In the context of Google Street View attempts to provide street-level panoramas of urban clusters [
http://blogoscoped.com/search/?q=Street+View] and some photo-subjects' there (and growing) objections to that, BT CSTO Bruce Schneier voices a plea for unrestricted free public-space photography using somewhat demagogic arguments.

“Terrorists Don't Do Movie Plots”
http://www.schneier.com/essay-087.html (1)
[repurposed, and linked-to, in his]
“Are photographers really a threat?” (2)
http://image.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Technology/Pix/pictures/2008/06/04/rear-window460x276.jpg
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jun/05/news.terrorism

It's demagogy, because
[^1] terrorists may actually “DO” movie plots: prior to SeptemberElevents, Al-Qaeda conducted “research” by renting US-apocalyptic Hollywood movies [ see #11 @ http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/reader/0141029358?ie=UTF8&resultsPage=2&keywords=The%20Siege&v=search-inside];

[^2] most of his listed threats to photographers and their trade occur in the context of wars and other violent conflicts, where every bystander is at risk, and more so the ones drawing attention to themselves (=a “biproduct” of all street photography).

That is not the same as Schneier's decrying *general unwarrantedness* of all suspicion of photography for potentially-nefarious use (which, in Street View's case, may not be that unwarranted either. Or else Google's needs to widden their commerial domain supersede individual's rights to privacy).

Only in the last paragraph does Schneier allude to the real cause for such suspicion occuring: the human propensity —Uniformed Humans especially— for Soviet-style, but mostly universal, paranoia, masked as wish to protect “subjects” by shielding them from pedestrian and/or imaginary threats, e.g. by imposing control over fellow photo-men... (come to think of: if you ARE in charge of something, how do you measure how far it stretches, and where does it end? ;-))

“[...] prohibiting photography was something we used to ridicule about the USSR. [...]”