Homeland Security and railfans

[dharmon]

QUOTE: Originally posted by philnrunt

dharmon- so did you notify HO-SHA about that spill? They might have 40 or 50 pages of questions for you to fill out!

Oh yeah, HOSHA was all over it. But nothing compared to CAL-HOSHA. [:)]

QUOTE:
And guys, take my word for it, the local LEO's (I like that) have tons of other things on their minds, if one speaks with you it is probably because someone complained about it. Be up front and you should have absolutely no problem. Most LEO's are pretty reasonable guys, if they ask you to move on it's usually to please nervous citizens.
As for the idea of making a law against taking pics from public property, it would be a waste of time and totally un-enforceable, so you can almost bet the polliticians will be working on something along those lines real soon, as most of the laws passed in knee jerk reaction are.

As Phil says, most LEOs are reasonable. Explain what you're doing and be courteous and they'll probably leave you alone or at worst ask you to leave. Mouth off and it's a trip downtown. The majority of civilians don't understand folks that sit and watch trains or planes and consider it suspicious.

As for taking pictures from public property. I'd be willing to bet there's a thousand lawyers waiting in the wings to make their big splash going to the Supreme Court over something like this. Someone arrested for taking pictures of trains from public property, if they were willing to challenge it would probably get tossed out. But along those lines, courts don't look favorably on those that mouthed off to the cop leading up to the arrest.