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Comment by jstanley | Hacker News Reader

Why were no cameras allowed in the train station?

There are vague federal anti-terrorism statues that disallow photography of "critical infrastructure". Mostly used by guards to bully anybody they are suspicious of for whatever reason. You probably won't be affected by these unless you happen to look middle eastern or dark skinned. These laws also are also applied inconsistently to bridges, power plants, dams, government buildings, and the like.

I'm not dark-skinned or Middle Eastern, but I was stopped and questioned by transit police at Penn Station in New York for taking a photo of an OS error message on a train status monitor. About 2010 or so?

They seemed to be alarmed by anyone taking an unconventional interest in station infrastructure.

Is it considered terrorism if you fix their BSOD

I'm surprised that happened in Penn Station because I'd expect New York has enough nerds that Police are used to the fact that yeah, there are infrastructure nerds, and they think BSODs are worth photographing, and some of them are connected. I guess it depends what "stopped and questioned" means. I've had cops stop me and informally ask me about stuff and it didn't bother me, whereas if they wanna see my ID, search my stuff, now I have a problem with it and I want proper paperwork because somebody is getting a formal complaint.

This is India, most people are dark-skinned.

India colorism and casteism is sometimes worse than most racism in western culture.

When high caste neighbor of my great-grandfather in Gulbarga used to treat him as outcaste when he touched her pots and water jugs it was because he was Muslim (well, Ahmedi more specifically, but Muslim as far as she was concerned)

Year 2007, I was visiting US for first time. Found Atlanta fascinating. Clicking pictures everywhere.

Waiting for metro (marta?) I took video of a train arriving. The conductor? of the train stepped out , said that's not allowed, and insisted I delete it immediately.

That I know of, photography is still prohibited on the MBTA in Boston, but you see it all the time.

I think the Overton window has shifted to the point where the ability to take a photo is now assumed to be a given, and enforcement otherwise would be difficult because "everybody's doing it".

It's generally legal anywhere in the US you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy (like publicly accessible spaces)

The T backtracked on that a while back: https://patch.com/massachusetts/northend/yes-you-can-take-ph...

(the original MBTA link is long gone)

It sounds like you're right, at least from MBTA's perspective: [0].

I'm curious if a court has upheld that, though. MBTA is at a funny nexus of public and private organization, so personally speaking I'd like to see the First Amendment prevail.

[0] https://mbtarealty.com/filming-and-sampling/

But why?

I don't know.

One hypothesis is he didn't like my skin color. Maybe it was too soon after 2001.

And after the 2004 train bombings in Madrid

A platform conductor once (maybe 15 years ago) explained to me that taking photos of the train entering the station was forbidden because the flash could distract the train operator at the crucial moment where a person falls into the trench. There was a sign posted, that's why I asked.

Back then I thought this to be a very rare edge-case and it seems to be. But since then I personally witnessed persons falling into the trench twice. Furthermore I learned that railway and train operators take security pretty seriously, because anything that could go wrong probably kills you.

It's interesting how many anti-photography that are actually just anti-flash rules, and they're becoming close to obsolete. Today's cell phone cameras handle low light conditions so well that the flash is hardly ever used.

True! But there are also a lot of people who let their flash settings on auto all the time. I guess a LED flash is just as distracting as an old-school flash, even if it is not as bright.

Somewhat similarly, you can take a bicycle onto a UK train platform (and onto the train), but the lights have to be off, so a driver doesn't see your red light and slam on the brakes.

I'm guessing post 9/11 mania.

There were a lot of attempted strange policies about photography post 9/11 in the US. Some stuck around for longer than others. They were all absurd, not like you have to take photos to case the joint / before you set off a bomb.

At one point Amtrak had a photo contest to take photos of their trains and submit them, and a guy was arrested by Amtrack police for doing just that.

What is interesting is that after any attack one of the first requests is for people who took photos that day to turn them in so they can see if there was anything important captured.

> At one point Amtrak had a photo contest to take photos of their trains and submit them, and a guy was arrested by Amtrack police for doing just that.

And Stephen Colbert did a great comedy episode about this exact problem. https://www.cc.com/video/9kc6le/the-colbert-report-nailed-em... , https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/nyregion/28about.html

I wonder if they ever got further response.

Apparently railways are considered military infrastructure at time of war.

British era rule which was rescinded some years ago.

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