| It's a strange place we have come to when legal activity becomes
| suspicious activity. It is perfectly legal to photograph in a public
| place.
|

Interesting issue. It's certainly a problem when
police don't think the public should be able to see
them at work. On the other hand, I find it unsettling
that whenever I'm in public someone might be taking
a picture from their cellphone. It makes me glad that
my reckless youth is behind me.

Of course it's always been possible to have one's
picture taken in public, but in the past it was far
more obvious and far less ubiquitous. Someone pointing
a camera at scantily clad bathers, for instance, would
be obvious. Someone walking buy carrying their cellphone
is not obvious.

I think I remember a law being passed in Japan that
requires a click sound when a photo is taken with a cellphone,
so that it can't easily be done surreptitiously. Perhaps more
laws like that will be developed.

Another angle: What about the young men aiming
their cellphones up the skirts of women on escalators?
Those women are in public and I don't think it's
illegal for those men to squat down, pretending to
tie their shoelace while they look up. So how is it
illegal to simply click their cellphone camera in a public
place, on an escalator? If a woman wears a skirt, does she
somehow get legal protection against anyone seeing
underneath it? Again, this wasn't much of an issue back
when photos required cameras. Taking photos up skirts
would have pretty much required harassment. But now
it can be done with no one noticing. It may well
be time that some kind of compromise has to be found
between public freedom and personal privacy.

And as always, I guess the time-tested advice holds
true: Make sure you wear clean underwear when you
go out, in case you get into a car accident and passersby
take photos of you being put into the ambulance.