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A Victorian civil liberties group has announced that police directives to photographers may be out of line.
From today's The Age. Worth reading.
It's about time common sense prevailed.

Thanks and great finding same as very interesting arcticle.

Sydney will be next on the paper with the photos of both our admins and mods

Thanks Trevor, I hadn't seen that article.

I agree it is important that we maintain our right to go about our lawful business without harrassment.

Is this the same guy?

Maybe!
This article is today 18/01/06
and other thread is back to Dec.05.

Interesting read, certainly sounds like the earlier post about the Shell station.

Yes, it is a follow up to the previous article.

good article.. thanks trevor.

cheers

And Geelong Camera Club has its own identity so they can speak loud!

Interested that three of the four people had the same surname (relatives) and the 4th person was the one the police visited. WOnder if the news photographer needed extras to get a better pic.

Glad to see them take a stand.. I hope it doesn't stop there though. On the other hand, if enough people take a stand, it wouldn't surprise me if they make it law.

Good read, thanks

Good on 'em. And so the revolution starts......

I read the article and that original post and I have written to Vic police re the first story.

As yet I have not received a reply I will be following it up though

The problem with police and government is that they can’t think laterally

I love this weeks Photo of the week

I have a vision of waking up one morning and seeing a similar seen on my doorstep!

"Mr Steley have you been out with your camera again?"

We do not live in a police state .....yet.

This story just got a run on the 10:30 ABC news - unfortunately I think I'm the only person that watches it

Cheers

digitor wrote:This story just got a run on the 10:30 ABC news - unfortunately I think I'm the only person that watches it

Cheers

HAH!!! So it's you......

The story also ran on Ch 7, got a good bit of time too.

The boys from Geelong Camera Club all headed down to the refinery with their cameras, and a channel 7 film crew in tow
and started taking photos. Within five minutes, a guy from the refinery came out and asked them why they were
photographing the refinery. We didn't hear the answer unfortunately.

The photog who was visited by the police was interviewed, said the whole experience was quite unsettling.

There were interviews with the Police minister, and a Civil liberties person.

The real importance was that this issue is getting some proper coverage, and the photogs aren't being treated as unreasonable, in fact quite the opposite.

My view - the "war on terror" in our day to day lives is as much about keeping people scared and compliant as it is
about it's stated purpose. And the suggestion extends to not even questioning these things.

Bravo Geelong Camera Club. BTW - it was a pretty good shot of the refinery too!!

This is the link to ABC news online regarding this story:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/20 ... 550466.htm

Another story.......

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,17 ... 93,00.html

When will we have our normal life back? and enjoying our freedom without these hassles.

Birddog114 wrote:When will we have our normal life back? and enjoying our freedom without these hassles.

When the pound note is legal tender - never

Greg B wrote:My view - the "war on terror" in our day to day lives is as much about keeping people scared and compliant as it is
about it's stated purpose. And the suggestion extends to not even questioning these things.

Exactly.

Hence the new laws on sedition and the like. Keep the plebs under our thumbs.

Part of the problem is that we, as Aussies, are basically very conservative, and too willing to follow like sheep (sorry Leon).

And this new talk of the Oz Card? Yech! I have no issue with the underlying concept, but I have less than no confidence whatsoever in the abilities of our public service to deliver anything that remotely resembles a semi-secure system.

This is from the same people who deport Australian citizens.... and they expect us to accept they can build a secure ID system?

Gimme a bloody break!

Don’t ever trust the system

Back in the 80’s I was a naughty person and did not pay my taxes for a couple of years. The tax office offered an amnesty, so my accountant arranged for me to stand up and be counted. His suggestion was for me to suddenly have a middle name

Everything worked out fine and I paid the taxes.

Now comes the evil part - from that time onwards I received hundreds of letters from all manner of business offering services etc., to, you guessed it, Chris + middle name + surname - so much for safety of information under government

sirhc55 wrote:Now comes the evil part - from that time onwards I received hundreds of letters from all manner of business offering services etc., to, you guessed it, Chris + middle name + surname - so much for safety of information under government

How do you think they balance the budget?

Only a matter of time now till some photog. who has followed the advice of this club is arrested by some overzealous coppers...

Now that could cause a fuss.

oli wrote:Only a matter of time now till some photog. who has followed the advice of this club is arrested by some overzealous coppers...

Now that could cause a fuss.

Indeed it would. The charges would be interesting, because they need to relate to actual laws. Of course - part of the reason why there have been concerns about the anti terror anti sedition laws is that they allow detention or legal sanction without there being any actual wrongdoing, merely a perception.

It is a variation on the McCarthyist fifties.

Greg B wrote:

oli wrote:Only a matter of time now till some photog. who has followed the advice of this club is arrested by some overzealous coppers...

Now that could cause a fuss.

Indeed it would. The charges would be interesting, because they need to relate to actual laws. Of course - part of the reason why there have been concerns about the anti terror anti sedition laws is that they allow detention or legal sanction without there being any actual wrongdoing, merely a perception.

It is a variation on the McCarthyist fifties.

Or Nazi Germany

If we go to a beach with a camera club and shoot there.
Will the police come to our door and check out our computers as suspect Paedophiles?

You are all thoughtcriminals! Admit it!

Cheers
Steffen.

Steffen wrote:You are all thoughtcriminals! Admit it!

Cheers
Steffen.

The police always controlled what we could shoot. Australia was never different. The police could always stop us from shooting certain things. Australia has always been like this. History wasn't different. The police always had these powers. Nothing has changed. Australia was always like this in the past.

Police only enforce the law, they do not make the law.

There has to be a law broken for them to act.

So far as I know there is no law against photography in a public area.

I don't see anything wrong with the police making a call to follow up with the photographer. They are just doing their job.

Imagine the outcry from the public if one of those tanks was blown up the following week by terrorists and it come out that unidentified persons had been seen taking photos of the facility the week before by police and the police had done nothing.

As for the police saying you can't take photos of industrial complexes, that is well over the top.

... Obsolete ...

The facility probably isn't public property, but where the photographer was standing certainly was. He was merely pointing the camera in the general direction of the facility when the storage tanks jumped out in front of the camera.

As far as trying that overseas, I think that's part of the problem. Nobody except pollies want to go down the path of other countries and losing these liberties. I know I certainly don't. It's not good when you can get arrested just by pointing you're camera in a direction of a building, or object.

Also, if I was a terrorist, I wouldn't be taking photo's from the outside.. what's the point. In most cases if it's a public building, it's already in photo's, and in this case, it's available by google earth. With all seriousness, what would a terrorist gain by taking photo's of a building from the street. Out of all the terrorist attacks in recent years, how many of the terrorists were found after the fact to have gone and taken photo's of their targets with SLR's or DSLRS. I wonder if the police would have done the same thing had those people used P&S's.

As for comparing our liberties with overseas.. i agree we have it good. That's all the more reason not to accept it when we lose these liberties.

On a final note.. I want to know that if I put a camera on a tripod, I can pan my camera 360 degrees without risk of being arrested.

VK4CP wrote:Since when is a gas storage facility public property???

Brian Walters wrote:"Geelong Camera Club member Hans Kawitski was told not to photograph industrial installations and was ordered to inform members of the camera club to follow his lead."

Indeed. Try this overseas.
It's common knowledge you cannot take photos of installations such as this.
You'll be arrested and carted away at the drop of a hat.

Having worked on the 2004 Olympics television coverage in Athens, I can tell you that security paranoia was at it's absolute height.
I have never seen so many weapons in my life, and counted five different uniforms amongst the punters. If somebody toting an Uzi sub-machine gun, and a 9mm pistol (and they're the ones that aren't concealed) tells me not to photograph something, then that's a fair call. I didn't argue!

IMO, some of these civil libertarian soft-cocks in Australia and the U.S.A. go overboard sometimes, and should mind their own bloody business.

So what if...
Say some ratbag terrorist, disguised as some snap-happy tourist, blew this facility up... causing God knows what damage.
Who would be the first to complain why nothing was done to prevent this?

Catch 22.

Anyone who disagrees with hightened security this day and age should travel overseas and see what you can and can't do.
You'll appreciate the freedoms that Australia has, real quick.

$0.03

VK4CP wrote:IMO, some of these civil libertarian soft-cocks in Australia and the U.S.A. go overboard sometimes, and should mind their own bloody business.

I tend to think it is their business, and mine and yours, and everybody else's business.

We sacrifice our liberties at our great peril - once lost, very hard to regain. History is a strong teacher.

This was on the ABC website. It is good that we got a bit of support from the government.

www.abc.net.au

Club vice-president Frank Sady says authorities should exercise commonsense, because a terrorist would not hang around the refinery's front gate.

I'm just trying to work out if that is supposed to be a joke.

Authorities exercising common sense?

Spooky wrote:I don't see anything wrong with the police making a call to follow up with the photographer. They are just doing their job.

Imagine the outcry from the public if one of those tanks was blown up the following week by terrorists and it come out that unidentified persons had been seen taking photos of the facility the week before by police and the police had done nothing.

I'll take the stance that wont surprise anyone and agree with the State Police or federal agencies having more than a passing intrest on people photographing critical infrastructure. like Sppoky says, imagine ABC, Channel 9 and Channel 7 carrying on if someone blew things up and some member of the public comes forward and says "I saw someone taking photos, I told the Police, but the said they didn't care".... Who's head would be on a pole then? The Police would once again be the useless bad guys, ripe for an easy kicking.

As for the attitudes I'm seeing of "is this a police state" & "like nazi germany" & "infringment on my freedoms" etc etc, god forbid that we actually did have harsh legislation, then you would have someone to really complain about.

Next thing members of this board will be posting about secret meetings between governments and alien replicons, secret super quiet helicopters, masonic devil worshipping meetings where virgins are sacrficed etc etc...

Raskill wrote:...

I'll take the stance that wont surprise anyone and agree with the State Police or federal agencies having more than a passing intrest on people photographing critical infrastructure. like Sppoky says, imagine ABC, Channel 9 and Channel 7 carrying on if someone blew things up and some member of the public comes forward and says "I saw someone taking photos, I told the Police, but the said they didn't care".... Who's head would be on a pole then? The Police would once again be the useless bad guys, ripe for an easy kicking.

As for the attitudes I'm seeing of "is this a police state" & "like nazi germany" & "infringment on my freedoms" etc etc, god forbid that we actually did have harsh legislation, then you would have someone to really complain about.

Next thing members of this board will be posting about secret meetings between governments and alien replicons, secret super quiet helicopters, masonic devil worshipping meetings where virgins are sacrficed etc etc...

Agreed the police have a tough job at the best of times and most of the time their effort goes unoticed.But chasing away people taking snaps of landmark and industrial installations is bordering on a police state. Most photos of such places are already publicily available so unless the photog is trespassing then no law has been broken, and everyone should relax. Mobile phones have been used as detonators yet people are free to carry them switched on public transport.

Raskill wrote:Next thing members of this board will be posting about secret meetings between governments and alien replicons, secret super quiet helicopters, masonic devil worshipping meetings where virgins are sacrficed etc etc...

That's a bit of a stretch from expressing concern about being prevented from or harrassed for taking photographs where the photographer is not breaking any laws.

However, I believe the food is quite good at those masonic devil worship meetings, and the floor show, well.....

This story made the TripleJ news the other day too.

Reminds me of the time, back in about 1983? or so, when wandering around Tamworth taking photos for an exercise in the Nikon Travelling School of Photography (which reminds me Clive whatshisname never returned some of my photos!) that we were taking a few pics of the local electricity county council building and got hassled by a security guard about it.

Gordon

Gordon wrote:Reminds me of the time, back in about 1983? or so,

Quite possibly earlier. I did one, in Blacktown, and my recollection is that it was well before I was a father.

That would have been 1984 guys...