In article 2014060508002455919-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom,
Savageduck wrote:

I took a picture at the bar referee smog station of what I consider
an inappropriate action but the employee there made me delete it
in his presence because, he said, it's against bar policy.

It might be against BAR policy, it might not. Did he actually show you
that policy in writing?

probably not, because there's no such policy.

Then were you on private property? ...and I suspect you were, on
private property you have no right to whip out your phone to take
photographs. If you were standing on public property to take the shot
you would have less of a problem, other than you were trying to capture
something occurring on private property, which is something you do not
necessarily have a right to do.

unless there's a prohibition for photography, you definitely can take
photos, *especially* if you are on public property and it plainly can
be seen.

I want to complain to the California BAR but I want that picture
back. It's an Android 4.3 Samsung Galaxy S3 with an SD card.

Complain about what? Something to do with not passing your smog test,
or having to delete the photograph?

the 'inappropriate action' he mentioned.

I used the default "Camera" app.
I have Ubuntu linux.

Is there a way to get the photo back?

Provided you haven't overwritten or formatted the card, recovery might
be possiblity. A search for photo recovery software will reveal a whole
bunch of options. Your problem is going to be finding one which runs on
Linux. The other is any thing else you might have done with your phone
which wrote to the SD card.
http://bit.ly/1kN95Tn

the options are definitely more limited for linux but linux users
should be used to that. that's why they dualboot windows and/or use
wine.