"Storm in a teacup" is how I've normally heard it. Of cpourse since Athennaeus was writing in Latin I assume, the dustinction between storm and tempest doesn't really apply. (And they didn't have tecups or teapots in his day, henc retye saucepan.

Incidentally, witches were supposed to be able to brew up storms in their kitchens, using saucapmns or teacups or whatever. There's a reference to this in Macbeth, I seem to remember.

As for the business with the camera, I think people should avoid getting hung up on the actual incident itself - it's emblematic of a wider process, a creeping regimentation of how we live. (And if it had happened in Soviet Russia, outside Stalin's time anyway, the chances are that it would have been much the same as the incident described by Maginnis - the idea that people automatically got disappeared for trivial reasons doesn't actually reflect the way things were most of the time. Oppressive, but in a drab way.)