For the past five years, Carlos Miller, a former newspaper reporter, has covered incidents and issues surrounding the public’s right to record the police. Miller’s blog, which he refers to as PINAC, began as a hobby, but became a full-time job. On it, he chronicles his own court cases (he’s had three), other photographer arrests, and related legislation from around the country. He advocates knowing the law and using that knowledge to stand up to law enforcement in what he often refers to, in a sarcastic nod to government terminology, as “The War on Photography.”

Last year, the Baltimore Police Department published a General Order to officers explaining that members of the public have a right to record their activity in public, but the Justice Department said in its 11-page letter this week that the order didn’t go far enough, and pointed out several areas where it should clarify and assert more strongly the rights that individuals possess.

“The Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts far more speech than necessary to protect legitimate privacy interests,” the Chicago-based appeals court wrote

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit today granted a preliminary injunction, blocking enforcement of the Illinois Eavesdropping statute as it applies to audio recording of police performing “their duties in public places and engaging in public communications audible to persons who witness the events.”

it must be made unequivocally clear: journalists are f*cking enemies.”

“………………….To our enemies: if we won’t hesitate to directly confront hundreds of cops and to destroy property, what makes you think we hold the lens of your camera to be sacred? You want to preserve your four thousand dollar camera to watch us break everything else? We are not doing this for you, and this is not a game. You clearly do not understand that there is no exception. We feel nothing but contempt for you cowardly spectators.

You’d better watch your necks next time

The bodies of the three photojournalists were discovered on World Press Freedom Day and less than a week after Mexico’s Congress approved a law granting protection to journalists who have received threats.

“I had a couple people make grabs for my gear,” Muncy told Buzzfeed. “They just didn’t want their pictures taken.” “One girl walks up to one of the photogs and nailed him right in the face,” Muncy said. “He popped her right back.” Muncy told Buzzfeed the photographer was Lucas Jackson of Reuters.

Photographer Carlos Miller, owner of the Photography Is Not a Crime blog, has learned that the Miami-Dade Police Department is watching him like, well, police states watch dissidents, just looking for reasons to arrest him.

There are several resources available for photographers who encounter trouble with the law. Here are just a few

Although the Vogue piece didn’t mention it, the photos that accompanied the article — of Asma al-Assad, her husband and two of their children at home in Damascus — were facilitated by an American public-relations firm working for the Syrian government. The firm, Brown Lloyd James, was paid $25,000 to set up a photo session with James Nachtwey, the famed war photographer who shot the pictures for Vogue.

A manager for G4S, a security firm, has said that security guards working to protect the Olympic site in London are trained to deter people from taking photographs, it has been claimed

When we made the decision to publish, the Pentagon asked us to wait 24 additional hours to protect troops depicted in the photographs. We agreed to push back our publication date until the Pentagon told us they had taken the necessary precautions. In fact, we waited more than 72 hours after their request.

The guards refused to let Walker leave immediately. The incident, he writes, ended after the security guards “called police, who also asked to see the video footage, citing the Terrorism Act. The reporter was allowed to leave after neither he nor the police could properly operate the camera to replay the footage.”

Today a federal civil rights lawsuit was filed on behalf of Philip Datz in the Eastern District of the U.S. District Court that challenges Suffolk County’s policy and practice of obstructing the First Amendment right of the press and the public to record and gather the news about police activity in public places. 

Agents often wait for documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras at the door as she disembarks from international flights. Poitras, a US citizen, has been interrogated for hours, had her personal belongings and reporter’s notebooks seized, held and copied, and her laptop, phone and other devices searched and copied

If there is anything that is shocking to me about the subject at this point, it’s that the visual censorship of these wars has been so absolute that many today actually fail to understand why such scenes would even be important or relevant to see.