Washington DC security guards clueless about photographers' rights

June 2, 2008 @ 11:31AM

Washington DC security guards clueless about photographers' rights

By Carlos Miller -...

A television news crew was conducting a segment about how photographers’ rights are being violated at Union Station in Washington DC when a security guard ordered them to turn their cameras off.

Ironically, the man they were interviewing at the time was the Amtrak head spokesman who was informing them that there is no policy in place that forbids photographers from filming or photographing inside the historical train station.

When asked, the security guard was unable to explain why they were not allowed to film inside the station, which is one of the busiest – and most picturesque – terminals in the United States.

Check out the video here.

Comments

Anonymous

3 years ago

http://lightboxdc.blogspot.com/ is the blog of the Fox photographer who shot the great footage.

Congresswoman Norton is getting involved now. This should be good.

Anonymous

3 years ago

[...] seems that this isn’t the first time that Amtrak has run into problems with one hand not knowing what the other was [...]

Anonymous

1 year ago

Just saw this article. This happened to me about a year ago. I was photographing the ceilings. The ceilings! And this security guard comes up and says I’m not allowed to photograph inside. No reason given.

Anonymous

1 year ago

Does anyone know why a DHS agent would prohibit an individual from recording his/her own responses during an interview? Know any laws supporting the prohibition? What about having two persons be present for the interview?
How about being denied these options and then the law enforcement agent actually lies about what the individual said? Having the recording would have been a record of what was actually said?

Lastly, it was a DHS agent and the agency refuses to respond to the person’s request as to why he/she could not record the responses or why the person could not have two individuals present for the interview since there were two agents.

Any one have some thoughts?