The Toss DPReview has coverage of a remarkable moment between two photographers at the Minneapolis ICE protests.
The incident is striking on its own, but it also renewed a long-standing wish of mine that camera manufacturers take photographer safety and data security more seriously.
For years we’ve had the ability to quickly force a passcode-only unlock of our phones, preventing authorities from compelling access via biometrics like Face ID. Despite years of advocacy, there’s still no widely adopted native equivalent for cameras that I’m aware of, leaving photographers to improvise ways to protect their work in moments when it matters most. (Aside/rant: The idea that you can’t be forced to divulge a passcode but somehow can be compelled to unlock a device with your fingerprint or face is something I still think the courts got wrong, and needs to be remedied by lawmakers.)
Hence Abernathy tossing his camera to a perfect stranger.
I’ve been lucky to have only been hassled by authority-types a few times while photographing something. Once, hilariously, a security guard tried—very loudly—to stop me from taking photos of my own office building while I was on assignment and standing on a public sidewalk. Another time, a DEP officer ordered me to hand over my driver’s license, while leaning in with a gap-toothed sneer to say he’d take my film too—or worse—if I didn’t cooperate. (A wildly illegal threat, to be clear. But since there was no one in sight for miles of wilderness in every direction, I complied and, after some more hassling, kept his paws off my film and myself.)
But working photojournalists? They deal with this crap all the time.
I’ve lost track of how many times I, or a lawyer I was working with, had to get on the phone with local authorities to get them to back off of a photographer we had out on assignment. In every case, that photographer was fully within their rights. Over and over again, the people charged with enforcing the law either didn’t understand it or chose to ignore it.
I still walk around with a copy of the The Photographer’s Right and the ACLU bust card in my camera bag. But I know they won’t get me very far if the person wearing the badge is ignorant of the law, acting in bad faith, or both. More protection is needed.