Street Photography Is Not a Crime

This could be hard to explain to a few security guards, tinfoil hat wearers and uptight housewives but if you are in a public space then anybody has the right to take a photo of you.

Strange that in this age of employer, creditor and government spying that people are mainly suspicious of hippies screwing around with their overpriced digital camera.

Recently, KCTV 5 reports that police questioned a man photographing people at Apartment Complex Pool. Not only did they question the guy for more than an hour but they also checked his camera for anything incriminating before letting him go. It's important to know that the guy was using a cell phone cam and that is the hallmark of pervs and annoying people but the principal is still same. Like it or not, you can't stop someone from snapping a pic even if you believe it might take away a portion of your soul.

Here's more from Wikipedia (so it must be true):

"In the United States, anything visible ("in plain view") from a public area can be legally photographed. This includes buildings and facilities, people, signage, notices and images. It is not uncommon for security personnel to use intimidation or other tactics to attempt to stop the photographer from photographing their facilities (trying to prevent, e.g., industrial espionage); however, there is no legal precedent to prevent the photographer so long as the image being photographed is in plain view from a public area."

I've always thought that if you are gonna take a photo of someone, common decency dictates that you should ask permission but then again neither the police nor the government do as much so there's no reason to expect anyone else to bother.