I'm going to use this as my starting point, and my take on some of it.
It's not a war on photographers, or tourists, or anything else. It is a heightened awareness of the potential concerns about some activities -- and some of those activities overlap with photographers. And that awareness has spread from a small subset of people (some law enforcement, security personnel, and the like) to a lot more people -- including people who don't really know much more than they've heard all the "See Something - Say Something" PSAs.
So, some guy is taking pictures of a bridge, or even just a building. Once, it would have been ignored. Today, someone sees him, and calls the cops. The cops show up -- and some of them don't know any better than the guy who called. So they "interview" the photographer... who, sometimes, we have to admit, has an agenda when something like that happens, or just plain is stubborn and obnoxious about things. Stupidity and needless drama ensues, from both sides.
Add in the ease of posting things to the web, and the proliferation of cameras in cell phones, cheap digital cameras and more, and we get into another area of problems. More people are taking more pictures and videos of things that might not have been photographed or videoed before. Including police encounters... Once again, add a conflict of well intentioned folks sticking to their guns, right or wrong, on either side... and more needless stupidity and drama comes up.
