You don’t have Rights if you’re not allowed to exercise them. This is a chilling account by a professional photographer of his experience with the San Francisco Transit Police (BART PD) and San Francisco Police (SFPD). In his own words, when he attempted to shoot some photos of a BART station platform:

… The short version is that The Fare Inspectors tried to prevent me from taking photos under threat of citation. When I refused to stop, they tried to cite me but couldn’t find any relevant code, regulation or law to cite me. Enlisting the aid of the SFPD and BART Police officers also yielded now results. No citation was issued.

He has links to a detailed account in the linked blog posting.

Essentially, what the police told him was, “Just because it’s legal and a Constitution Right doesn’t mean we won’t find some way to arrest you or harass you for attempting to exercise it.” If the only things being done in the name of “security” are Security Theater at best and Illegal Thuggery at worst, then I can’t help but believe that America has lost the utterly mis-named, “War on Terror.”

It’s times like these that I wonder what the future of Security and Risk Management holds. Real security professionals of all stripes (both information and physical) are trained in how to identify the most effective and least intrusive ways to protect assets. Real security people don’t harass people for the crime of knowing and exercising their rights. Whenever I see or hear an account of this sort of official harassment, it makes me sick.

According to the theory of terrorism, calling it the “War on Terror”means you just lost.

I’m not kidding, it’s in the bible for terrorists, and for some reason, even though the book is on the reading list for Marines Officers, the actual message doesn’t get through to those who make decisions.

(Ref: Che Guevara, _Guerilla Warfare_)

The message gets through to the Marines. Just take a look at The Free Congress Commentary. William Lind was a career Marine officer and he DEFINITELY gets 4GW (4th Generation Warfare).

Unfortunately, the people high enough up in the Executive Branch to be naming things like wars were never Marines or any other sort of serviceperson to a degree worth mentioning.

Of course, if naming it “The War on Terror” means you’ve lost it, then maybe the War on Freedom isn’t such a bad monicker after all…