If you're near Coke HQ, put your camera away

The horror of Sept. 11 is almost two years past, but the repercussions are still with us. Just ask Michael Davis. In late July, the attorney returned to work after a vacation to learn an agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was looking for him. Davis wasn't surprised; attorneys are frequently contacted by law enforcement.

But the GBI agent wasn't just looking for Davis. The agent was investigating him.

Two weeks earlier, Davis had driven to Luckie Street, to the scene of a DUI he was preparing to argue in court. He claims he parked his car on the curb, legally, near the Coca-Cola building and walked a few yards south to snap photographs of the intersection.

He says a Coke security guard approached him.

"He said, 'What are you taking pictures of?'" Davis claims. "And I said, 'What do you mean what am I taking pictures of?' We got kind of ugly with each other."

Davis says he told the guard he was an attorney taking pictures of a crime scene, that the guard told him to get off Coke property and that he told the guard he wasn't on Coke property. Then he left.

"That was the last I thought of it," Davis says. "It was pretty clear that I wasn't a suspicious character."

Coke, however, wasn't so sure. "There was some conversation, but the facts as he's outlined them are not accurate," says Coca-Cola spokeswoman Racquel White. She wouldn't elaborate. "Like every company, we have heightened our security measures around the building and throughout the company" since Sept. 11.

A GBI spokesman acknowledged getting a call from Coke security "about suspicious circumstances involving a subject taking some photos." He says there's no ongoing probe and declined further comment.

Davis says he considers Coke's actions an intrusion of privacy. One thing in particular bothers him: How was he found?

"My car is actually in my ex-wife's name," he says. "And my ex-wife was out of the country at the time. I think she would have called me if she had heard from the GBI, that they were looking for me."