Look, but Don't Take a Picture!

I have a really hard time understanding anti-terrorism laws. You can go and look at something (mentally take a snapshot) but you can't pull out a camera and take a picture. Here's a story from the Guardian telling you that as a tourist you can expect to be manhandled by the police and forced to

Like most visitors to London, Klaus Matzka and his teenage son Loris took several photographs of some of the city's sights, including the famous red double-decker buses. More unusually perhaps, they also took pictures of the Vauxhall bus station, which Matzka regards as "modern sculpture".

But the tourists have said they had to return home to Vienna without their holiday pictures after two policemen forced them to delete the photographs from their cameras in the name of preventing terrorism.

Matkza, a 69-year-old retired television cameraman with a taste for modern architecture, was told that photographing anything to do with transport was "strictly forbidden". The policemen also recorded the pair's details, including passport numbers and hotel addresses.

...

In a telephone interview from his home in Vienna, Matka said: "I've never had these experiences anywhere, never in the world, not even in Communist countries."

To put my two bits in...

I noticed that my local library has now put up a sign forbidding taking pictures in the building. Yep... you know, books are dangerous articles especially if terrorists get pictures of them! I'm outraged because when I was a kid libraries were quiet sanctums for readers, but this day people wander through shouting on their cellphones. That's OK. But taking a picture... well, that is strictly verboten!

You can thank George Bush for this "new world order" where Big Brother lays down more and more rules of "correct behaviour" all in the name of "public safety". Sad.