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| Re: Union Station Photographers Rights Issue Gets Press Attention (625917) | |||
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Re: Union Station Photographers Rights Issue Gets Press Attention |
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Posted by BMTLines on Sat May 31 14:50:55 2008, in response to Re: Union Station Photographers Rights Issue Gets Press Attention, posted by Robert King on Sat May 31 13:29:39 2008. I agree with you to the extent that the guards themselves are caught in the middle. Unfortunately photographers have no choice but to report the guards every time and/or escalate this to the media - the problem is not going away by ignoring it.There is a lot more to the Union Station story and you had to be following the Flickr group to understand it fully. The media interest did not arise suddenly last week. There have been efforts to communicate with both Amtrak and Jones LaSalle ongoing for months. Amtrak returned the calls and responded very clearly that photography was permitted within the areas of Union Station that it controls. After some prodding a higher level manager of Jones LaSalle, Joan Malkowski, finally stated in writing (email) that photography was permitted in all public areas managed by them. Furthermore she promised (again in writing) that all security guards would be retrained with respect to the photography issue. Approximately beginning 2 weeks ago a group of photographers began entering Union Station, individually at random times to "test" whether or not Joan (Jones LaSalle) had kept their word. When it became apparant that she had not the issue was escalated to the media. Keep in mind these are not run of the mill railfan photographers - semi-pro and pro photographers are driving this effort as well as hobbyists that happen to be attorneys and/or politically connected. Besides the problem that guard faces on Monday morning - I am sure the meetings will not go well for Joan either for committing the company to a written photography policy and retraining of the guards only to be proven otherwise on TV!! As for the guards - here is a comment another guard made with respect to photography at a refinery where he worked. It is not Amtrak or Union Station related but it does give insight into the forces at play: For the past 10 years I have been a private security guard at an Ohio oil refinery. We patrol the area surrounding the refinery, including city streets. I have had many instances where I had to deal with photographers, both on and off the refinery's property. Lots of local college students like to take pictures of the refinery at night (lots of pretty lights and cool 30ft. flames coming off the smoke-stacks). It is company policy that no photographs are permitted to be taken of the facility, for both safety/security reasons, and for corporate privacy reasons. However, it is perfectly legal to take photographs of the facility if you are not on the refinery's property at the time. All the guards know this, but we have to try to stop them anyway. It's part of our procedure. Just like it is legal for you to take the pictures, it is legal for us to tell you that it is not (there is no law that says I can't lie to you about it). I can make any demand that I wish, including asking for ID, that you relinquish your film, or erase your pictures, even though you do not legally have to obey any of these. If you don't know that, that's your problem. If you do happen to be on company property, I can call the police and have you arrested for trespassing, otherwise, it is my job to try to harass you and convince you to stop taking pictures. Our best weapon in this fight is the taking down of your license plate number and informing you that the information will be forwarded to the FBI and the DHS (which it will). That usually scares people enough to want to get out of the area ASAP. |
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