Depends on what organisation the polite chap belongs to. In the U.K., MOD police have the power to detain you in certain circumstances until civilian police arrive to assess the situation.
Unless you’ve managed to get yourself within camera range of anything classified above Restricted, at which point some very forthright folks will be inviting you for an interview without biscuits.
I’d argue that if there were anything secretive that can be seen from a public high street, then they’ve failed in their job in keeping their secrets secure!
But the question arises are they doing it at the behest of their employers, or is there a creeping general belief that one shouldn’t be allowed to photograph private (and/or) public buildings?
A bit of both I suspect.
Sometimes it’s a straight money grab. I mentioned the Royal Parks and their photography permits - other places are starting to demand money to allow photo shoots - e.g. Painshill Park in Surrey. I had planned to do a post-wedding shoot for a Chinese couple there - it would have been an ideal location, but because they turned up wearing their wedding kit the woman on the desk demanded £100 for a “photo permit”.
Not surprisingly my clients declined and I had to come up with alternative locations ASAP. It all worked out well in the end, but it was a big PITA.
I was in Beirut many years ago, happily wandering around taking photos. When a soldier in a watchtower pointed his rifle at me I decided to put the camera away.
Beautiful photograph ChrisMann, what a shame more and more places are demanding permits.
John_Scully - crikey, that sounds like a smart move!
I’ve just been on Google Maps, street view, and the historic building I photographed (from the same eyeline and position), along with the whole face of the naval base is clearly visible, and you can zoom in, to a reasonable degree (more so than my camera allows).
The National Trust stole our right over our drive when we were forced to give way or lose the sale of our house.
The case went to court and well heeled folk in Surrey won the case over ransom strips.
Too late for us, but I was personally challenged by one of their staff when I had just come out of hospital after a serious infection and was not at my best.
Absolutely appalling behavior and they are well known for bad behavior towards the tenants of their farms, especially in the Lakes.
Lovely photo Chris. Hope you had a groundsheet! I’d have been worrying about ants!!! 
there’s one lovely stretch of the countryside… which we were driving along in the gentle sunshine…
all the cars stopped and the menfolk rushed towards the trees 
I got out and wandered around the cars, chatting with the ladies and vaguely threatening the menfolk with my camera 
One of the ladies swiftly called to me… put your camera away… that (over there) is a restricted area… and she didn’t mean just the menfolk…
Seems we’d ground to a stop alongside the fields and meadows which form part of a military setup. No buildings anywhere, just open/assorted landscape.
I could have taken some lovely nature shots, but decided discretion was better…
But how do you know that this is completely accurate, and images might have been altered for security reasons? Anyway, it’s often not just the building but alsô any people or activities taking place.
Yesterday we remembered the killing of Dominique Bernard, which brought home to me that threats are ever present. So I’m happy to go along with rules that are aimed at minimising terrorism.
Thank you Gareth! Yes the permit thing is becoming more common - I believe in California that professionals have to get one to do family portraits on the beach…
That’s outrageous. Yes the NT are not my favourite people, I think they forget that they are meant to be “custodians for the nation” and who they ultimately work for.
Thank you Sue! No groundsheet needed as the shoot was in late July and it was fortunately an ant-free zone (Newlands Corner near Guildford, for those who know Surrey).
We did have a summer thunderstorm shortly afterwards IIRC so that was the end of the sitting down shots!
I do keep a groundsheet in the car though.
It’s quite funny in the end, because I’ve never deleted a photograph before, I hit delete, and it came up with ‘delete’ (in English) on the screen, and I hit delete again thinking they’d gone (security watched as I did it), but turns out I was supposed to hit the ‘ok’ button to ensure deletion, so I still have the photographs. Certainly no intention in sharing them, but anyone can see the same scene from the same angle on Google Street Maps. There were no people visible in my pictures, but you can see figures (unblurred from behind and faces blurred from the front), from the Google car images.
Because I had gone straight to the edge of the base from the market and had not walked the perimeter, there were no signs to signify the purpose of the terrain. Once I’d taken the pictures, I’d gone back into the market. It must get photographed every day, it’s in such a visible spot and public area. If you were photographing the market or adjacent park, the base would easily end up in the background of your photos too.
Actually, and I’m sure the military know this, even if you had “deleted” the images on the spot it’s a trivial matter to recover them from the card afterwards, using one of many available bits of software. The in-camera delete command simply removes them from the table of contents, it doesn’t actually remove the photo data. Nor does “formatting” the card really wipe it - again the data can be recovered using the appropriate software, if the card has not bee reused since.
The only way the images get truly wiped is if you overwrite them with new photos afterwards, or use some kind of security program to do a deep erase of the card.
Or physically destroy the card (which is what anyone actually in the security services would have done).
Yes, I do have recovery software and have recovered files from memory cards before. I wouldn’t have bothered going to the trouble in this instance though.
I was just surprised to see my photographs were still there due to not pressing the correct button!
Anyway, your runner in Moscow Central would have already downloaded them from the Cloud 
In 2006 myself and a New Zealand artist, Amanda Newall made a number of works about nuclear and wind power in Cumbria that we exhibited at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s HQ.
One of the pieces was an animated series of drawings of Sellafield done from memory following a walk around the perimeter of the complex (photography and direct sketching weren’t allowed). Looking hard at something and then trying to draw it from memory was based on a Visual Studies exercise I’d used with art students some twenty or so years earlier.
I assume it’s the same in the UK, but I’ve subsequently read that “protected” sites do not allow someone to sketch or draw directly in France. I don’t see how they can prevent somebody doing it from memory.
You’ll have to enlist the savant artist Stephen Wiltshire who has an incredible photographic memory and can recreate architectural drawings in cityscapes, down to the correct number of windows in each building having only looked at a scene briefly!
