Picture America without pictures of America
A Coalition of Concerned Citizens, Filmmakers and Photographers
Picture America without pictures of America
A Coalition of Concerned Citizens, Filmmakers and
Photographers
Citizen Photos
by boat captian show persons of interest
Seattle
FBI gets 200 tips over ferry photo
The FBI says it has received more than 200 leads and tips after the publication of a photograph of two men seen acting suspiciously on several Washington state ferries. While the men have not been identified, Special Agent Larry Carr said Thursday that the bureau is hopeful "that we'll be able to have this matter resolved soon." Carr declined to say more. The FBI earlier this week released two photographs of the men taken last month aboard an unidentified Puget Sound ferry. The photos were shot by the boat's captain after complaints that the men were acting strangely. FBI analysts concluded the same men were seen on between four and six different ferries.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007FBI Seeks Identity of Two Men Seen Aboard Washington State Ferries
The FBI released photographs of two men Monday who have been seen on Washington state ferries "exhibiting unusual behavior" and asked the public for help identifying them.
The agency's Seattle field office, along with the Washington Joint Analytical Center, was still seeking the men's identities and whereabouts Wednesday as ferry service was temporarily shutdown when a suspicious package was found in a ferry bathroom and taken away by authorities.
"We had various independent reports from passengers and ferry employees that these two guys were engaging in what they described as unusual activities on the ferries," Special Agent Robbie Burroughs, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Washington state, told FOXNews.com.
"They felt that these guys were showing an undue interest in the boat itself, in the layout, the workers and the terminal, and it caused them enough concern that they contacted law enforcement about it," she told FOXNews.com.
The two were photographed by a ferry employee about a month ago, and those photographs were distributed to ferry employees three weeks ago by local law enforcement.
"We decided that we would go to the public to see if we could get some help in identifying them, so that we could resolve the situation more quickly," Burroughs said. "Keeping in mind that their behavior might have been completely innocuous."
Ferry service was halted Wednesday on one Seattle ferry line during the morning commute when a suspicious package was found aboard a ferry docked in the city.
The Washington State Patrol didn't disclose any details of the package that was found by a crew member in the passenger area of the Washington state ferry Puyallup, but Sgt. Craig Johnson said investigators determined it didn't pose any immediate threat and carried it off the vessel for further examination.
Johnson said no arrests were made and no identified individuals are being sought, but said the State Patrol would like to find the person who left it aboard the 460-foot Puyallup.
Marta Coursey, a ferry system spokeswoman, said the Puyallup had just been emptied of cars and passengers after arriving at Colman Dock from Bainbridge Island about 8 a.m. when the package was discovered behind the toilet in the disabled passenger stall in the men's restroom.
Two Seattle-Bainbridge runs were canceled during the package scare. Following a search and examination by State Patrol troopers, the 2,500-passenger, 202-vehicle capacity ferry was cleared to resume service about 9 a.m. During the shutdown, service on the Seattle-Bainbridge and Seattle-Bremerton runs was maintained on the terminal's other main slip.
"Just as any large transportation system would be considered a target by law enforcement, this is our big transportation system and that's why everybody here recognizes the fact that it could be a target," Burroughs told FOXNews.com. "It's something that we're very tuned into, and we monitor instances on the ferries very closely."
The FBI has received dozens of tips since releasing the photographs of the unidentified men and is following up on new leads, but they have yet to be identified as of Wednesday, Burroughs said.
The release of the photos did spark a minor controversy between Seattle's rival papers, when the Post-Intelligencer decided not to run the photo when the Times did."Running a photograph of two men who may as easily be tourists from Texas as terrorists from the Mideast with a story that makes them out to be persons of interest in a terrorism investigation seems problematic, to say the least," Post-Intelligencer Managing Editor David McCumber said in a blog Tuesday, noting that "ferry security is hugely important. So are civil liberties and privacy."
Click here to read the blog: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/328575_fbi22.html |
A Times managing editor defended the paper's decision to run the photos on Tuesday."Further reporting helped us more effectively weigh the potential value — and harm — of publishing the photos," said Suki Dardarian, the paper's managing editor of news coverage and enterprise. "After some deliberation, we decided to publish the photographs, along with as much context as we could bring to the story."
Click here to read the Times story:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003847538_ferries22m.html |Anyone with information on the identities of the two men
is asked to contact the FBI's Seattle office at 206-622-0460.
FOXNews.com's Sara Bonisteel
and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007The Seattle FBI has released photos of two men who agents believe were "exhibiting unusual behavior" aboard Washington State Ferries. Bureau analysts have concluded several of the incidents this summer are related. Neither man is a suspect or has been charged with a crime; the FBI says it simply wants to identify them.
FBI asks: Who are the men in this photo from ferry?
By Mike Carter and Jennifer Sullivan
Seattle Times staff reporterThe FBI wants to identify two men who reportedly rode as many as six different ferry routes in recent weeks — snapping photos of doorways and going to areas of the boats where passengers don't normally go — and is asking the public to help.
In a rare move, the federal agency has released photographs of the men taken by a ferry employee.
The FBI hopes to determine whether the men are innocent passengers or possible terrorists.
"They seemed very interested in the operation of the boat," said David Gomez, the assistant special agent in charge of the agency's Seattle office.
"They were taking photographs of doors, not seabirds," said U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Richard Hartley in Seattle.
Gomez said employees and passengers reported the incidents over several weeks this summer. In at least one instance, they asked questions about ferry operations, Gomez said. It wasn't until analysts looked through the reports that a pattern was seen, he said. Since then, the FBI has concluded "four to six" of the incidents were related and involved the same two men.
Several other similar incidents were reported, but analysts could not conclude they involved the same men.
One ferry employee was so suspicious that he snapped photographs of the two standing at the rail of a ferry. The FBI would not say exactly when the photos were taken or which boat they were taken on.
Gomez said investigators conducted follow-up interviews with witnesses, including showing them photos.
"We have enough investigative confirmation to make us believe the incidents are related," Gomez said. The men have not been seen in several weeks.
FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs said the FBI has received dozens of tips as a result of releasing the photos. So far, the men remain unidentified.
"We are able to resolve the great majority of reports of suspicious activities on the ferries," Gomez said. "We have not been able to do that here." The decision to release the photographs publicly was vetted with bureau officials in Washington, D.C., and demonstrates just how serious the potential threat is being taken, he said.
The sightings so concerned area law-enforcement officials that the Washington State Patrol, the Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Administration accelerated plans to work together more regularly, said Bob Calkins, a state patrol spokesman. The three agencies and the FBI have all been looking for the men.
The Seattle Times reported on Aug. 4 that security had been increased due to suspicious riders on ferries. When the photos were released late Monday afternoon, The Times refrained from publishing them in print or online. "We had little more information than we'd reported earlier in the month, and we wanted to better understand the circumstances surrounding the investigation and the photographs," said Suki Dardarian, managing editor of news coverage and enterprise.
"Further reporting helped us more effectively weigh the potential value — and harm — of publishing the photos. After some deliberation, we decided to publish the photographs, along with as much context as we could bring to the story."
On Tuesday, readers of the news alert posted on a variety of Internet sites weighed in on the decision to publish or not. Some suggested that distributing the photos was profiling on the part of law enforcement, while others thanked media outlets and the FBI for alerting them to possible threats to security.
The release of the photos enraged some in the Arab-American and Muslim communities, said Aziz Junejo, who hosts an Islamic talk show on television and writes a column about Islam for The Seattle Times.
He called the release "careless" and said he has been inundated with complaints that the FBI is profiling Arab-Americans. He said the photos appear to be of two Arab-American men.
"The people I'm hearing from are outraged and angry and paranoid," he said. "They're afraid to ride the ferries now."
Hisham Farajallah, the president of the Islamic Center of Washington and a board member at the Idriss Mosque in Northgate, said people are "scared."
"But we all want the same thing — that is the safety and security of our country," he said, noting that the Islamic community and law enforcement in Seattle have a good relationship.
Gomez said there is no specific threat to the ferry system and Hartley, the Coast Guard enforcement official, said maritime-security levels remain at their lowest.
Still, there has been a notable increase in visible security on some ferry runs in recent weeks, said WSF Executive Director Mike Anderson. "We have thrown some manpower at this," he said.
The Washington ferry system moves more than 26 million passengers and 11 million vehicles a year and is the largest ferry system in the country. Last year, it was singled out by the Department of Justice inspector general as one of the top two maritime terrorist targets in the country. The other is oil-tanker traffic along the Gulf Coast.
Ahmed Ressam, an al-Qaida-trained terrorist convicted of conspiring to set off a bomb at the Los Angeles International Airport during the Millennium celebration, was captured in December 1999 coming off a privately owned ferry in Port Angeles from Victoria, B.C. The trunk of his rental car was filled with bomb-making materials.
In June 2004, several Marine and Navy officers attending the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., conducted surveillance of the ferries as a class project and determined they were vulnerable to attack.
In the spring of 2004, the FBI conducted a threat assessment of the ferry system and concluded that terrorists were conducting "pre-operational planning" for an attack. The assessment was based on a review of 157 suspicious incidents over nearly three years. Analysts concluded that 19 of them were likely or extremely likely to have involved terrorist surveillance.
Gomez said the most recent incidents are similar to the 19, but that analysts have not been able to draw the same conclusions because of a lack of information.
Following the 2004 threat assessment, the Coast Guard required the State Patrol to increase the number of vehicles it screens, mostly through the use of explosive-sniffing dogs. Even so, the number of cars, trucks and vans screened going onto the boats remains a fraction of the total. Walk-on ferry passengers are not screened and do not undergo any security check.
Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com and
Jennifer Sullivan: 206-464-8294 or jensullivan@seattletimes.comCopyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company
Permission to reprint or copy this article or photo, other than personal use,
must be obtained from The Seattle Times.
Call 206-464-3113 or e-mail resale@seattletimes.com with your request.
Picture New York |
Basically, this [proposed NY City film permit ordinance] opens the door to unlimited police interactions with photographers and filmmakers, because under these proposed rules, if they were passed, basically everyone with a camera, including everyone with a cell phone, would be someone who might have to have a permit to do photography... with all the people out there with cameras, most people are going to be left alone. This is going to give the police license to stop people they want to stop for whatever reason they want. And you can imagine who the likely targets are of that sort of enforcement... People with dark skin, people who look suspicious in the eyes of the police... It's going to be the people who tend to be harassed by the police in other contexts. -- Christopher Dunn
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