Fear of Stuff

Two items that you might want to keep in mind if your travels take you to distant lands.  Kuwait has banned DSLR cameras (big, digital cameras with big lenses) for everyone other than professional journalists. Small digital cameras and cell phone cameras are still okay.

A village in India, Muzaffarnagar, has banned cell phones for unmarried girls to thwart them from eloping.

And in the District of Columbia, cameras are prohibited from being brought into the Superior Court Building, but "you may bring a mobile phone into the building; however, you are not permitted to use the phone's camera function on the premises." Never mind that a cell phone camera can take really good photos, as in this front page New York Times photograph.

Arrested for Photographing the Police: Policy Forum Wednesday

The Cato Institute will hold a policy forum on Wednesday, September 22, on "Recording the Police: Is Citizen Journalism against the Law?"

In Maryland a motorcyclist was arrested and charged with breaking the state's wiretapping laws for videoing a police officer who pulled him over. If convicted, he faces 16 years in prison. In Seattle, a man was taken into custody when he photographed the police arresting somebody on the street. In Texas a man was arrested for photographing a police officer on his own property. In Boston a lawyer was arrested for videoing the police arresting somebody for drugs, and charged with "aiding escape" and disturbing the peace. I was stopped by security officers from photographing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in downtown DC.