“It’s just like it used to be in East Germany,” he told me. He should know. He lived there during the reign of the communist regime. He was detained for several hours yesterday at gunpoint for taking pictures of the Golden Gate bridge from a scenic overlook. “In East Germany, you could be arrested and detained for taking pictures of any government building or national landmark. I never thought it would be that way here.” The park ranger, plainclothes detectives and two squad cars of police officers kept him for a long time, cited him with a fine, and make him delete photos from his camera. In my understanding as a prior government media relations specialist, this is an unconstitutional practice. But faced with a night in jail and a trial for resisting arrest (he was told), he complied and handed over his equipment so the officers could delete any ‘dangerous’ images from his camera. When he asked me about it, I told him that the officers had overstepped their legal bounds. But the price of showing them the error of their ways would be a trip to jail and a court date to let a judge (who has a fuller grasp of the constitution and U.S. case law) straighten out the constitutionality of the situation. So he complied and submitted to the unwarranted search, seizure, and destruction of his property. All for taking pretty pictures from a scenic location.
Inwardly I weep for our country. If this is to be the routine way of things, then in some ways the terrorists have won. Will they be able to turn the United States into a totalitarian regime where citizens lose their first amendment and personal property rights? If so, our momentary security may have the illusion of enhancement, but our idealogical gatekeepers have lost the battle that separates us from our enemies’ version of a perfect society.