“It’s just like it used to be in East Germany,” he told me.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 He should know.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 He lived there during the reign of the communist regime.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 He was detained for several hours yesterday at gunpoint for taking pictures of the Golden Gate bridge from a scenic overlook.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 “In East Germany, you could be arrested and detained for taking pictures of any government building or national landmark.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 I never thought it would be that way here.”\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 In my understanding as a prior government media relations specialist, this is an unconstitutional practice.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 When he asked me about it, I told him that the officers had overstepped their legal bounds.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 So he complied and submitted to the unwarranted search, seizure, and destruction of his property.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 All for taking pretty pictures from a scenic location.<\/p>\n
Inwardly I weep for our country.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 If this is to be the routine way of things, then in some ways the terrorists have won.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 Will they be able to turn the United States into a totalitarian regime where citizens lose their first amendment and personal property rights?\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“It’s just like it used to be in East Germany,” he told me.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 He should know.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 He lived there during the reign of the communist regime.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 He was detained for several hours yesterday at gunpoint for taking pictures of the Golden Gate bridge from a scenic overlook.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 “In East Germany, you could be arrested and … Continue reading Sad times for U.S.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18,4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-politics","category-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdZlL-46","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}