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To: Bucky Katt who wrote (10415)	1/29/2003 11:57:46 AM
From: xcr600	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 48463

Student's film confiscated after snapping photos at Rosemount refinery Nolan Zavoral Star Tribune Published Jan. 29, 2003 REFI29 Mike Marty was driving back to Wisconsin last Sunday, around noon, when the billowing steam from the Flint Hills refinery in Rosemount caught his artistic eye. He pulled off Hwy. 52 and began taking pictures -- two with a pocket camera, one with a single-lens reflex camera -- and drove away. Or tried. A few minutes later, he had surrendered the roll of pictures from his single-lens reflex camera -- apparently in the name of national security. He wondered Tuesday night if he had complied too willingly with a security guard's request to hand over the film or, as the guard threatened, risk a call from the FBI. "I've regretted it," said Marty, a 25-year-old graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "I felt my rights were [violated], that I didn't live in a free country." Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the refinery -- formerly the Koch Refinery, one of the largest crude-oil refineries in the country -- has increased security, said spokesman John Hofland. "As we heard after 9/11, places like ours are supposed to report suspicious activity. We feel an increased need to know who's around the facility -- to keep on top of such activities," he said. Nevertheless, Charles Samuelson, director of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union, expressed concern Tuesday about an issue larger than a photograph. "We can certainly improve security at airports and along our borders, and we can pay more taxes to fund the INS and the Coast Guard," he said. "Those are all reasonable things. But there's the rule of law in this country: the right of travel, of habeas corpus . . . to not give your name -- those are all quintessentially American values. "I worry that in our fear, we're giving up that which makes us fundamentally Americans." Hofland said other people with cameras have voluntarily turned over their film to refinery personnel. He said he didn't know if anyone had refused, although "it wouldn't surprise me." However, Marty said he felt "coerced" into doing it, even though the guard, reading from a printed form, called it "voluntary." "I'm a computer science graduate student," Marty said. "I didn't want to be applying for a job with a government agency, and have [it] do background jobs -- and then not get the job because my name was flagged." Hofland said that the refinery will decide if the black-and-white photograph compromises security -- and to keep it if it does. Both Marty and Hofland said there are no signs near the public road warning against pictures. Samuelson said, "What something like this does is negate [America's] strength, which is its openness." startribune.com