[wting]

I'm surprised at the nonchalant dismissal.

Everybody gets in a dizzy when some bill may or may not infringe on the 2nd amendment, but the same response is noticeably absent when it comes to photographers' rights.

Even though photographers are legally allowed to photograph a government building from public property, why the dismissal when the government is in contempt of her own laws?

The steady erosion of personal rights and laissez faire attitude towards government behavior is what lead to the PRISM situation to begin with.

More info:

http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/you-have-every-right-photogr...

[mpyne]

We shoo away photographers who are mapping out the gates to our military bases as well. The U.S. Embassay bombing in Lebanon is only one of many, many examples of why there is a valid security interest in not having people map out your physical security vulnerabilities if you can avoid it.

[andrewcooke]

isn't "if you can avoid it" the crux here? there's a trade-off between freedom and protection. and the idea was, i thought, that people decided that together, as a community, and created laws that reflect it.

but what's happening here doesn't follow any law. it's extra protection, and less freedom.

and what's so weird is the way people like you come out of the woodwork as apologists for this process.

when are you going to stop?

the usa already has laws so "protecting" and "un-freedom" that it seems the nsa can assemble huge databases on your communication. if you hadn't noticed, there's a huge fuss about that right now. yet the best you can come up with is to argue that less freedom than the current law provides is a great idea?

it kind of boggles the mind. how little freedom do you actually want?

[mpyne]

Unless I'm mistaken there is a law, FISA. It even uses warrants with judicial review, and FISA itself has been publically known for awhile, so it's hardly some fait accompli. The people have bought in, whether on purpose or not.

So, people aren't complaining that this is illegal, per se, they're complaining that there shouldn't be that law at all. Didn't you watch the Daily Show clip from the other night?

P.S. When are people going to stop calling those with a view not 100% aligned with their own "apologists" and acknowledge that there might even be different conclusions that reasonable people can reach on a topic?