If visiting Indy, don't take pics of any.....

[swmdrayfan]

There were quite a few stories like this a couple/few years ago but I haven't heard anything recently. I didn't understand the idea behind it then, and still don't...

It's called paranoia, a v.

[another view]

It's called paranoia, a v.

You're right about that. We all know that our world (here in USA) changed on 9/11/01. Since we had not dealt with something like that day before, it's understandable that things would be a little crazy for a period of time. I can accept that, and I can accept holding off taking pictures of this or that because the powers that be are trying to decide what needs to be protected, and how to do it. Here we are coming up on six years later and some areas of law enforcement still have their heads in the sand. That's sad...

Tink, I'm surprised you're dealing with that too in Austrailia. I thought we had the market cornered on goofy ideas!

[JSPhoto]

Since we had not dealt with something like that day before, it's understandable that things would be a little crazy for a period of time.

We haven't? Throughout the history of America we have been attacked without warning, both in our homeland and overseas. We have had ships blown up, barracks blown up by suicide bombers, a Federal building blown up, airliners blown up by terrorists...and thats just since the 1970's. We dealt with all kinds of attacks, but just never responded properly. If we had put safety measures in place at our airports like Isreal has had for many years 911 wouldn't have occured because they are prepared. The US has always had a "wait and see" attitude towards security, then after something happens they say "oh, we should have done this or that". The same occurred when Pearl Harbor was attacked.
Our responses to terrorists over the years has been to throw a few punches and bloddy their nose ie: Lybia & leader Momar Kadafi, who's aif force took a beating numerous times following terrorist attacks on airliners, and even Kadafi himself being targeted several times. Oddly enough Kadafi actually stood up for the US and against the terrorists in the attack on 911 and since has helped US officials locate terrorists.
These quick attacks though did not do anything to upgrade US airport security, and even now many airports are still way behind in security measures and items that are not supposed to get onboard still do. Aircraft still do not have proper secure cabin doors.

Another thing that gets me is that the taking photos of certain buildings is illegal, but the buying and selling of software such as Microsoft Flight Simulator, which has the cockpit layouts of several large aircraft hasn't been limited at all, it also has the airports and blocky city scapes that included the twin towers, not to mention the geographic co-ordinates of all the airports and landmarks and how to use and disable the autopilot and the terrorist pilots had the software to help in their training. Tell me that Microsoft didn't fight to save that, it's probably their biggest money maker besides Windows. Once again $$ takes precidence over security, but it shows where the governments priorities are as well. Big companies get away with whatever they want, while the little guy gets harrassed for taking a photo.

JS

[another view]

We haven't? Throughout the history of America we have been attacked without warning, both in our homeland and overseas.

True, but 9/11 was such a huge magnitude here on our own soil, over the course of only a couple of hours and not while a big part of the world was already at war (as in the case of Pearl Harbor). Not to make light of any of your examples and others that have happened in history. Good point about flight simulator - hadn't really given that much thought. After almost six years, it seems like we're still focusing on the small stuff - cockpit doors on the planes I flew on as recent as two weeks ago didn't look any more secure than they did several years ago but I still have to take off my shoes (sandals, even), check my bag for fear of having the wrong sized tube of toothpaste and throw away a security-checked bottle of water in order to get on a plane. Then they run the schedules so tight that any minor problem results in system-wide delays. Road trips are so much easier...