Wiretrapping
In case you haven't heard, some police forces have begun to arrest people who are videotaping them under state wiretapping laws. The basic idea is that the wiretapping law requires a person to obtain consent of all parties being recorded before the recording happens.
This concept is disturbing, especially when you consider the revelations within recent years of abuse by police that were brought to light only by citizens videotaping the police actions. From Rodney King to Oscar Grant being shot at a BART station in 2009, we see the importance of using these recordings to hold our police to a high standard of conduct.
So, the response out of the city of Boston police department has been to use the wiretapping laws to declare that citizen recordings of their activities violate the privacy of the officers, whether or not the officers in question are in a public venue at the time. In at least one instance, they arrested a man for recording their arrest of someone else, under the wiretapping law as well as for disturbing the peace and aiding the escape of a prisoner.
It wasn't long before they realized that they weren't going to win on the last point, and not terribly long before they realized they wouldn't win on the first two either. They dropped the last, and then the first two; I suppose they thought it was finished at that point.
But this man wasn't going to put up with this, so he turned around and sued them for false arrest. The police have tried to claim qualified immunity - where public officials doing their jobs in a reasonable manner aren't subject to arrests for mistakes they make over confusing points of law.
Last week, an appeals court struck down their claim of qualified immunity. As a layman, I imagine that this decision is pretty scathing, but I may be wrong. At the very least, the appeals court was decidedly clear in how it feels about this matter, which is that the citizen was well within his rights to use an obvious recording device in a public forum to record police activity, and that the officers obviously knew what was going on anyway.
Some quotes that I really enjoyed:
This whole case has riled me as I heard about it, because one of the things that I've learned about photography and recordings is that if you're in a public venue without any reasonable expectation of privacy, then you don't have any expectation of privacy. However, it seems like the police were wanting more protections for themselves, which is a concept that worries me. As I mentioned in the opening, recordings such as these have, on occasion, revealed brutalities by police officers, which is an important function to prevent a police state. (And that's pretty well said within that decision by the court.)
All in all, I was laughing in happiness both when I first heard about this on Friday night, and when I read the ruling this morning. I'm glad that the courts are agreeing that citizen oversight of police actions in a public forum is not a crime.
This concept is disturbing, especially when you consider the revelations within recent years of abuse by police that were brought to light only by citizens videotaping the police actions. From Rodney King to Oscar Grant being shot at a BART station in 2009, we see the importance of using these recordings to hold our police to a high standard of conduct.
So, the response out of the city of Boston police department has been to use the wiretapping laws to declare that citizen recordings of their activities violate the privacy of the officers, whether or not the officers in question are in a public venue at the time. In at least one instance, they arrested a man for recording their arrest of someone else, under the wiretapping law as well as for disturbing the peace and aiding the escape of a prisoner.
It wasn't long before they realized that they weren't going to win on the last point, and not terribly long before they realized they wouldn't win on the first two either. They dropped the last, and then the first two; I suppose they thought it was finished at that point.
But this man wasn't going to put up with this, so he turned around and sued them for false arrest. The police have tried to claim qualified immunity - where public officials doing their jobs in a reasonable manner aren't subject to arrests for mistakes they make over confusing points of law.
Last week, an appeals court struck down their claim of qualified immunity. As a layman, I imagine that this decision is pretty scathing, but I may be wrong. At the very least, the appeals court was decidedly clear in how it feels about this matter, which is that the citizen was well within his rights to use an obvious recording device in a public forum to record police activity, and that the officers obviously knew what was going on anyway.
Some quotes that I really enjoyed:
- "officers were unhappy they were being recorded during an arrest . . . does not make a lawful exercise of a First Amendment right a crime." (This quote was from one of the earlier rulings).
- The First Amendment issue here is, as the parties frame it, fairly narrow: is there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative.
- Glik filmed the defendant police officers in the Boston Common, the oldest city park in the United States and the apotheosis of a public forum. In such traditional public spaces, the rights of the state to limit the exercise of First Amendment activity are "sharply circumscribed."
This whole case has riled me as I heard about it, because one of the things that I've learned about photography and recordings is that if you're in a public venue without any reasonable expectation of privacy, then you don't have any expectation of privacy. However, it seems like the police were wanting more protections for themselves, which is a concept that worries me. As I mentioned in the opening, recordings such as these have, on occasion, revealed brutalities by police officers, which is an important function to prevent a police state. (And that's pretty well said within that decision by the court.)
All in all, I was laughing in happiness both when I first heard about this on Friday night, and when I read the ruling this morning. I'm glad that the courts are agreeing that citizen oversight of police actions in a public forum is not a crime.