Military Casket-Photo Restrictions Are Doomed to Fail

This story has made headlines around America, whereby the Pentagon eased up on their ban forbidding news organizations to showing the homecomings of the war dead at military bases - as hundreds of photographs of flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base were released on the Internet by a Web site (thememoryhole.org) dedicated to combating government secrecy.

Steve Outing's commentary in E-Media Tidbits, on the Seattle contract worker stationed in Kuwait, who snapped the photo while on the job and was fired for it is interesting and relates to camera phones:

"The U.S. government since 1991 has made it policy to prohibit the press from photographing returning military dead. But as this episode demonstrates, everybody's a reporter these days. With digital cameras, photo cell-phones, and nearly ubiquitous Internet access, constraints on "the press" only apply to professional journalists; they often don't apply -- cannot apply -- to device-carrying members of the public who happen to witness, say, a planeload of caskets returning from Iraq. Government efforts to limit what the public sees are increasingly futile".

emily | 1:59 PM | Citizens as Camera Phone Reporters |
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