Oil spill, homeland security, & photography...

It is probably appropriate that the first post we write going into year 4 is breaking the rule of "never talk religion or politics".

We're not taking on both, just politics (kinda).

For those of you who haven't read the story about the photographer who was detained by police you can (and should) read it here.

The gist of the story is photographer Lance Rosenfield was taking pictures of the BP refinery in Texas (from a public vantage point) when he was detained (but not arrested) by a BP security person, local police, and a member of homeland security.

Lance was released only after they took down his personal info (social security number, birth date, etc.) AND looking through all of his images.

My question is, if Lance was shooting from a public road why did/do they have the right to do this?

You can read more about this story here and here, you can see the images that led to Homeland Security "detaining" Lance here.

And this is not the only incident relating to photography and the gulf oil spill, you can read stories of British Petroleum restricting access to the oil spill over at Newsweek, the New York Times, and the Huffington Post.

Is this still the land of the free?

Troubling, extremely troubling.