Time to make an announcement. Our long-dreamed of, long-worked for project has become reality. Bob and I are making a documentary about pickpockets. The shoot starts now! We have an incredible team, and backing that is the fantasy of any serious documentary-maker. And we have a film director whose passion and persistence has been the engine of our project for more than four years now.
Bob and I have been on our feet countless, endless days, for the past seventeen years in pursuit of pickpockets. We find, follow, and film the thieves, talk to them, and interview them. Dropping into the most fabulous locations of the world, we give short shrift to museums and monuments, and instead lurk among the tourists, preying on their prey. In the name of research, we people-watch. We’ve slowly acquired better and better video equipment, and a massive archive of crime footage. Time to do something with it.
We’re on location now in a European city we chose for the main filming of our documentary. While I can’t reveal everything, I intend to share the excitement, successes, and surprises of our journey as we dive ever deeper into the world of pickpockets. I don’t mean to be coy if I only hint of tantalizing details; certain aspects are contractually unmentionable for now.
I intended to post our progress every day, but our only internet point, in the hotel lobby, has gone down. There is nothing else nearby. We have several new local modem sticks—none work.
Every frequent traveler has a personal list of what he misses about home. The list varies depending on the type and length of travel. Items high on my list are gardening and cooking.
My garden at home is of the type a frequent traveler can maintain. Specifically, that means it will survive, if not thrive, with a sprinkler system on a timer. Save for a few herbs there’s nothing edible, since I’d certainly miss fleeting moments of ripeness.
We’ve spent this spring and summer bouncing around Europe. By the end of September, we’ll have been on the road five straight months. Flying every three to six days, changing time zones, putting new names and faces into short-term memory, packing and unpacking, all while trying to keep up the administratrivia of business.
Between business trips, we made Stockholm our base, and our Swedish garden is what kept me sane. Growing food thrills me. Picking the bounty of the garden is a joy. A fistful of fragrant parsley makes me breathe deeply. A bowl of basil leaves or a palmful of oregano make me salivate for the possibilities. Weeding brings tranquility, and flavor explosions in the form of smultron, tiny wild strawberries found throughout the yard.
When we arrived in May, the rhubarb was ready and the cherry trees were flowering gloriously above it. I carried long, thick bundles of the red and green stalks up to the kitchen the afternoon of my first day, chopping and baking it into a crispy-topped pie. Later in the season, I simply chopped it and cooked it in a pot for ten minutes with nothing but a little sugar and cinnamon.
The elderberry trees burst into big, feathery flowers. They’re called fläder in Swedish, and we make a sort of juice-concentrate from the flowers. Worth a separate post.
Cherries, huge black ones and shiny white ones, required long ladders to harvest. The birds like them before they’ve reached their peek and, with easier access, always win the lion’s share. Those we manage to gather are too delicious to eat any way but out-of-hand. But why, we wonder, do the birds have to take a little bite out of each cherry? Why don’t they eat a whole one instead of pecking at a dozen?
Raspberries ripened next; I all but ignored them for my garden favorite, the deep and complex svart vinbär, black wineberry, aka black currant. These I gorged on—plain, on ice cream, with yogurt, thrown into a pan with a roasting chicken. It’s no wonder the most interesting red wines tout “flavors of black currant.” (Sure beats aroma of cat pee!)
Black currants are tedious to harvest, as they hang in loose, delicate bunches of only a few berries. But our bushes were so laden I could fill bowlfuls without moving my feet. Before each trip I took in July, I cooked a pot of these for five minutes and filled a jar to take with me.
Snails love black currants, too. The adorable baby ones, smaller than a bedbug, are impossible to see among the black berries. They quickly flee to the rim of the bowl though (as quickly as a baby snail can go), when I fill the berry bowl with water for a few minutes.
As the black currants dwindled, the red ones ripened, the berries becoming so dark and heavy in their grape-like clusters that the lower branches of the bushes laid in the grass. Red currants are easy to pick, and a fork quickly strips them from their little stems. They’re gorgeous, like little ruby marbles, but I find them too tart and one-dimensional in flavor. Still, they’re excellent over ice cream…
Golden green gooseberries fattened to perfection, overlapping the black and red currant weeks. My thumbnail was black for a month from topping and tailing them. I baked them with curried chutney chicken and chopped them with sugar for the freezer, to be eaten slushy through winter. Turns out they’re sublime arranged cut in half on a peanut butter sandwich. I always start eating the gooseberries too early, and only realize it when they’ve turned honey-colored and thin-skinned on their branches, and half of them are already gone.
Now the rhubarb has gotten a second burst of energy and the plums are ripe. These plums, called Victoria, are sweet as sugar, another favorite of the birds, and alas, this year, a little wormy. I can’t eat them without cutting them open for examination. But that just requires a bit of knifecraft.
It’s September 4th, and we’ve already had to turn on the heat. Sunny nights are long gone. The days are more often gray, rainy, and windy than otherwise. Bob and I are packing up, leaving Sweden for the last time this year, full of antioxidants and phytochemicals and glowing with good health. From our upstairs windows, we look down on reddening apples, but we’ll miss them.
[dropcap letter=”F”]irst there was skimming, now there’s shimming,” says Kim Thomas, former Las Vegas Metro Detective, now an international authority on forgery. Information on this new credit card acquisition technique comes via a Citibank investigator.
Now, looking for parts stuck onto the front of a cash machine, which might indicate fraudulent activity, is not enough. A shimmer does the work of a skimmer, but is housed completely inside the card slot of an ATM. In other words, entirely invisible to users.
Shimming
Kim Thomas describes the shim-skimmer: “The thief makes a circuit board the size of a credit card, but approximately .1 mm thick. They use a carrier card to insert the device. Basically it is a reader-transmitter. The reader does what the usual credit card skimmer does: capture full track data. The transmitter does what bluetooth does: transmit the track data to a receiver. The technology is pretty sophisticated and will be hard to catch once it goes into mass production.”
According to Jamey Heary, Cisco Security Expert, “effective flexible shims are recently being mass produced and widely used in certain parts of Europe.” He diagrams the physical layout of this “man-in-the-middle” attack as installed inside a card-reader.
I haven’t found anyone who has actually seen one of these shimmers, but no one’s calling it just a proof-of-concept, either. It isn’t clear to me whether or not the shimmer works with U.S. credit cards that lack the chip-and-PIN. Anyone know more about this?
“Door-pushers” are a problem in some cities. These thieves saunter down the long corridors of giant hotels with their arms outstretched, methodically pushing on every door on each side of the hall. Some doors open. In one city I won’t name, police get 300 to 400 reports of theft due to door-pushers every month.
“But we know there are more,” a police officer told me. “Some hotels prefer not to report them to us, but door-pushers we catch tell us they work there.” These are huge, famous hotels that don’t want negative publicity.
The risk is completely preventable. Just make certain your door closes tightly when you leave your room, and when you enter it. Why wouldn’t the door close tightly? Air pressure in hermetically sealed hotels is one possible reason; alignment of door latches or frames is another. Bob and I stayed in one hotel, a phenomenal one in Spokane, where the doors to suites took almost a full minute to close, due to hydraulic systems. We couldn’t pull the doors closed or hurry them along in any way. Patience was the only option. (Ours always closed properly, eventually.)
On the left: Bob’s rig. A strip of white tape is just a spare piece, used to secure checked bags. On the right: Bambi’s set-up. Not aluminum, but still like new after five years of hard use.
Road Warrior Packing Tips
Eighteen years of near constant travel gives one a certain authority on the subject. Bob Arno and I are on the road together about 200 days a year, making more than a hundred take-offs and landings per year. Although we travel side-by-side to the same destinations, we have very different ideas about how to pack and what works best on the road.
Let’s start with checked bags. What do you bring?
He:Zero Halliburton hard-shell aluminum cases. Usually a regular suitcase-shaped one for clothes, and an 18-inch cube-shaped one for equipment. They’re hard to break into and almost indestructible.
She:Same, but only one. It opens like a clamshell and both halves lay flat when open. I always slide it under the bed and use it like a drawer. I don’t unpack much.
How is your stuff organized within the suitcases?
He:Everything is in containers. Socks, shirts, shoes, shaving stuff, all of it. They all zip or close, and I’m rather fond of the containers as well as what they contain. Ties and belts are rolled. All shoes have shoe-trees. Suits lay flat and are interwoven to prevent creases. I bring a great steamer, but I usually just need a few blasts with it. I’m not a perfectionist wrinkle-wise.
She:My clothes are folded and stacked as they would be in a drawer. Even dresses. Clothes in one half of the bag, shoes and accessories on the other side. Shoes are all in bags. Belts are usually flat instead of rolled, because they take up no space that way. I’m fanatic about sealing liquids in plastic bags. I’ve had one leak too many. Other than shoe bags, I’m not big on containers.
Inside Bob’s Halliburton cube.
Cabin baggage. Do you use a roll-aboard?
He:Absolutely. A maximum regulation-sized Zero Halliburton, black aluminum. Its telescoping handle is actually too short for me—all roll-ons are too short for me!—so I have a snap-on handle extension that makes it really comfortable to drag. The bag locks, and it’s padded inside. I stuff it full of hard drives, video cameras, and other recording equipment. Because of the bag’s excellent security, I don’t have to worry too much when I’m forced to check it on smaller planes. However, because it’s so dense with electronics, I have to pull half the items out at every security check, lay them flat in a bin, and put them separately though the scanner.
She:Mine’s a red Mandarina Duck, also the largest regulation size. It has tons of zipped pockets, and anything I need is a just second away. The power cord for my computer, plug adapters, a book, iPod cord and earphones—they’re all in outside compartments. Inside I have a black suit and a dress, both on the same hanger, important shoes, a hard drive, and just a mass of necessities. I could probably live with just that bag. In fact I did once, out in Africa when my checked luggage didn’t show up. Ten days with just my carry-on!
Our daily haul. What about your second carry-on, your “small, personal item”?
He:Yep, another Halliburton. It’s a briefcase, which holds two Mac laptops, a few more hard drives and power cords, my wallet, pens, and reading. It balances on my roll-on, and I can snap my extension handle over it to fasten them together. Strong and safe!
She:A Mandarina Duck shoulder bag that goes with the roll-aboard. This bag is fantastic. It holds my 17″ MacBookPro in one padded compartment, and all my important items in another. Wallet, iPods, jewelry, foreign currency, airplane power adapter, reading, a shawl, and innumerable little essentials (like passports and dark chocolate). The bag attaches securely on top of the roll-on and the two stand as a single unit.
Have any unusual packing tips?
He:1. Bags and pouches for everything, and the same ones all the time so you know where everything is.
2. In addition to an international plug adapter, I keep a short extension cord with multiple outlets in my roll-on. It allows me to share a power outlet, even if, like in an airport, they’re all being used. It’s useful every single day.
She:1. I keep a small pouch in my shoulder bag, about the size of my hand. It’s my airplane bag, and goes on my lap on every flight. It contains noise-canceling earphones, a pen, lip balm, and a nail file. Things I know I’ll want on the flight.
2. On the road, the lowly shower cap has a hundred uses. As shoe bags, a rainy-day camera cover, to hold not-quite-dry socks, collected seashells, or an oozy bottle of lotion… even to cover the tv remote if you’re squeamish.
3. When packing a nice suit jacket, stand the collar up and open the lapels so they’re flat. That way you avoid hard, sharp creases where the lapels fold and your jacket will look more elegant.
4. I use shampoo for hand-washing clothes.
Criticisms on each other’s method?
He:Bambi isn’t in charge of all our video equipment and hard drives for video editing (which we do on the road), so she can use her space for useful things that benefit us both. Neither of her cabin bags is lockable, though, so she’s always reluctant to leave them in a hotel storage room. To me, her bags are messy inside. I don’t know how she finds anything, but she does.
She:All his pouches and little bags! I don’t know what’s in any of them. And with luggage weight restrictions, why haul the weight of containers? Bob’s two carry-ons take too much time to get into. I can grab a credit card, loyalty card, pen, tissue, or bag of peanuts in an instant. I take out my computer, check email, and put it away all in a minute or two, while standing up. I get through airport security and I’m on my way in under a minute. Bob’s set-up is slow. But I’m not above locking my stuff into his bags sometimes.
[dropcap letter=”B”]ob and I sleep more nights in hotels than in our own home and, to date, we have never been ripped off in a hotel room. True, we use a certain amount of care, but our laptops are usually left out and sometimes valuables are more hidden than locked. We stay in hotels ranked from six stars to no stars, depending on our sponsors and our intentions. In each hotel room, we make a quick and automatic assessment of risks and adjust our behavior to correspond. We have never walked out of a hotel* because of hotel room security issues; we simply adopt the necessary precautions.
The room key: we prefer electronic card keys. Old-fashioned metal keys can be copied, and where might copies be floating around? Electronic locks are usually recoded after each guest. Most electronic locks save records of whose keys have recently gained entry. Authorized keys are registered to their users. So if a guest reports a problem, security can tap into records stored in the lock’s mechanism and see the last ten or so entries, be they housekeeping, an engineer, a minibar man, or the guest himself.
In 2007, Tokyo’s Disneyland Hilton issued paper keys with room numbers printed on them.
Electronic key cards should not be marked with a room number. They’re usually given in a folder which identifies the room. Leave the folder in the room when you go out and carry just the un-numbered magnetic card. If you lose the key, the safety of your room won’t be compromised.
Some hotels still use metal keys attached to a big fat ornament and expect guests to leave keys at the front desk when going out. I’m not fond of this method for several reasons. First, I prefer privacy and anonymity rather than announcing my comings and goings. In some hotels, anyone can look at the hooks or pigeonholes behind the desk and know if a room is occupied or empty. Second, I don’t care for the delay entailed in asking for the key on returning. I could just take the thing with me, but its design discourages that. So third, I don’t want to haul around a chunk of brass the size of a doorknocker. And finally, these keys are usually well identified with the name of the hotel and room number. Losing it would expose one to substantial risk. When possible, Bob and I remove the key from its chunk and just carry it, re-attaching it before check-out. At other times, we go traditional and turn in the key as the hotel suggests.
Deadbolts and door latches: we like these for hotel room security during the night, but they aren’t universal. In Paris once, two men entered our room in the dead of night. Luckily, we woke up and Bob dramatically commanded them to get out. “Pardon,” they said, “c’est une erreur,” it is a mistake. The strange thing was that they had been standing there whispering for a moment. If it had truly been a mistake, wouldn’t they immediately back out of an occupied room? We should have placed a chair in front of the door beneath the knob.
Peephole in the door: I always look out at who’s knocking on the door, and if there’s no peephole, I ask through the closed door. Minibar? No thanks. Window cleaner? Wait til I check out. Engineer? I’ll call the front desk and find out who and why.
Connecting doors to adjoining rooms: I always double check to make sure they’re locked. They always are.
Windows: this is what I look at first, mostly because I hope they open. If they do open, I need to know about outside access. Is there a balcony? If so, there’s probably access to mine from a neighboring balcony. I’ve spoken enough with Frank Black, a career burglar, to never leave a room with an open balcony door. Frank specialized in burglarizing high-rise apartment buildings, but 21 years in prison has, apparently, retired him from that business. He’s now a respected tattoo artist and children’s book author.
In Florida (and I presume elsewhere, too), a certain subset of cat burglar is called a pants burglar. These creep in at night through open lanai doors, while the occupants are sleeping. They’re named for their beeline to men’s trousers, where they hope to find a wallet. They also visit the dresser top hoping to find, perhaps, a woman’s ring taken off for the night.
One morning I woke to see a perfect convergence of wires out the window. Only the view from my pillow created this lovely, serendipitous intersection of three unconnected and discrete (phone? electric?) lines.
I love an open window, but before I sleep with a breeze, I need to analyze window access. If my room is on the ground floor, on an atrium floor, or if it has a rooftop out the window, I won’t sleep with it open. If there are nearby balconies, forget it. Of course it also depends on the overall ambiance and character of the property. At a safari lodge in Tanzania I’ll worry more about baboons. In a thatched-roof teak tree-house in Bali, I figure I’ve paid enough to expect good security. At an all-inclusive beach resort with rooms that don’t lock—well? I planned for that when I packed.
After a quick appraisal of the hotel room security combined with its overall quality, we know how careful we want to be. In truth, we leave our laptops out in full view in about eighty-five percent of the rooms we stay in. Small valuables? Never. Wallets and jewelry? In the safe.
Some travelers believe in using duct tape to fasten their valuables to the underside of a bedside table, or other furniture. I can’t endorse that practice, unless it’s a last resort.
“During peak travel seasons hotels tend to use a lot of transient help,” Bob Arno says, “and sometimes the screening of these temporary employees is not as high as it could be. So yes, one always has to be concerned about hotel room theft.” The only way to protect your small valuables is to lock them in the hotel room safe.
But is the safe safe? We generally feel secure with electronic safes that allow us to key in our own code or swipe our own magnetic strip. For a magnetic strip, we use an airline or telephone card, not a credit card. The old-fashioned type of safe that takes a regular metal key we do not consider safe and do not use. We’ve surveyed police officers, hotel security, and FBI agents on this issue, and they agree with this reasoning.
*Once, during a short stay in a Greek hotel, we felt it unwise to leave the things in our room unattended. Had our visit been longer than overnight, we would have relocated.
[dropcap letter=”W”]as it instinct or anger that made Bob chase my bag snatcher? He rocketed down the street brandishing the famous umbrella weapon that was so ineffectual in Naples. I had managed nothing more than “Hey!,” but my weak protestation was like the starting gun at the Monaco Grand Prix. Two grown men went from zero to sixty in an instant.
Bag snatch!
I can’t say I was caught unaware when the bag snatcher stepped up to meet me, face to face. He calmly looked me in the eyes, seized the strap of my purse with both hands, and yanked it hard enough to break the leather against my shoulder. It happened much faster than you can read that sentence.
I gave my little shout and the creep was off and running, Bob on his tail. It took me several seconds to realize that I still had the purse clutched tightly in my hands. I could have laughed, but for the fact that my husband was in pursuit of a potentially dangerous criminal in a decidedly unsafe neighborhood.
The street we had walked was full of the necessities of life in this non-touristy part of Barcelona, lined with tiny hardware, shoe repair, and paint shops. We had been directed there, without any specific warning, in search of a few pieces of wood. Peeking through doorways seeking the lumberyard, we revealed ourselves as obvious outsiders. As we strayed ever further from the relative safety of La Rambla, we sensed a vague but growing threat of danger.
My antennas were out way before the interloper trespassed so suddenly into my aura. I didn’t see his approach, but I had already assumed a protective posture. Both my hands held the small purse I wore diagonally crossed over my chest.
Bob was a few steps ahead of me and didn’t see the confrontation. It only lasted two seconds. It’s astonishing what analysis and conclusions the brain can manage in those instants. I thought the man looked ordinary but grave. He stood uncomfortably close and made uncommon eye contact. I thought he would speak. I thought he would ask a question, or offer advice. Against my will, I slipped into the trusting attitude of a traveler in a foreign land. And that was my mistake.
Perhaps I’d have reacted quicker or with more suspicion if the bag snatcher had looked sleazy, mean, or desperate. But he didn’t, and I gave him the benefit of any doubt. In those two seconds, the gentleman had all the opportunity he needed to seize the strap of my bag and yank.
My feeble objection was enough to get Bob’s attention. He whirled around and leapt into pursuit, his long stride a clear advantage. When the perp dashed into a crowded alley, I thought it was all over. Bob bellowed “Policia!” at a volume that would fill an amphitheater. I, far behind, expected to see the escaping sprinter blocked or tripped by the local loiterers.
On the contrary. The sea of people opened for his getaway, then closed up again to watch the tall guy run. They didn’t exactly block Bob’s path, but seemed to plant themselves firmly as obstacles. Bob had to give up.
For me, the humiliation suffered by the would-be thief was almost enough. Like a cat with a mouthful of feathers, he ran with nothing more than twelve inches of torn leather strap in his fist. Yet, I was shaken and weak-kneed immediately following the experience, and the after effects lingered for months. Despite the fact that I wasn’t hurt, I lost nothing of value, and Bob hadn’t been tripped in the chase, I felt victimized.
A dozen boys swarmed around Gary Ferrari in front of the Sheraton Hotel in Lima. At least it seemed like a dozen—they’d appeared out of nowhere and were gone in just a few seconds. In that cyclone of baby-faces and a hundred probing fingers, they got his wallet and the gold chain from his neck.
Pickpockets in Lima
“We call them pirañas,” said Dora Pinedo, concierge at the Sheraton. “They are everywhere.”
“I don’t know how they got my chain,” said Gary, rubbing the red welt on his neck. “It was under my shirt.” He didn’t realize that the boys had learned to recognize the telltale ridge of fabric that covers any chain worth stealing.
“They’re usually seven-, eight-, nine-year-old boys,” Dora told us, “and they mob their victim in groups of six to ten. There is nothing one can do with so many little hands all over.”
We interviewed Petter Infante, 28, and Wilmer Sulca, 17, both grown-up pirañas. We found them at Lima’s University Park, where a comedy presentation was taking place in an entertainment pit, rather like a small amphitheater. Hundreds of people surrounded the pit, transfixed. Others loitered around the audience, more sat on cement benches, and many were asleep in the grass. Petter and Wilmer looked at us skeptically but agreed to talk to us after Gori, our interpreter, paid off a policeman patrolling the park.
Wilmer, a pickpocket in Lima
“But not here,” Wilmer said.
“Anywhere you want,” said Bob. Right, let’s enter their lair, and let’s take our fancy equipment in with us. The five of us piled into a taxi and Wilmer instructed the driver in staccato Spanish. Where were they taking us? I looked at Gori for assurance but our fine-boned archeology-student interpreter was not a bodyguard.
Wilmer led us into a garage-like cantina, dark, deserted, music blaring, disco lights flashing. The boys ordered huge bottles of Cristal beer. Bob wired Petter with a microphone and I set up our video camera, hyper-conscious of our vulnerability—read that: scared. My eyes were glued to Petter’s left arm, a mass of parallel scars, layer upon layer of them. A cut on his wrist was gaping open, infected. I used the gash to focus the camera.
Petter’s arm.
“The first thing I ever stole was a chicken,” Petter said. “I was twelve years old, alone, and hungry. I had small brothers to take care of.” Petter’s expressive face told a many-chaptered tale of violence: his snaggle teeth were edged with gold, his cheeks crosshatched with scars.
“I’m best at stealing watches. I just grab it off someone walking, then run. I’m a very fast runner. The victim could never catch me. We call this arreba tar. It means run-steal.”
He stood to demonstrate his expertise. Bob stood to be victim. “You can see there’s nothing in his front pocket, it’s flat,” Petter said. Then he did a lightning fast dip and grab into Bob’s back pocket. The wallet flew upward with a grand flourish, like the follow-through of a tennis stroke.
“We’ll steal anything,” Wilmer said, “nothing in particular. It’s all easy. It’s like a game.” Wilmer then showed the same method from Bob’s front pocket, finishing with the same exuberant flourish. “Cocagado—I’m already gone. By the time the victim realizes, we’re cocagado.”
The knife scars on Petter’s arm are like stripes on an officer’s shoulders: you have to respect him. You see he’s tough and dangerous. He started cutting himself a few years ago.
“If the police catch you, you cut yourself and they release you. They don’t want you if you’re cut and bleeding.”
“I’m on the street nine years and I never cut myself,” Wilmer said. “I don’t like to do that. We don’t have the same philosophy, Petter and I. He likes to cut himself, I do not. We think differently.”
(A police officer explained that an injured arrestee must be taken to a hospital, which requires hours of paperwork. If an arresting officer is near the end of his shift, he may not want to pursue such lengthy formalities.)
Petter and Wilmer, pickpockets in Lima, are opportunists, pirañas grown into hardened thieves. Petter thinks nothing of threatening his victims with a knife. I don’t know if he ever has or would use it. The boys’ main operative is speed.
Petter’s cuts
“We wait at the bus stops and look for someone with a good watch, or something else to take. We wait until the bus doors are ready to close then grab it and run. And sometimes we grab things through the open windows of the bus. We reach inside and grab cellphones, watches, glasses, purses, anything.”
Opportunists look for sure bets, for temptations, for the fat wallet protruding from a back pocket “like a gift,” as a pickpocket in Prague told me. “We call it …˜the other man’s pocket,'” a Russian thief revealed; “the sucker pocket,” said another. “Tourists make it too easy,” complained a man in Prague whose family members were admitted thieves.
Is it legal to take photos at airport security checkpoints, or not?
Occasionally I’ll politely ask a TSA officer if I may take a picture. Usually, they say no. You know, “for security reasons.”
But not always. A few times they’ve said yes, but don’t take pictures of the X-ray machines. That always leaves me a little puzzled: which X-ray machines? Which part of them? But the TSOs didn’t seem to care and left me unsupervised.
Turns out that many police and security officers, TSA included, aren’t exactly aware of what’s allowed and what isn’t. Believing photography is prohibited, or erring on the “side of security,” or just exercising their authority, no photos is the default reaction.
And many of us, meek and obedient citizens that we are, we accept that. Or we choose not to challenge the uniform. We don’t know what’s legal and what isn’t, either. We tend to have, in the back of our minds, that it’s illegal to photograph bridges, airports, even police officers.
But yes, it is perfectly legal to take pictures at TSA checkpoints, with a few minor limitations (not the X-ray monitors, not if you interfere with the screening process). You can even videotape if you like—yes, you can film the officers, too. You might be challenged. You might be delayed by the officers. You might even miss your flight.
In fact, pretty much anything can be legally photographed from a public place (again, with a few exceptions), including crimes in progress, police officers, federal buildings, the New York subway, and security checkpoints. Yep, if you can see it, you can shoot it. Pretty much. I’m talking strictly about the U.S. here.
…rules don’t always filter down to police officers and security guards who continue to restrict photographers, often citing authority they don’t have. Almost nine years after the terrorist attacks, which ratcheted up security at government properties and transportation hubs, anyone photographing federal buildings, bridges, trains or airports runs the risk of being seen as a potential terrorist.
The right to take photographs in the United States is being challenged more than ever. People are being stopped, harassed, and even intimidated into handing over their personal property simply because they were taking photographs of subjects that made other people uncomfortable. Recent examples have included photographing industrial plants, bridges, buildings, trains, and bus stations. For the most part, attempts to restrict photography are based on misguided fears about the supposed dangers that unrestricted photography presents to society.
This issue is pertinent to Bob and me in our thiefhunting exploits. We often feel on thin ice when shooting thieves in the wild, especially abroad. And perhaps sometimes we are. We’ve been challenged and chastised many times. Once we had a videotape seized, but we’d seen it coming and swapped the tape for a blank, pocketing the valuable footage we’d just shot.
I was admonished, not too long ago, for taking a few shots of a pair of armed and uniformed police officers drinking whiskey at an airport bar. Okay, it was in Trieste, Italy, not in the U.S.; I have no idea what my legal rights were. The officers leisurely sauntered over, after they’d finished their drinks, and said no photos. Okay. Then they left. Much later, when I left, they made a beeline for me and made me delete the photos. Had they been lying in wait? Anyway, I couldn’t recover the images.
Time to make an announcement. Our long-dreamed of, long-worked for project has become reality. Bob and I are making a documentary about pickpockets. The shoot starts now! We have an incredible team, and backing that is the fantasy of any serious documentary-maker. And we have a film director whose passion and persistence has been the engine of our project for more than four years now.
