This evening I went through the local chain fast food restaurant’s drive through. My friends drove by me, and being funny started taking pictures as I sat at the window getting my food. I felt like the paparazzi were after me again.
That’s when an 18ish year old man (working fast food employee) asked me if I knew those people, I replied “yes”. He then advised me he was a member of the military and his face could not be seen in photographs. If his face was seen in a picture it would need to be deleted.
He may have said he was in the army, but I’m not sure. I also think bringing up this issue would could cause him more problems than just letting people continue on their way.
I don’t buy it, but is there any truth to this, or he was just trying to gloat a little bit?
No, no, Delta. He is definitely the D-Boy type. Doubtless he is undercover, so it is important for him to inform people that he is off-duty military and his picture will need to be deleted. Come to think of it, he might have been CIA…
A somewhat related true story. I used to work in a prison and we had recently opened a shop that made office furniture. It was the size of a small factory/large shop and about twenty of thirty prisoners worked in it plus the civilian employees who supervised it and the guards who watched it.
Anyway, a local paper wanted to do an article on this new business so they got permission to send a reporter and photographer into the prison. The reporter was able to interview a bunch or prisoners and employees but the photographer ran into a problem. NY law says that you cannot photograph a prisoner without his permission - and most of the prisoners did not want to be photographed. As it turned out only one prisoner agreed to sign the waiver.
So this one prisoner went through the various areas of the factory, being photographed demonstrating how the machines worked. The five or six civilian employees and the two guards were also in some photographs. And, out of sight of the camera, were the other dozens of prisoners who worked there.
The result was that if you looked at the pictures, you would figure we had an entire shop where one prisoner was single-handedly building all the furniture under the supervision of several employees.
I reckon Al Quida routinely monitor pictures of people working in fast food places for the very fact alone that they are liable to get pics of special forces personell and intelligence officers.
Because thats where members of the intelligence community meet to discuss faking moonlandings and their giant lizard alien overlords who secretly run the world.
I know this myself because I WAS the man behind the Grassy knoll.
In the UK there is a law prohibiting photographs of police and military personell if the pictures are ‘likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’.
This is sufficiently broad that many police officers have used this as a blanket rule of “you’re not allowed to take pictures of any police / soldiers etc”.
Soldiers would never allow their picture to appear publicly, and would never upload personal pictures to their Facebook. No soldier would dare post a personal picture on a message board.
:rolleyes:
The hardest part of this policy? Because he can’t have his picture taken, this guy will never be able to make “employee of the week” at the fast food restaurant.
Once, I took some extra leave as a recruiting assistant(I can’t recall what the program was called now, but basically you got a week extra leave and got to follow the recruiter around during the day, telling high school kids how nifty everything was).
We set up a table at a jobs fair at a local community college.
I was there, looking all spiffy in my uniform.
A news photographer for a local paper happened by. Snapped my photo.
Front page of the paper the next day… Me in my spiffy uniform, on the front page of the paper with some blurb about the job fair… with my hands in my pockets.
Guess what MR1 cared most about?
The fast food kid is full of it. There are(or were), iirc, some restrictions about appearing at political campaigns in uniform, or giving interviews as a member of the military about the military, but thats about it.
I was on the phone with a friend who’s in the Army as I saw this thread (because I’m incapable of ever doing just one thing at a time.)
“Hey, G, some dude at the McDonald’s drive-through told some guy on the internet that he can’t be photographed because he’s in the Army.”
“Really? Did he claim to be Special Forces?”
“Mm…nope.”
“Guy’s just stupid, then - if you’re going to make shit up, tell them that you’re Special Forces. Or at least tell the chicks that.”
He said that it’s complete bullshit (which, sadly, destroyed my hope that he’d turned to a life of crime since joining. Granted, a sad life of crime consisting of “Hey, I posted my training graduation photo on Facebook! And here are some of the guys I work with at a barbecue!” crime, but crime nonetheless).
