law they were being arrested, I was brusquely told “Patriot Act!” with no other explanation. It would be interesting if someone who IS a lawyer would tell us if such a thing is true.
By “government facility” I was, of course, referring to some place at which sensitive work might be done, not the Washington Monument or a sewage treatment plant. (Since this is GQ, I don’t intend this as a slighting reference to Congress. [snerk])
I live just north of D.C., a few miles from the National Security Agency’s main campus at Fort Meade. At least two police cars are always conspicuously stationed along the main road that passes by the Agency. Even though all of NSA’s buildings incorporate state-of-the-art anti-spying technology, I can guarantee you that if I were to pull over and point a camera at one of them, I would be talking with a government employee within minutes. Heck, I’ll wager that if I stopped to fix a flat, I’d have company in short order, and it wouldn’t be the AAA.
Even closer to me is a building that was once an ordinary office building, but in the last couple of years it has been surrounded with a double-perimeter chain link fence topped with razor wire and cameras. The only entrance has a manned guard’s booth and one of those heavy-duty raiseable barriers to keep a car bomber out. Scuttlebutt from the neighbors says it’s a Homeland Security facility, but no one I know knows for sure, and I’m not pulling up to that gate to ask.
Haven’t you heard? There are petting zoos on the terrorist watch list! Do you imagine that people always behave rationally when it comes to security issues? On 9/11/01 they closed the shopping mall here in Columbia, MD, as if that were fourth on the list after the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and the White House.
No law I can think of, but banks are concerned that the smart kind of robber or burglar will take pictures of the whole bank and draw out blueprints for their ne’er’do’well shennanigans.
I’ve run across bankers expressing concern about this matter when people used picture phones in the bank.
To be honest, it seems like paranoia to me, but when you work in a place where you get a gun waved at you once every three years or so, it could make you paranoid.
If the guard actually knew your name when he issued you that warning, and the place had gotten robbed any time in the last two weeks, you would have found yourself getting interviewed by the FBI.
Excuse me.
“If it had gotten robbed any time in the next two weeks after you were warned…”
The police or the FBI can question whoever they like, with or without the slightest grounds for suspicion. Being questioned for taking photos is not the same thing as being arrested, and certainly not the same thing as being convicted of taking a picture of a bank or of a government building.
I knew a girl in college who was interviewed for a couple hours in her dorm room by some guys from some govenrment agency or another (I can’t remember, probably the FBI or some investigative branch of the Defense Department) because her fiance was finishing up his ROTC and college and was about to commission (this is apparently fairly common for people about to become military offices, though it may depend on what their job in the military will be). Pretty much just a background check, making sure the guy didn’t have gambling debts or whatever that might make him a security risk (and presumably also making sure the girl didn’t have any similar problems that could be used against her husband).
Hell, I was approached by a SAPD officer while taking pictures of a church on top of a hill a few months ago, with my car pulled over on the side of the road with the blinkers on. I explained what I was doing, he bid me farewell and got back in his car. A couple minutes later, I saw him driving past again, presumably checking to see if I was still there and if I was actually taking pictures of the church. Eh, no biggie, it’s his job to make sure people aren’t up to no good, and the whole exchange cost me about 30 seconds of my day while I was on my way to meet my cousin for dinner.
The way it was explained to me by my college’s photo club, was that you can take pictures of buildings or houses, as long as you are not on their property when you do so. That said, standing on the sidewalk and using a telephoto lens to take pictures of a girl getting dressed in her bedroom would be a form of trespassing (you can photograph the building, but not it’s contents). If questioned by security or law enforcement, just keep your cool and don’t get hostile. They usually can’t force you to hand over your camera or film, though they may not realize it (and thus, standing your ground may result in you being locked up for a short period of time, so choose your battles).
Here’s a (long but well-documented) discussion of the same kind of incident here in San Francisco.
Same thing happened to me once, on public property outside a former military hospital (the land had been given back to SF), and to my friend Cody at the US Mint.
This post betrays a disturbing lack of the “OMG TERRORISTS!” frame of mind used when crafting government policy on such matters. Why would they? My god, man, they’re terrorists! Why wouldn’t they?!