My wife and I bought a century-old semi-detached home about five years ago that had been in the same family for 50 years.

In the process of tearing up the carpets and clearing out the canning cupboards in the basement, we found a number of little time capsules including copies of the local newspaper with stories on the Suez Crisis and a long evaporated bottle of whiskey on a high shelf above the work bench.

My favorite discovery came as I disassembled a contraption that had been built to pump water out of the basement, perhaps in conjunction with an old washing machine.

Underneath the copper cistern was a white and blue ceramic butter crock adorned with a number of swastikas. No doubt it had been hidden there since the 1930s or '40s.

My wife made me leave it on a shelf in the garage when we sold the place a couple of years ago.

Odds are that it'll wind up sitting empty in Newark, N.J. for the next two years after one trip to China like the thousands already there.

Wish I could be there.

One of the keys to making this successful is bringing together different communities that have encountered this phenomenon of misinformed officials.

Airliners.net, a site for aviation enthusiasts with a strong photography community, would be a good place to start. Railpictures.net, is another bastion of geekdom with a dedicated community of photogs.

Anyone up for a flashmob (should it be a strobemob) in Philly? There'd be something apropos about descending on Independence Mall to make a point.

#86 - "Don't film cops... especially when they are breaking rules or you might end up with a dirt nap."

I disagree. You should always take pictures of cops whenever possible. What would the world be like if the Rodney King camera man had run away.

If the authorities expect the populace to behave because they're on CCTV, the police have to realize that they're likely to be on citizens' cameras.

The British are forging a culture of fear from ignorance and some perverted sense of patriotism. It's just what Orwell predicted.

A photography demonstration would be a great idea to make a statement. It wouldn't have to be a flash mob, per se, but rather a date and time frame where hundreds or thousands of photographers (or simply people who own cameras) converge in the same public place and overwhelm "the system" to an extent that it attracts media attention. A couple of dozen wrongful arrest lawsuits wouldn't hurt either.

Thinking more broadly, why not set up an open Flickr account and invite people to post their holiday snaps of London to create a massive pool of "illegal" street photography?

Here in the states, it doesn't seem so extreme. I've never heard of anyone being hassled for taking pictures on the street. In a shopping mall, yes, but that is actually private property.

The places people have asserted their right to take photographs are airports. One of my favorite subjects is aviation photography. I've never had a problem, but I have heard of photographers' encounters with pig-headed cops who insist that it's illegal to take a photo of an aircraft from a public area. It may be illegal to park on the perimeter road or the side of a busy highway, but it's never illegal to take the picture.

I will spend a night in jail before I back down from a cop who tells me otherwise.