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November 14, 2005
Blogger Questioned for Taking Photos During WSIS Registration
Pakistani blogger Shahzad of BytesForAll recently posted a message to the APC blog warning people about taking pictures around WSIS facilities. Here's a part of the account, with added emphasis by me:
Maxigas had to register and collect his badge from the WSIS registration centre. I accompanied him to the centre and then thought of taking some pictures of the registration area to share with folks@bytesforall.Looking at our cameras, when we still had to take a picture, this security person came to us and warned us to refrain from taking pictures. Then, he asked for our passports and started questioning as to why we want to take pictures.
We informed him that we plan to share these on various blogs and websites, to which he responded that only accredited journalists are allowed to take pictures. He also went through all the snapshots available in our digital camera.
In the meantime, the lady translator was apologizing again and again for this. We were detained and questioned for about 15 minutes and allowed to go. We did request them though to place some notices and signs to let other delegates know that photography is forbidden in the WSIS area.
For me, it is very interesting, since almost every delegate is carrying this weapon and surely would want to photograph their event, exhibition area, friends etc. and, in doing so, could seriously fall into trouble.
I personally haven't taken any pictures yet, and I don't have any plans to curtail my photography based on this incident. My guess is some jittery security guard though someone was trying to take pics of registering delegates. But even so, it's next to impossible to take a picture at WSIS without getting some other delegates in the frame accidentally. And as Shahzad said, probably every delegate here is armed with some kind of camera. And 15,000 delegates can't be wrong. -andy
Posted by acarvin at November 14, 2005 3:31 PM
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