As you may have noticed, I like to take photos of airliners, airports, and stuff like that. Fortunately I haven’t personally encountered the “cheap prose of patriotic convenience” that Patrick Smith writes about in Salon today – but it feels as if it’s only a matter of time. After Smith had twice been harrassed by clueless security staff for taking pictures at airports, he…
… presented the issue to Phil Orlandella, the media relations director for Boston’s Logan International Airport. As the departure point for both of the 767s that hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, Logan’s security procedures came under intense scrutiny in the weeks that followed. Orlandella’s office sits off a corridor between Terminals B and C, and he’s been intimate with all all things Logan for more than a quarter century.
“Who controls security, TSA or the local police?” he says. “They both do, it’s that simple. And no, it’s not against any rules to take pictures, inside or outside, period. If anyone tells you otherwise, that’s a bunch of baloney.”
I think I’ll carry a copy of this piece with me when I travel… just in case some officious goon tries to tell me that I can’t take photographs because “we live in a different world now”.