"Where does it say that?" Miklus asks. "Show me the law. Show it to me and I'll stop."
The agent doesn't answer, but leaves and returns with several airline employees, one of whom tells Miklus that it's "against the law" to take photos at a security checkpoint.
"Put down the camera!" the employee orders. Miklus continues taping. A police officer later refuses to arrest him.
Such incidents are becoming increasingly common, making shutterbugs hesitant to take pictures that they're well within their rights to take. They include security guards harassing a photographer shooting in a Los Angeles park and a man being threatened for videotaping a whale in the Florida Keys. TSA screening areas are a flash point for these encounters, with officers sometimes threatening passengers, blocking their view, or citing nonexistent rules in an effort to force them to stop taking photos.
"I used to deal with one of these a month," says Mickey Osterreicher, the general counsel of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA). "Then it was weekly. Now it's almost every day. Citizens are being told that they can't take pictures out in public - whether it's a building, a bridge, or a train."
Travelers are confused. Bridget Garrity, an attorney from Torrington, Conn., recently spotted a sign at BWI Marshall Airport suggesting that taking photos of TSA screeners is illegal. "It was hung on the wall right above the entry to the security lanes for the machines," she says. "It did have some reference to a federal code, but I couldn't get it all down." Garrity was tempted to take a picture of the sign, but was afraid that she might be breaking the law.
Jonathan Dean, a spokesman for BWI, said the signs are posted near the screening area because "TSA typically discourages photography at its checkpoints."
