The principal attribute of a campaign against photography, or the encroachment on private property rights (see, “Is a Man’s Home Still His Castle? – Washington Examiner“) is that officials aim to take from American citizens rights that Americans now have, and have historically had. This is the dark – and reactionary — side of contemporary bureaucracy. In the name of security, or public health, or simply from officials’ feelings of entitlement, comes the demand that private citizens give up rights of property, association, speech, etc.
The political and legal backlash against this official over-reaching has only begun. I’d guess it will be a years-long effort, so long that it will come to be seen as a distinctive political era. Much of the over-reach one sees now, that has spread its tentacles into America over the last dozen or so years, will wither away. Those who have slavishly and servilely defended officials’ encroachments will find that the next generation holds them only as objects of ridicule. Americans’ natural taste for liberty, coupled with use of social media that are naturally open, will prove irresistible.
There are many benefits of a more open society, one of which Professor Reynolds of Instapundit.com highlights in an email from a reader:
….nearly all of our officers and their chiefs strongly support audio and visual recording of officers while on duty. Most jurisdictions here have voice-activated microphones and video cameras mounted in their patrol cars and remote microphones clipped to their officers’ collars. Many of these devices automatically download video and audio feeds directly to remote servers to prevent tampering with the raw footage.
But the cameras cannot capture everything that happens around an officer and the microphones have a limited range, so bystanders’ portable video can be a potent source of evidence documenting that an officer acted properly – which they do in the vast majority of instances.
See, Instapundit – A PROSECUTOR ON THE WAR AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHY.