Photo by Intangible Arts, who got the stinkeye from guards when taking out is camera to take this photo in 2007.

Well, photographers, there’s good news and there’s bad news.

The good news is that the bulletin explicitly delineating photographers’ rights given to officers in the Federal Protection Service, the part of the Department of Homeland Security that protects federal buildings, seems to be working! Photographer Jerome Vorus went on a tour to test the theory, having no issues outside DHS or the Department of Justice buildings. The real test: Vorus was briefly stopped at the Department of Labor, “but when [the officers] called the building director,” said Vorus, “I was told to continue my photography and that they would speak to the security personnel again about the rights of the public.”

The bad news? Clearly if each and every officer of the law isn’t explicitly force-fed these already existing rights, they are up for the taking. Standing on the public sidewalk outside the D.C. Superior Court, Vorus was first stopped by a Court Security Officer, who then called two U.S. Marshals, who detained him for photographing what one Marshal described as a “sensitive building.” Vorus adds: “When I attempted to file a report on both, [the Marshals] quickly deterred me from making a report stating that I would be taken into custody for ‘being on the property,'” even though he was actually on the public sidewalk, and he “was also told that taking photos of any federal building is prohibited…

“I was told multiple times that I could not video or audio record them, that it was wire tapping in the District,” says Vorus.