Pixiq

Uneffingbelievable on so many levels. As a former marketing guy, I cannot for the life of me understand how there could be such poor communication within the organization about the photography contest. At the very least one would expect posters in every station announcing the contest. As a citizen, I am alarmed beyond simple concern that I could be treated like a criminal simply for taking a picture. As I’ve mentioned before, in my current career as a realtor and a blogger I’m often out in public with a camera. This is absolutely chilling.

You can email the PR people here:
mediarelations@amtrak.com
mediarelationsnyc@amtrak.com
mediarelationschicago@amtrak.com
mediarelationsoakland@amtrak.com

I guess companies need to start giving out “permission slips” with their contests saying “Please don’t arrest me! Your corporate bosses said it was OK!”.

He will win. He clearly wasn’t trespassing because he rode the train in. He was a paying customer in a public building provided for that very purpose.

He will also win because the US Supreme Court decided this very issue several decades ago. Photography in and of itself has already been ruled constitutional.

This is the very reason I stopped taking pictures as a railfan. When the FBI arrested a man in Ft. Worth on terrorist charges right after 9/11 for simply enjoying watching a freaking train go by, it just wasn’t worth it. Screw Amtrak, their PR calendar, and the rest of them for this after sucking my wallet dry as a taxpayer since 1971 when the corporation was created. This is insane!

I’ve met some really nice railroad cops on the Southern Pacific back in the 1970′s and 80′s – but there are some real nuts out there, as evidenced here. Be careful. They don’t know the law, are privately paid full law enforcement with real police powers. This should be unconstitutional to have that kind of power of arrest with a private company, but it’s not.

Good thing our Banks, Healthcare, Insurance companies, and Auto industry aren’t run by the same folks who operate Amtrack. Think about it.

Stupid cops, these are the kind of punk cops I just love to hear about getting clipped in the line of duty!

Jess
http://www.online-privacy.se.tc

This is unbelievable. I am hearing more and more about people being treated like criminals for acting like citizens that live in a free country. I think that a lot of the problem lies with giving morons authority when they are unable to make good judgement calls. They seem to lose it when they realize that they have power. It happens everyday in our airports when mothers are asked to drink their babies breastmilk to prove it’s not an explosive and our elderly are searched down to their toes. Meanwhile, real criminals are arrested and released to continue on with their crimes. What has happened to us?

Steve, I hope you’re being ironic … ? Our non-government Banks, Healthcare, Insurance companies, and Auto industry are all a shambles. Whether an institution is government-run or not has little bearing on power-mad police in any milieu.

Most police in the US are great men and women, but a significant minority are complete a**holes.

Man. That’s just completely ridiculous. I’ve linked to you from my blog — I hope you get some traffic out of it. Good reporting!

He’s a conservative Republican? Then he totally deserves this treatment as he actively helped to put it into place. Conservatives think you can put laws into place, like wiretapping and homeland security, and that it’s just to get the bad guys. They don’t realize stepping on civil rights means that ultimately THEIR civil rights are trampled.

I called Clifford Cole (212.630.7770) the media relations guy in NYC on Dec 22. I asked him about taking photos on the platforms. He said it’s not allowed by the general public. I asked where it was written that it wasn’t allowed by the general public, he could not say. He said if I had a Working Press Credential an Amtrak employee would escort me. Basically told me I had to take his word. I pointed out that the general public takes photos on the platform in Penn Station NY all the time and Amtraks policy about having a ticket, which I’m not sure is legal either. He said it’s not allowed for the general public to take photos on the platforms. I asked again where is it written. He said we are just going to go around in circles and hung up on me.

I was also told to call John Kalapos at 215.349.1238 but he never called me back.

I left a message for Michael Gallagher (212.630.7770) the Station Manager of Penn Station which he failed to return.

I had tickets, lots of them. The cops did ask to see my ticket, which had been collected on the train I was riding when I came in, so I showed them my stack of tickets, from a ten trip purchase.

I believe that a big part of the reason for attempt to ban photos is that Amtrak doesn’t want photos documenting the sorry condition they keep our rail roads in. If there was an accident and they are trying to blame it on an employee and you have a photo of a signal in disrepair that would make Amtrak Management look bad. You also might send that photo off to someone that has oversight of the company and someone could get in trouble. So even though there is not a law, harass the public and do all you can to prevent them from exercising their first amendment rights.

Cops and officials don’t like photos because photos don’t lie. A friend of mine that’s an attorney has a saying, “how do you know when a cop is lying? when his lips are moving.” It’s sad that while there are many really good officers thre are also so many that aren’t good.

One other thing. We really don’t want cops being allowed to make judgement calls in the street. We never want the enforcers judging. The founding fathers seperated the powers for a reason. The cops where enforcing a non-existant law, a law I guess they think should be there, which means they are acting as judgement. If they had enfoced the laws that exist I would have been left alone or at most told the platform is now closed to the public you have to leave.

I think he was smoking too much KILLER WEED. It’s Penn Station NY, it serves Amtrak, NJ Transit and the LIRR. There are even photos of the trains with the logos on them.

There is a section of the patriot act that mentinos photography, (8) surveils, hotographs, videotapes, diagrams, or otherwise collects information with the intent to plan or assist in planning any of the acts described in paragraphs (1) through (6);

You can read the whole section here, http://amtrak.duanek.name/PatroitAct.html

Seeems to me the guys failed reading comprehension because they failed to read the entire paragraph. I’m trying to get Carlos to do an article on this.

I checked on my FOIA requests today and they didn’t call me back.

Killer Weed,

The NYPD does not make the laws although they sometimes try to enforce non-existent laws.

There is no ban of photographing MTA facilities.

http://carlosmiller.com/?s=mta

some of my prior statements i retract. others i do not.

Well I guess that narrows it down

“Marie B. // Dec 27, 2008 at 11:12 am

This is unbelievable. I am hearing more and more about people being treated like criminals for acting like citizens that live in a free country.”

A free country? Buhahahahaaaaaa!! Oh man, good stuff…

You know terrorists don’t much care for rules and regulations. If a terrorist really wanted to surveil a station he would not even need a hidden camera, a sketch pad would suffice. The whole of the Himalayas were surveyed in the 19th century by surveyors disguised as Monks.

All stupid regulations do is force things underground and penalise the legitimate.

I have attempted in the UK to make videos in shopping malls and other private places, the worst that has ever happened is that the security people have asked me to stop and told me to get permission. There is no need for thuggery.

Trespass is a civil offence not a criminal one, and although the owners of a building do have a right to eject anyone they do not like (and frequently do) they do not have a right to prevent them access in the first place if they are there for a legitimate purpose in business hours.

I did ask the security once in a shopping mall why they objected to me filming, and they said that I could be recording there security cameras. How ridiculous does that get.

In other place I told them that I had a legal right under the data protection act (a European regulation) to access the surveillance photographs of them telling me to stop making my video, that non plussed them. Most surveillance cameras in this country are being used illegally because the people who set them up do not know the regulations..

This is just a little taste of what is to come. Remember, if someone is wearing a costume, (I mean,… uniform) just keep your head bowed and bleat “sir, yes sir”, on cue.

I wonder how these private Sturmabteilung would behave if they knew that a moderate proportion of the crowd surrounding them was likely armed AND had a more properly developed moral sense of what is right and wrong.

BART shooting captured on video
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/06/MNOV154P0R.DTL

We never learn.

Transit Cops charged with protecting what is considered “critical infrastructure” take their job VERY seriously.

Strictly speaking, police forces such as those of Amtrak and PANYNJ are custodians of private property, and their commands and orders express the will of the property owner and failure to comply means you are trespassing — at least that’s the way they tell it.

I did some investigative work on a web forum that is home to PAPD and other transit cops.

Read the lively and edifying exchange here:
http://www.transitcop.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4025

This is the result of 9/11, which has yet to be seriously investigated. It troubles me that a country with so many lawyers has bought the official story, when it has so many holes.

Oh come on, what do you expect, the cops are hired by the government and Amtrak is run by the government — and anyone with above average intelligence who is capable of making the rational decisions that would have prevented such a confrontation is going to be working in the private sector making more money anyway, so it’s a made-to-order recipe for civil rights abuse, or worse. If you don’t want to be abused, stay away from government employees. This guy got off lucky. He could have been in the Fruitvale Station instead of Penn Station. At least he didn’t get shot in the back and killed.

Thanks, we need people who care about liberty to take stands and publicize the actions of the state to eliminate liberty. It is unfortunate we have allowed the situation to deteriorate so far, but now we need people to assure we do not lose our freedom because those in authority decide they are not bound by laws.

JDog,

Interesting thread, especially how they act as if these infrastructures are private property.

They don’t understand the concept of tax-funded infrastructure.

Or tax-funded salaries for that matter.

As a senior citizen, I can remember as a child “the policeman is your friend” I filed that away under B for Bull Poop along with the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and the stork story about babies.

Most cops have always been bullies. 9/11 made them all thugs. Can you imagine if these thugish slugs had tasers. Poor Carlos would have ended up looking like a over cooked chili dog!

Every so often I head to the city to do some shooting – I leave my guns at home. I leave them home so I don’t get mistreated by law enforcement for practicing my second amendment rights so I can practice my first. I use to live in NYC. 9/11 – I got the hell out of there – this story is one of the reasons why; when a country looks at its fellow citizens as the enemy rather than attacking it’s actual enemy (islamo based fascism) we are all about to die it’s just a matter of how and when. Lib’s don’t see it because they buy into the notion of the benevolent state – nothing is benevolent when you give it a monopoly on force. Thank the man upstairs you didn’t panic, you’d be dead.

Carlos,
It is the corporate structure of these “public” agencies that privatizes the property.
In what is fast becoming a corporatist (fascist) society, this will be more common.
It really doesn’t have anything to do with tax payer dollars. Do you think that since AIG got a huge taxpayer bailout that any of us can go onto their corporate property?

Who hates us because of our “freedoms”?

License, control and antimidate has forever been the creed of the State. Welcome to Facism in the land of, “problem-reaction-solution” or the Heglian Dialectic, if people want freedom, they better figure out what the principles of freedom are and start to live it and breath it! Don’t let oppression happen to you and don’t just shrug while it is happening to others. Jury nullification, get your children OUT of public schools, understand central planning, Fiat money systems, read up on Collectivism, ABOVE ALL ELSE turn off your television and start critically thinking about your own belief system. Forget the left vs. right BS it is a LIE, we all want something better for the future – ps Terrorism (fear) has a history of being the sure road to government tyranny. Going along to get a long will seal our doom.

As outrageous and horrifying as this (yet another) criminal assault by the gang in blue is, it should not surprise anyone… Afterall, it occured in NYC, a mini police state, particularly post 9/11. Further, such jack booted thuggery is not an isolated, anomalous phenomena in this country anymore, but rather a widespread problem coast to coast with our increasingly authoritarian, militarized police; i.e. armed thugs who get off lording real and imagined authority at gun point. One can read about murders, assaults, beatings, rapes , illegal searchs/harrassment at gestapo-like checkpoints, and a laundry list of abuses perpetrated by cops “just doing their jobs” on a daily basis around this allegedly free country. FYI “Officer friendly” is NOT your friend, but rather increasingly an istrument of arbitrary state control, surveilance, harrassment, revenue enhancement i.e. theft and corruption; all conveniently under the pretense of legitimate authority. Police budgets encourage/reward conflicts of interest through issuance of tickets and asset forfeiture abuses. Any benefit or service provided by police at all levels is ancillary. There primary purpose is to control you.

Police have no legal ability or responsibility to protect you, yet they will zealously enforce every unconstitutional law to ensure that you are unarmed and defenseless at every opportunity. Incidentally, so-called “law enforcement officers” (an egregiously unAmerican concept) are a common denominator in every assault on freedom, every oppressive regime and every genocide perpetrated historically around the world. They are armed thugs enforcing the will of those who rule; at the end of the day noncompliance ultimately will result in them killing you.

All are (and were) of course “just doing their jobs”, enforcing the law (no matter how draconian, arbitrary or stupid), cracking down on dissent, and maintaining the status quo (no matter how unjust) at gun point and all at the expense of those they “serve”. Ban coffee and cigarettes, ban blond hair; these assholes will enforce the law and kill you for being afoul of it.

The photographer who was wronged in this case, got off easy. Thankfully he was not tasered to death, nor had a broom stick shoved up his ass, nor shot in the head 30 times because he wore a coat that was too big and didn’t respond fast enough to their threats.

I gave up on the passenger trains in this country in the 1980s. Way too much nonsense. Trains were fun in the 1960s when they were still private, but the government has sucked all the fun and beauty out of them.

And I gave up on the passenger airlines in 2002 after a run-in with Southwest Airlines. I’m disgusted with the level of fascism and authoritarianism. Americans shouldn’t be so inured to it. But, they are, which is a shame.

This process of policy bullying and brutality is not going to get better. It is going to get much worse. And resistance – is it really only going to consist of photographers patiently explaining to police that the airline or train service is running a photo contest?

There was a time in this country when the line “papers please” in the film “Casablanca” would evoke boos and hisses from the entire audience. America has become a bunch of sissies too enamored of their wage slave 9 to 5 jobs to do anything about freedom, it seems. Kinda sad.

I think it’s time for a nice fat lawsuit against the egregious activity of a second rate railway company. Actually I take that back, the company is in fact third rate, much too stupid to realize that you don’t encourage photographers then arrest them for doing what you asked them to do. Some heads should roll over this PR disaster. Preferably the chief of the Amtrak police force along with the two stupid officers.

Besides a lawsuit, one might also ask the question: should the government own all the passenger rail service in the country? They sold off Conrail a few decades ago, and it wasn’t the end of the world.

JDog…

That thread on TransitCops is amazing. These guys honestly thing the public properties that they work on are their own private property.

“If you don’t like it, get off our bridge.” by David Webb

Me thinks he watched too much Dragnet as a kid. LOL

ImSour states… “Refusing to comply with the police request to abide by those policies and rules constitutes refusing to comply with a lawful order, which subjects you to arrest for trespass.”

He is right, but the order must first be “LAWFUL”. You are under no legal compunction to comply with an unlawful order (such as “delete those photos!).

Who have we turned our country over to? jeez!!!

???

Here’s a good piece on the fight over this in Illinois

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,1221026

You should look up Mr. Zullig

I think in light of the BART cops in Oakland he is lucky they didn’t just shoot him dead so he could not tell his side of the story.

I finally got a response from Amtrak:

“Dear Mr. Smith:

Thank you for your email of December 27, 2008, to our Media Relations offices.

Generally, Amtrak’s policy is that ticketed passengers may take photographs on board our trains that do not interfere with passengers, crew or other Amtrak employees. Photography is permissible only in public areas of our stations and is prohibited in restricted areas (for example, rights of way and other no trespassing areas, etc.). Photography on train platforms is limited to ticketed passengers who may do so briefly prior to boarding or departing from a train.

All other photography requires prior notice to Amtrak and may require an escort at the discretion of the company. For safety and security reasons, this permission may be restricted temporarily by Amtrak personnel. Amtrak’s requirement of prior notice allows the company to inform the notifying photographer of the conditions of access and when access may be temporarily denied.

Regarding the recent matter you referenced, Amtrak is conducting an investigation into the incident.

We appreciate your interest in Amtrak and hope we can serve your travel needs in the future.

Sincerely,
Lena Gray
Customer Relations Specialist
Amtrak”

DID AMTRAKS Lena Gray JUST SEND THE S.O.B. THE BUG LETTER?

Tony,

In other words, “blah blah blah blah blah”.

Laurentius Rex: the London photographer who was harrassed and arrested near his home in Elephant and Castle would probably disagree with you.

Oh, sorry, I thought the “Website” field would put this site on my post:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/11/another-london-photo.html

You failed to mention that the Amtrak photo contest had ended prior to this incident. You also left out that platforms are not “public areas” as stated in the “rules of the station” posted at all entrances and the “no trespassing” signs on all the platforms. My question is, if you saw three middle-eastern men acting suspiciously and taking pictures of sensitive areas that people generally don’t take pictures of, what would you do? Nothing, or tell the police? If you would do nothing you are irresponsible and naïve. If you would tell the police then you can’t expect any different treatment then the middle-eastern men would receive. Or maybe the police should just know by looking at them who is a terrorist. Bottom line is when transit systems (or other areas) are terror targets you have to play by the rules. And that means everyone, not just the bad guys.

Wake Up,

If I saw three Middle Eastern men taking photos, I would assume they were tourists.

Terrorists walk around with guns and bombs, not cameras.

Also, Duane Kerzic was preparing for the next’s year contest.

I guess you’re one of those people willing to give up their First Amendment rights for “safety”.

You should be ashamed to call yourself American.

I’m with Carlos, remember the words of one of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin,
“They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security”

Taking pictures in this day and age is not really damaging. If any terrorists wanted pictures of a train loading platform, they probably would only have to do a Google image search.

Wakeup says that you have to play by the rules. The rules are clearly unconstitutional, the enforcement of the rules is arbitrary and capricious, the contestants are not notified about the change in status regarding taking photos, the police behave brutality and apply force disproportionately, but “the law is the law.” But the law stinks, and anyone who obeys the law or advocates obedience also stinks.

In his novel “Les Miserables,” Victor Hugo puts the words “the law is the law” in the mouth of the stupid and irrational police inspector Javert. Thus the term “Javertism” to describe extreme procrustean application of the law.

Gosh, that’s probably over Wakeup’s head. So, let’s take procrustean apart, too. Procrustes was a character in Greek mythology, a son of Poseidon who would offer a bed to travelers, secretly adjusting it ahead of time. It would always prove too long or too short a bed, and Procrustes would stretch his victims on the rack, or amputate their feet to make sure they would fit. He was finally killed by Theseus who put Procrustes to bed and chopped off his head.

The law is wrong. In a free country, we should not obey laws that are wrong. We should disobey them, and force the laws to be changed. Where necessary, we should defend ourselves against the procrustean application of unjust laws with self defense, including up to deadly force as we see fit.

Anyone who disagrees is a coward or a bully, or both.

“The cops where enforcing a non-existant law, a law I guess they think should be there, which means they are acting as judgement. If they had enfoced the laws that exist I would have been left alone or at most told the platform is now closed to the public you have to leave.”

It’s worse than that. They’re legislating, judging, and enforcing. Republicans cry about judges legislating from the bench but legislating from behind a badge is more frequent and more harmful. At least judges are required to have some education. Cops need a GED and don’t get hired if their IQ is anywhere above room temperature because they might cause trouble for the brotherhood. Their jobs are even more secure than those of judges due to their corrupt unions and code of silence.

Thanks Rei Kobi,

http://carlosmiller.com/2009/01/16/uk-anti-terrorism-act-is-nothing-but-...

It is obvious the guy should have been stopped and his camera gear taken from him. He had a ticket to ride on the train, arrive at his destination and leave.
Quit picking on the police as they were only doing their jobs and prevented this picture taker from getting photos that could easily have been used by terrorists for almost anything.
He is lucky he was only stopped and is not in jail for his attitude and snoopy subversive photo activities.

Hey robert do you work for the
Transportation Stazi Assembly do you?

You and those who think like you will be shittin your pants when your view of the world arrives at your door huh!

Hey Robert.

Go fuck yourself. Fascist pig.