The incident happened in 2009 - the laws have been sorted since then
If you like I will go street shooting with the 600 and see if I get arrested
You've pointed this out already. Alas there has been a slow but steady increase in the hassling of "unofficial" video and still photographers around the US and in New York as well as London, which had at one point actual laws against pointing DSLRs at a range of public buildings; then someone must have remembered the Olympics were coming. (I think there's a thread about it in CR somewhere, and there is plenty in the Nikon Rumors forum.) I don't doubt that you, Brian, with your confidence and resourcefulness will get around any such obstacles -- indeed in your special costume and 800 lb lens you might even become a tourist attraction here in New York and as such a boon to the hotel industry and qualifying for police protection. But I can tell you on information and belief, that most people are far more easily intimidated. It's also nice to see the manufacturers begin to fight back, professional associations (as per that post from London) &c. None of this cancels the general trend.
The entrenchment of the security culture over the past twenty years has really been something, at least it has been here. It was underway by the early '90s when the effects of the new economic dispensation began to kick in. The response to 9/11 clothed it with a loud and hard-to-talk-back-to rhetoric. This is especially true when you want to photograph police presence. Photographers can learn how to answer preposterous claims and attempted hindrances here:
http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/you-have-every-right-photograph-copI too have a 60D, though I don't doubt that your 60D is bigger and better. It wasn't till I bought this camera and started to use it out of doors, that I became aware of the Security Attitude, security both private and public. Generally the cops are easier to deal with than the former, who are themselves very often retired cops with more aggressive orders. It's amazing the scope of what these have been and are trying to stop -- like taking photos of the facades of immense and famous buildings. The commanding irony of course is that the prevalence of pocket and cell-phone cams makes their hugger-mugger entirely pointless. It's as if the Wizards of Oz over here credit DSLRs with some sort of voodoo power. The only other group that seems to share this view is a scattering of ... photographers, amateur and professional.
Why does this matter? Because of the present atmosphere, and because photographers document the forms and pressures of the times, and serve too as canaries in the mine-shaft. It's very easy to understand why the cuffs get tighter. Imagine you were wearing the badge --
I won't let anything happen on my watch!. Without a lot more push-back than we're seeing at the moment it's inevitable that restrictions of every kind will just go on getting bigger and commoner and stupider, not just against Canon gear photography but speech, inquiry, research, distribution -- all in the name of saving liberty and freedom. The year 2009 was not the end of that process. I think it's significant -- from the video embedded in the Guardian link -- that the episode ended in physical violence against that female tourist, for that's what is was, put yourself in her shoes. And the new face of authority appeared for us to see clearly. That young cop didn't seem like a bad kid to me, but you could see that "Oh, yeah?!" attitude that had been instilled in him. For more than 200 years immunity from police violence was a seldom-challenged perk of being middle class. The security culture is breeding impunity.
