Hello VPaulus, more than 10 years ago this sort of thing made big news when a couple of tourists where arrested because they took pictures of aircraft in Greece. Even a member of our parliament went over there, trying to help out. From wikipedia:
'The legal repercussions of the hobby were dramatically shown in November 2001 when fourteen aircraft spotters (twelve British, two Dutch) were arrested by Greek police after being observed at an open day at the Greek Air Force base at Kalamata. They were charged with espionage, and faced a possible 20-year prison sentence if found guilty. After being held for six weeks, they were eventually released on £9,000 bail, and the charges reduced to the misdemeanour charge of illegal information collection. Confident of their innocence they returned for their trial in April 2002 and were stunned to be found guilty, with eight of the group sentenced to three years, the rest for one year. At their appeal a year later all were acquitted.'
It's simply against the law to take photographs of anything military in Greece, and since all airports also have a military function = you're a spy. You photograph an area with 'strategic importance' = spy. This is, unfortunately, no joke. And to think that they are a full member of the European Union, so they have to abide to the European Convention on Human Rights
. But because of paranoia about Turkey and Cyprus, the military (still a very influential lobby in Greece) and the government refuse to back down to more reasonable levels of interpreting their Criminal Law system with regards to this matter. I'm not surprised to see they haven't changed in all those years, even with all the negative attention it received at the time.
By the way, did anyone inform the Greeks of the existance of Google?
http://goo.gl/maps/Qyo7p Click this link (Google maps - Greek military airfield), and congratulations, you are now a spy.
