If the officers were polite what harm is there in them following up and making sure?
You can play the "what if" game until the cows go home, and opinions will of course differ as to where the line of caution should be drawn, but IMO we're far far into the land of paranoia at this point.
Is the answer to all this just some hand-wavy 'everything changed after 9/11?'
Perhaps too many false positives and you get canned for not being able to do your job competently, then subsequently replaced by someone who can adequately assess threats?
Reporting suspicious activity and subsequently investigating it isn't a waste of time - analogously, if it were a waste of time we wouldn't keep security logs on any of our computers. The issue is adequately assessing what is a credible threat and what isn't, which the FBI is likely in a better position to do than the average security guard. That's likely the reason he just dropped off his business card instead of bringing along the SWAT team - based on whatever was tipped to the agent, this guy was probably not an actual threat.
- If there is such a "too many false-positives, you get canned" policy, I feel like the threshold is probably set too high... just in case.
- "Better safe than sorry, just report it because the FBI is in a better position to determine X" isn't the bar that you want to use for reporting things.
- The bar for 'suspicious' could just be 'argued with me (security guard) about my ability to prevent him (photographer) from photographing private property from public property.' Or maybe 'he knew his rights' / 'argued about his rights' / 'mentioned the ACLU.' Or just plain old 'he was Muslim and photographing things, I better report him!' I think that these 'filters' are not doing an adequate job of assessing threats, but probably fall well below any thresholds that would get said security guard in trouble for too many false-positives.
- From the FBI side of things, you could equally have 'better safe than sorry' group-think that says no one should be punished for making reports, because we don't want someone to see something that could prevent the 'next 9/11' and then not report it for fear of getting in trouble for if being a false-positive.
> Reporting suspicious activity and subsequently investigating it isn't a waste of time
The problem here is that everyone has different ideas on what is suspicious, and they bring their own prejudices to the table. Law-and-order / authority figures tend to view people that question them (and don't just fall in line) as acting subversively, and therefore suspicious. Just arguing with a guard about their inability to prevent you from photographing private property that is in plain-view from public property (without trespassing) could be enough to make you 'suspicious' just because most people are non-confrontational, and unwilling to push back against what the security guard says. As the Japanese saying goes, "The nail that sticks up its head, gets hammered."
That would be a great policy. Too bad the reality is nothing like that -- probably the opposite.
If he took a single photo he's nothing like any photog that I've ever met. Sure, they probably have tourists, art appreciators or whatever, taking photos sometimes. But, I'm guessing, they don't all get added to an FBI SAR list - so this person was clearly not "[just] [t]aking a photo". Indeed he was probably taking dozens of photos, from lots of angles.
There's too little detail of course in the story to know - that would move against the angle they're trying to sell.
This was targeted intelligence gathering, surely.
What kind of instances? Taking a photo? The author's exact point is that society should recalibrate itself such that anybody photographing a public piece of artwork shouldn't raise suspicions or trigger an FBI follow-up. It's the physical equivalent to the NSA's "collect-it-all" mentality. Targeted intelligence gathering is the appropriate approach in my opinion. And sometimes that means accepting that a 72 year old photographing a made-to-be-photographed statue isn't leading a sleeper cell.