Politics of Photography After Reply.

"Dwhite - Powered by Caffeine, Daft Punk, and Corgis" (Dwhite95) 05/13/2015 at 13:44 • Filed to: None

1

14

Boom, have a car.

Saw !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! on Reddit that was a bit concerning. Basically a Wyoming bill has gone into effect which now considers photographs a form of “data collection”. So if you go on any land in Wyoming; private, public or otherwise, and take a picture without written consent to collect environmental data and then share it with a State or Federal agency you could potentially face a fine up to $1000 and a year in jail, repeat offenders could face up to a $5000 fine and a 5 years in jail. Just getting consent to take photographs is not enough.

A quote from the article.

“The new law is of breathtaking scope. It makes it a crime to “collect resource data” from any “open land,” meaning any land outside of a city or town, whether it’s federal, state, or privately owned. The statute defines the word collect as any method to “preserve information in any form,” including taking a “photograph” so long as the person gathering that information intends to submit it to a federal or state agency. In other words, if you discover an environmental disaster in Wyoming, even one that poses an imminent threat to public health, you’re obliged, according to this law, to keep it to yourself.”

Fuck, thats some sketchy shit. The article also claims this bill was motivated by the cattle ranchers wanting to prevent people from being able to prove that their cattle were grazing illegally. So not as malicious, but still sketchy.

TheDude without a car > Dwhite - Powered by Caffeine, Daft Punk, and Corgis 05/13/2015 at 13:47

0

This looks amazing. Alpina B5?

For Sweden > Dwhite - Powered by Caffeine, Daft Punk, and Corgis 05/13/2015 at 13:48

0

How is a random guy on the side of the road going to know if a rancher has the correct grazing rights?

Dwhite - Powered by Caffeine, Daft Punk, and Corgis > TheDude without a car 05/13/2015 at 13:48

0

If I remember right, yup. Those wheels are a dead giveaway, classic Alpina.

Dwhite - Powered by Caffeine, Daft Punk, and Corgis > For Sweden 05/13/2015 at 13:49

0

The article said grazing in relation to rivers and other bodies of water, which risk e-coli contamination from the cattle droppings.

TheDude without a car > Dwhite - Powered by Caffeine, Daft Punk, and Corgis 05/13/2015 at 13:50

0

I’m a sucker for them Alpina wheels.

For Sweden > Dwhite - Powered by Caffeine, Daft Punk, and Corgis 05/13/2015 at 13:56

0

Grazing next to bodies of water that supply municipal water systems is restricted, not banned. A normal Joe isn’t going to know the rancher’s grazing schedule.

I agree the law is dumb, but using the beef industry as a scary strawman for the urban photography community is also dumb.

Dwhite - Powered by Caffeine, Daft Punk, and Corgis > For Sweden 05/13/2015 at 14:02

0

Thats just the information I got from the article. And its unlikely that the law will ever be used against the average photographer. But I cant seem to find any information as to the reason why the bill was introduced in the first place.

But I’d at least say its more likely that it was introduced to have a way to punish whistle blowers, whether or not its against the beef industry or not.

AthomSfere > Dwhite - Powered by Caffeine, Daft Punk, and Corgis 05/13/2015 at 14:20

0

If it passed, pretty sure the ACLU would get it killed pretty quick as the article wrote it at least. Of course being a news outlet I would be curious to get the actual proposal, a lot of times what the bill actually is and the news reports are two very, very different things for ratings and sales.

AthomSfere > AthomSfere 05/13/2015 at 14:28

0

Yea, reading the actual bill a bit it looks like that news outlet was looking for clicks.

The bill specifically mentions trespassing as a requirement and also explicitly states the law does not apply to (among others)

(D) Collected incidental to a recreational 2 activity or educational activity done with statutory, 3 contractual or other legal authorization to enter or cross 4 open private land and the data is not used for legal or 5 regulatory proceeding.

Pretty sure you are not trespassing and at a National Park legally 99% of the time.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > AthomSfere 05/13/2015 at 14:40

0

Do you have a link to the bill? I read an article on that the other day and it struck me as being so blatantly unconstitutional the way the article described it that it was ridiculous.

AthomSfere > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 05/13/2015 at 14:45

0

Sure:

https://legiscan.com/WY/text/SF0012…

Bills suck to read, and I am not a lawyer but news agencies tend to suck even more in bending one part of a bill to bring in the alarmists!

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > AthomSfere 05/13/2015 at 14:52

1

Yeah, the article I read tortured the crap out of that to make it sound WAY worse than it is. Thanks for the link.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > Dwhite - Powered by Caffeine, Daft Punk, and Corgis 05/13/2015 at 14:56

1

AthomSfere posted the actual bill text . What the bill says is very different from what the article makes it out to be.

JGrabowMSt > Dwhite - Powered by Caffeine, Daft Punk, and Corgis 05/13/2015 at 14:57

0

Simple, don’t be collecting environmental data.