Thursday, May 25, 2006
Oblivious to looking suspicious
As I documented previously, my family took a vacation to Washington DC last month. It was a great trip, but there is one incident that I didn't document before.
One our last day in DC, we ended the day in the center of the National Mall. Most of the museums were closed and we were ready to head home. Our vehicle was parked at Union Station which is not too far, but a healthy walk. Adding to this, the family wanted to visit a rest room.
I volunteered to walk to the vehicle while the family went to the one open museum for a bio-break. The walk was pretty uneventful, although I was on the phone with my mom getting our Southwest Airlines electronic check-in taken care of while we walk.
My phone is a PDA phone that includes a camera. I rarely use the camera because it isn't really that good. However, it is ok for occasional shots.
When I arrived at Union Station, I found that I couldn't get in due to a major emergency response. I never did find out what the issue was, but there were a LOT of fire trucks, police, and other misc. emergency vehicles around. Someone mentioned seeing FBI guys there too.
I called the family and warned them that I was running late due to the situation. Since I was just standing around, I decided to take some pictures with the camera phone so that I could show the family what I was dealing with.
So here is the situation. Some guy is walking around the emergency vehicles that were probably called out for suspicious activity. This guy is quietly taking photographs with a device that is disguised as another device (i.e., not many people expect a PDA to be a camera -- I know this from experience).
After I took a number of these photos, I realized that this was probably not a good idea in Washington DC with the post 9/11 environment. I quietly put away my PDA and shortly thereafter was allowed into the building.
Here are the pictures if anyone is interested. I don't think that I am risking national security by posting these. If anything, this should serve as a deterrent by seeing the massive response that is triggered by an incident.
One our last day in DC, we ended the day in the center of the National Mall. Most of the museums were closed and we were ready to head home. Our vehicle was parked at Union Station which is not too far, but a healthy walk. Adding to this, the family wanted to visit a rest room.
I volunteered to walk to the vehicle while the family went to the one open museum for a bio-break. The walk was pretty uneventful, although I was on the phone with my mom getting our Southwest Airlines electronic check-in taken care of while we walk.
My phone is a PDA phone that includes a camera. I rarely use the camera because it isn't really that good. However, it is ok for occasional shots.
When I arrived at Union Station, I found that I couldn't get in due to a major emergency response. I never did find out what the issue was, but there were a LOT of fire trucks, police, and other misc. emergency vehicles around. Someone mentioned seeing FBI guys there too.
I called the family and warned them that I was running late due to the situation. Since I was just standing around, I decided to take some pictures with the camera phone so that I could show the family what I was dealing with.
So here is the situation. Some guy is walking around the emergency vehicles that were probably called out for suspicious activity. This guy is quietly taking photographs with a device that is disguised as another device (i.e., not many people expect a PDA to be a camera -- I know this from experience).
After I took a number of these photos, I realized that this was probably not a good idea in Washington DC with the post 9/11 environment. I quietly put away my PDA and shortly thereafter was allowed into the building.
Here are the pictures if anyone is interested. I don't think that I am risking national security by posting these. If anything, this should serve as a deterrent by seeing the massive response that is triggered by an incident.
# posted by - Rob @ 2:16 PM 
