Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Watching the watchers

This story is almost funny in the pettiness of its surveillance, when video cameras are all around us.

The funniest paragraph is this quote from Thomas Karns, the detective:

"I told her I wanted to know who she was and why she was taking my photograph," he wrote.
Uh, she was someone who wanted to know who he was and why he was taking her photograph! His retreat suggests that he knew he was over the line and didn't want to get caught. Instead, he wound up arresting her and a friend and outing himself.

It's clear that Lisa Nieves and Patrick Keaney have some experience with protest. Even if you wouldn't protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza (Hamas, too?), you should take as a firm lesson that any protest or civil disobedience should always be prepared to photograph the response of the authorities, as they were. Most of the time, that response will be comparatively minor like this. Most of the time, the authorities don't even want the theatrical conflict that protesters plan in order to get media attention.

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