Everyone walking into Arundel Mills mall is videotaped by a network of surveillance cameras. Walk into a store, and more cameras track you.
The same is true at any sizable mall in America.
But when Thomas Tang turned the tables, taking out his iPhone to record security guards ordering him to leave Arundel Mills, they were having none of it.
"Next thing I know, three dudes grab me," Tang said.
With one guard yelling, "Grab the phone," he said, they took his phone and slammed him to the ground. Then a guard found the video he'd taken and deleted it.
You don't have to believe Tang. Court records show that when county police Cpl. Jason Parrotte showed up on scene, Tang was on the ground and pleading to get his phone back.
Tang said security guards and police threatened he would be charged with a wiretapping violation.
This used to be an obscure provision of Maryland law, dealing with recording audio of a person without his consent.
Such confrontations and threats are now common, since lots of people carry video cameras in their pockets in the form of smartphones. Recently, irate citizens have used phones to capture such airport indignities as the groping patdown of a 6-year-old girl.
Not surprisingly, people in power who like to tape us don't much like it when they're taped.
In 2009, county police officers ordered a man to delete photos he took of an accident scene, threatening to arrest him.
A Harford County man who filmed a state trooper who pulled him over was charged with a felony after he posted the clip on YouTube. (Never mind that state police themselves videotape every traffic stop.)
In that case, a judge threw the charge out, saying public officials "should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation."
Malls are private property, and their security guards are not public officials.
So Arundel Mills has a right to ban photography and ask people to leave if they use cameras. If managers really want, they could seek charges against Tang for recording without their consent.
But their security guards don't have a right to take the law into their hands.
Tang said the only reason guards would have reacted so rashly is they knew what was on the iPhone didn't make them look good. He called the episode a "power trip."
Tang and his girlfriend, Erin Fabian, said they went to the mall about 10 p.m. April 8 - a Friday - planing to grab a late dinner and catch a midnight movie, maybe "Limitless."
They went in one entrance of the massive mall, and a security guard told them to leave because that area was closed. So they tried another entrance, and the same security guard told them to leave again.
They argued, with some justification, that the directive made no sense. Stores are closed at that hour, but restaurants and the movie theater are still open. If they were paying customers, what difference did it make where they entered?
And if security didn't want people coming in certain doors, why didn't they just lock them?
Fabian and the guard argued for a while. After more guards showed up, Tang and Fabian were ordered to leave and told they were banned for good.
On the way out, Tang pulled out his phone and started videotaping what he thought was rude behavior. Unwisely, he told the guards he was going to post the clip on YouTube.
After the iPhone was seized, a guard who knew his way around an iPhone deleted the video and gave the phone to police. Tang eventually got it back.
Fabian, 26, was arrested after what she said was "girl-fighting" and shoving that started when an officer tried to make her get on her knees. She's eight months pregnant.
Police, saying she struck a guard in the chin, charged her with assault. Tang is charged with trespassing.
An Arundel Mills spokeswoman, Wendy Ellis, said it's company policy not to comment on security "procedures and personnel" or open criminal cases. She declined to give the guards' names.
Tang and Fabian could have simply left when asked, without arguing. They were probably rude and might have deserved to get kicked out.
None of that justifies an assault or the theft of a phone.
Ellis said the vast majority of people stop taking pictures or video when asked. I asked whether guards routinely take phones away from people to delete what they've already taken. She wouldn't say.
Tang and Fabian have court records consisting mainly of the two of them getting into fights. Neither has been convicted of a crime in Maryland, but Fabian has a pending assault charge related to an argument with Tang.
Referring to the spats, Tang said they've "worked it out."
Tang, a 32-year-old computer technician from Pasadena, isn't sure how he'll proceed.
"I'm not really looking to get rich from this," he said.
He's not sure he has the money for a lawsuit. But he would like a court to rule the guards were in the wrong so this doesn't happen to anyone else.
Before Tang was thrown out of the mall, in part for taking pictures, there was one last bit of ironic business to attend to.
"By the way," he said, "they took my picture without my consent - put me on the banned list."
Read Eric Hartley's "Arundel Outtakes" blog at www.hometownannapolis.com/blogs .
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