watchdog_md, courtesy 
selki:"There, Stacy Horan informed me that Downtown Silver Spring including Ellsworth [Drive] is private property, not a public place, and subject to the rules of the Peterson Companies. They have a no photography policy to 'protect them from people who might want to use the photographs as part of a story in which they could write bad things about us.' And she told me that many of the chain stores in Downtown Silver Spring don't what their 'concepts' to be photographed for security reasons."