Rhode Island Department of Environmental ManagementProposed rules lack photosensitivity

A man approaches a young girl on a state-owned beach. Stubble-faced, slightly sweaty, trying to act more calm than he really is, he shows the child his camera — and asks her to take off her clothes.

Fortunately, this girl knows her rights. "Do you have a permit from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management? And how about a release form?" she demands.

Foiled! He slinks off — only to be taken into custody when the girl reports him to a nearby DEM officer.

Last fall, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) proposed a rule that would regulate the activities of commercial photographers on state land. Henceforth, such photographers would be required to obtain a permit before taking pictures at DEM-managed parks, beaches, and other facilities. And the photographers would also have to get a signed release from all recognizable people in their pictures.

Among the goals, DEM spokeswoman Stephanie Powell told the Providence Journal, was to give law-enforcement officials the tools they needed to prevent pedophiles from photographing children near outdoor showers and bathhouses.

But how could that be? Absent the regulation, have police officers been constrained from taking action against dirty old men who wield cameras while asking young children to strike lewd and lascivious poses? Even with the regulation, what would happen if a photographer promised a cop that the nude photos he was taking of an eight-year-old boy would not be used for commercial purposes? "Sorry — carry on," perhaps? Uh, not likely.

There doesn’t appear to be any ulterior motive behind the DEM’s proposal. Rather, it seems to have been merely a weird moment of bureaucratic insanity. At a hearing in November, the Rhode Island ACLU and the Providence Journal Company spoke out against the proposal. According to the Journal’s account, attorney Raymond Marcaccio told the agency he was worried that the regulation would be applied to news photographers who arrived on state property to shoot breaking news such as a boating accident or an oil spill, or even just a feature photo of families at the beach. Powell responded that it had never been the DEM’s intention to regulate the activities of news photographers. Well, duh.

The proposal was quickly dropped, and something good even came out of it: it emerged that the DEM, unbeknownst to its own officials, already had a rule on its books prohibiting commercial photographers from shooting on state land without permission. That rule was repealed, which means the First Amendment was actually in slightly better shape after this little fiasco than before.

Nevertheless, the episode shows why free speech can’t survive without constant vigilance. You never know when someone, somewhere is going to come up with some nutty idea to take away our rights.

James GallagherWorcester police chief tells protesters, "Smile"

It’s not entirely fair to single out Worcester police chief James Gallagher for the department’s policy of taking surveillance photos at peaceful demonstrations. After all, the practice dates back at least to 1970, and Gallagher has been chief for only a short time. And it was he who announced recently that his officers would stop the practice, more or less (see "Follow-Up," This Just In," May 24). But his previous defense of the policy was so mindless — and his so-called reversal is so dubious — that Gallagher has earned the coveted Muzzle.

The surveillance came to light last fall, when Worcester Magazine published a photo of an undercover police photographer at a peace demonstration, camera at the ready and gun by her side. Reportedly, she had been taking close-ups of demonstrators just moments before without revealing who she was or what she was doing; the protesters themselves figured she was either with the media or an antiwar organization until she ambled over to a police vehicle. At that point, a protester quickly snapped her picture. Incredibly, the police defended the policy in subsequent coverage in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

The blue wall of denial was still in place in March, when the Phoenix’s Kristen Lombardi interviewed Gallagher about the practice (see "Candid Cameras," News and Features, March 29). Lombardi wrote of Gallagher: "When asked whether good police work calls for photographing peaceful, law-abiding protesters, he responds, ‘Absolutely.’ When pressed to elaborate, the chief falls back on the just-in-case rationale: ‘The police use it to be ahead of the curve.’ Asked whether that means that people who exercise First Amendment rights are more likely to fall into criminal behavior, he replies, ‘No, not necessarily.’ So why is such surveillance necessary, then? ‘It just is,’ Gallagher insists."

If anything, police-union president Richard Cipro’s comments to Lombardi were even more troubling. "If you’re not involved in any illegal activity, you have nothing to worry about with this practice," he said. That rationale, of course, could be used to justify anything from letting the State Police tap your telephone to inviting the FBI to read your e-mail. As the legendary retired radio talk-show host Jerry Williams used to say, we’ve got everything to hide. Free citizens exercising their constitutional rights to speak out against their government should not have to worry that their photos are sitting in a police file somewhere. That reeks of the 1960s and ’70s, when federal agents infiltrated and spied on the civil-rights and antiwar movements — abuses that led to reforms that are now threatened because of the war on terrorism.

This story should have had a happy ending, but Chief Gallagher managed to spoil it. In May, he submitted a new policy to city officials promising not to take photos at peaceful rallies — unless, that is, "there is a reasonable belief that the photographic surveillance may provide information necessary to facilitate investigations." That’s a loophole big enough to stick a zoom lens through.

Ronal Madnick, of the Worcester ACLU, wants a policy that restricts photos to criminal activity and ongoing criminal investigations. That sounds reasonable. What about it, Chief?

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dan@dankennedy.net