A week ago, a rather strange event took place. No, I'm not talking about just the Transit of Mercury in front of the sun on May 9, but an odd result of it.

That morning I was staying at the Westin Waterfront in Boston. I like astrophotography, and have shot several transits. I am particularly proud of my gallery of the 2004 Transit of Venus which is unusual because I shot it in a hazy sunrise where it was a naked eye event, so I have photos of the sun with a lake and birds. Indeed, since the prior transit of Venus was in 1882, we may have been among the first alive to deliberately see it as a naked eye event.

I did not have my top lenses with me but I decided to photograph it anyway with my small size Sony 210mm zoom and a welding glass I brought along. I shot the transit, holding the welding glass over the lens, with all mounted on my super-light "3 legged thing" portable tripod. Not wanting to leave the lens pointed at the sun when I removed the glass, I pulled the drape shut, looked at photos and then tilted the camera away. I went off to my meetings in Boston.

At 10am I got a frantic call from the organizer of the Exponential Manufacturing conference I would be speaking at the next day. "You need to talk to the FBI!" he declared. Did they want my advice on privacy and security? "No," he said, "They saw you taking photos of the federal building with a tripod from your hotel window and want to talk to you." (Note: It probably wasn't the FBI, that was just a first impression. The detectives would not name who had reported it.)

Of course, I had no idea there was any federal building out the window and I did not take any photos of the buildings. In fact, I'm not quite sure what the federal facility is, though I presume it's at the Barnes Building at 495 Summer St. -- they never told me. Anybody know what's there? Google maps shows a credit union and a military recruiting office, and there was suggestion of a Navy facility. Amusingly the web page for the recruiting center features a (small) photo of the building.

Nothing to justify them having a surveillance crew constantly looking into the hotel rooms of guests and going nuts when they see a camera on a mini-tripod.

I talked to hotel security. Turns out they had gone into my room! Sadly, though police can't enter your room without a warrant, hotel staff usually can. Two Boston detectives were put on the case. After talking to hotel security, I thought it was over, but no, the next day after my talk, I had the detectives waiting for me in the hotel.

First of all, I was concerned the hotel had given them my name. The hotel insisted the Boston innkeeper statutes require they do this. In reality, such statutes were found facially unconstitutional last year by the Supreme Court in City of Los Angeles v. Patel. In a facial challenge, the law is declared inherently invalid regardless of the specific facts of a case. The Boston police don't believe this ruling applies to their law yet. So now my name is in police records over photographing the sun. Yes, when they met me, they realized I was just an astro-nerd and not a terrorist casing out the sun for an attack. (General conclusion, it's too bright, so do it at night.)

To scare me, and to justify their actions, they said the unnamed complainers (probably not FBI) had been "unsure if it was just a camera" (ie. pretending it might be a gun) even though it looks nothing like it. And when I closed the drape -- they were watching me live -- they imagined it was because I had seen them and was hiding.

Mostly I laugh but the other part of me asks, "what the hell has gone wrong with this country?" Feds peering into our hotel rooms? Being afraid of a cheap lens (on an expensive camera, admittedly) on an ultralight tripod? Getting a police record for taking a photo out your hotel window, not even of the nondescript building that I would have no idea is a federal building? Having to demonstrate to not one, but two detectives that you're just a harmless nerd? Not good. (They did Google me but did not clue in that I was on the board of the organization suing the NSA and other intelligence groups over the illegal mass wiretapping going on.)

Above you will find my evil picture of the sun -- not that bad for a $150 lens, actually -- and a picture of my room when I returned to it, with the camera pointing up and into the room. Yes, I took a picture of the buildings after all this, though I did not take one in the morning. That's Mercury in the lower left corner of the solar disk. The dark area in the middle is a sunspot, another good location for an attack.

Welcome to the new America. And of course I need to add "don't search my room or give my name to police without contacting me" to my list of things a good hotel should do.

(BTW, I see many duplicate comments pointing to the story of the Economics professor pulled from a plane for doing some diffEQs on paper in the plane seat on his way to a conference. I think the whole nerd world saw that story already.)