Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
One of the most shocking events in the U.S. last year was the U.S. Capitol riots. On Wednesday 6 January 2021, hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol Building to protest the election results.
During the riots, multiple people were assaulted and injured, many of them being journalists. One of the men who attacked the police and an AP photographer was charged with an assault and has been arrested.
A female TikTok influencer from Egypt, Haneen Hossam, recently had her content on the platform send her to jail. The only thing she did was what influencers generally do – she invited and taught other users to monetize their social media activity. For this, the young woman was charged with “human trafficking” and sentenced to three years in prison.
A French tourist has been arrested in Iran after he was caught flying a drone. He was accused of espionage and arrested in 2020, and he has been sentenced to eight years in prison.
Yes, this actually happened. A 28-year-old woman from Miami Beach trespassed a high school. She pretended to be a school girl looking for a registration office to pass through the security and then caused multiple incidents that eventually led to her arrest. And why? So she could gain more Instagram followers among the students.
After Instagram led to the arrest of a Capitol rioter, here’s another case where this social network led to an arrest. A Nashville man, who was out on a bond on a statutory rape charge, was arrested after he was seen in a live video published by a runaway juvenile.
BBC News reports that 11 models from Ukraine – with some outlets reporting 40 models in total – have been arrested along with Russian photographer, Alexey Kontsov for what has been described as a “lewd” photoshoot on an apartment balcony in Dubai. The models face up to six months in prison with the photographer who organised the shoot potentially facing 18 months.
They were caught due to video footage being posted to social media by the photographer. It is believed that he initially told police that he was watching from a nearby apartment and not involved in the shoot but made the “fatal mistake” of posting the video online – a potential crime in the UAE. But videos and photos show footage from inside the apartment and on the balcony with the models, too.
A fire chief from Alabama recently pulled out a gun on a real estate photographer and a realtor who arrived at the house he was selling. The man claimed that he thought a camera was a gun, he smashed it against the ground, and the victims claim that it was, in fact, all because of the color of their skin.
Photojournalist Andy Aitchison (46) was recently arrested after photographing protests at Napier Barracks in Folkestone, UK. He was reportedly arrested on suspicion of criminal damage for taking photos. In other words – for doing his job. He believes it’s censorship, and some serious concerns have been raised about media freedom.
On 15 May, police officers in Meqheleng, South Africa reportedly beat photographer Paul Nthoba. He was photographing them for a local newspaper while they were enforcing the coronavirus lockdown. However, they allegedly attacked him verbally at first, and later physically – multiple times.
Sharing photos of your exotic vacation on social networks can be a double-edged sword, especially during the pandemic. For a 23-year-old tourist from New York, posting photos from his trip to Hawaii had him arrested. He reportedly broke the mandatory quarantine, and it was his Instagram photos that gave him away.
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