Filmmaker
Rakesh Sharma has sued New York City for being
`detained and harassed’ by its police while
making a documentary about ordinary folks in a
post-9/11 world. Backing Sharma’s suit,
the New York Civil Liberties Union has challenged
curbs on people’s right to photograph public
places. Police offi cers confronted Sharma in
May 2005 for allegedly fi lming a “sensitive
building”. They interrogated him for three
hours. Despite “cooperating with them, they
treated me like a criminal,” the maker of
Final Solution, a documentary on the Gujarat riots,
said. Mr Sharma was told he needed a permit to
fi lm on city streets and then was denied one
without explanation when he applied to the Mayor’s
Offi ce of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, the
lawsuit said. (Hindustan Times, January 12, 2006,
New Delhi).
How to interprete this? Is it a scar of terror
or a scare of terrorism? Is photography of a public
place in New York illegal? I was surprised. Had
such an incident occurred in any of the many countries
that practice strict information regime, I would
have not reacted. But when such incident happens
in a country that champions all kind of ‘rights’
and ‘rights’ and at times does not
mind going to any extent to enforce its ‘rightful’
prescriptions, it raises many questions. Instead
of dealing with the issues raised by Mr Rakesh
Sharma about harassment and humiliation in US,
my concern is the law itself that supposedly prohibits
taking pictures of public places. Existence of
such laws in a mighty country like US further
strengthens the arguments that advocate the restriction
on the fl ow of the nature of information in public
domain mostly in the name of national security.
Worse, it does dampen and weaken the spirit of
those who favour a liberal policy of information
sharing. These people contest the basic logic
of restriction on the ground that in most of the
cases what we try to hide is already available
in public domain.
In fact, the pace of technological changes in
the fi eld of data capturing and its dissemination
is forcing the concerned authorities to redefi
ne their perception, approach and strategies.
It was not long ago that clicking a photograph
in an airport in India was prohibited. This rule
was termed as “silly and ridiculous”
by Lt
Gen Ranjit Singh, SM, Engineer-inchief
and Senior Col Comdt, the Corps of Engineers,
Indian Army. On one hand, when a country like
India is making efforts to make available spatial
data for civilian and developmental purposes through
landmark initiatives like the National Map Policy
and National Spatial Data Infrastructure, such
events taking place in other parts of the world
indicate a very different trend. Anyway, in an
era of ‘multiple standards’ when different
yardsticks are applied to different people in
similar situations, it is a challenge to explore
and evolve innovative responses in dealing with
security needs and civil liberties.
Bal Krishna, Editor
bal@mycoordinates.org |
