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Wiretapping Charges Dropped
Ada_Rules writes "I realize that the end of a story is not nearly as sexy as the beginning, but police in Nashua have dropped the wiretapping charges against a man that had recorded both video and audio from on his home security system. The man had brought a videotape to the police station to back up a claim that a detective was rude to him while on his property as part of an investigation. In addition, the police have determined that the man's complaint about the detective was justified."
It seems that it is less that the little guy here won, so much as the DA simply thought he wouldn't win. The decision is less based on the merit of the claim so it doesn't seem like anything is really gained by this happening.
In a fair society:
1: He is entitled to compensation, say $1000 per hour for every hour between the time he was charged and the time he knew for sure that the charges were dropped.
2: The police involved should be sent back for a minimum of 40 hours of updated training in the laws they are supposed to be enforcing.
3: The city attorney, who didn't immediately drop these bogus charges (he, at least, has no excuse at all for not knowing the law) should be immediately fired, suspended, or recalled as appropriate.
4: If there were any judges involved who didn't immediately drop the case, they should be impeached.
Then there'd have been some true justice here.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Now they can focus on the guy they dragged out of his yard and arrested for daring to photograph the cops with his cellphone camera. After that, they can re-evaluate just what "Live Free or Die" means.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
This has yourtube written all over it...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
When I read the first article about that man who was arrested because his home surveillance system had recorded a police officer who came to his home to speak to him I was fairly disturbed. It is no secret that our constant "legal" state of national emergency, that we have lived under for decades, has pretty much suspended the constitution. The laws passed following 9/11 took things that much further to where we are now. A man has the right to film his own property and anyone who passes onto it, so why was he arrested and charged with wiretapping because of the police's dislike of him? The thing I dont understand is how can the police allow themselves to be so propagandized and "programmed" to the point at which they no longer enforce the liberties granted to us under the constitution. I have read internal FBI memos that have been leaked and they discuss how the agents should be on the look out for different types of terrorist groups and they list certain characteristics of each. They characterize people who speak of their "constitutional rights" as being trouble makers. Am I the only one who see something wrong with this? Then again, I guess for most people it is easier to buy into the whole "less liberty/freedom = more protection against terrorists." I hear it all the time. Yes, those big bad arab-muslim terrorists are going to kill all americans...just after they get done killing each other in iraq. I'm not sure if you all have read the papers yet, but the media is reporting how iraq is on the verge of a major civil war...if it hasn't begun already. All i'm saying is this police oppression is nothing more than an extension of the post-9/11 mindset of tyrannical militarism and unreasonable punishment. This is just like the story a few days ago about the three 12 yr old children in england who were arrested and booked for breaking dead branches off trees so they could build a treehouse. What ever happened to the police protecting the people? I have heard more and more, from young and and old alike, that even though they are doing nothing wrong they still feel like they are guilty of something while in the presence of the police. I just dont see why they feel the need to be so intimidating and accusatory.
Seriously, the correct answer here, if citizens are really outraged, it to push through a ballot measure to change to be a 1-party state. That solves future problems like this.
Remember: This isn't a US thing, this is state by state. Some states, like New Hampshire are rea 2-party, and bitchy at that. All parties involved in being recorded have to consent beforehand. Of course, police get an exemption from this for their cameras in the cars.
Well that's not how it has to be. Other states are 1-party states, meaning only 1-party has to be informaed of the recording. So you can't go and tap your neighbours phone, but you can tap your own and not tell anyone. So long as one person knows, it's fine. Further some places, like Arizona, have a law such that if you own something, you are implicitly a party present or not. So you can record your own property, phoneline, whatever, and even if others are conversing without your presence you are still a party because it's your stuff.
So that's what it comes down to here. The NH voters just need to get this on the next ballot and change it. Now I'm guessing, for all the outrage, they are just going to let it drop and forget about it. Kinda sad, but really nothing you can do.
New Hampshire is traditionally a state where citizens love their privacy. The idea of being a two-party state is to make it damn hard for citizen A to record what citizen B has to say. I don't think that's a bad idea. But I doubt people thought much about the issue of citizens recording the police, probably because they didn't realize -- pre Rodney King -- that this would generate any information useful to the preservation of public order.
Now we know better. Turns out to be very useful to watch the police, as useful as it is to keep an eye on any public servant entrusted with the peoples' power. So I'd say the right thing to do is classify the police -- or any government agent -- in the same way as we classify public personages, like candidates or actors in public. These people by their choice of profession and action implicitly give consent to be recorded. It's not a felony to record John Kerry making a public speech (should you have sufficient stamina or caffeine), or film Mel Gibson getting arrested on Highway 1, even if neither gives his prior consent. These people have chosen to be "public personages" and are in public, and that means they no longer have the same rights to privacy as Joe Citizen.
If the police are out in uniform doing the public's work, it seems to me there should be a clear presumption that they're just as much public personages as a candidate for the state legislature giving public speeches, and that they have implicitly given permission to anyone to film or record them. (An obvious and sensible exception would be when they're undercover, not in uniform.)
The thing is, I shuold be able to record my phone conversations. Why not? You cannot safely assume that what you say to me on the phone is lost forever. I could be writing it down, or maybe just remembering it (I know people who are exceptional at that). Either way when you talk to me you've got to assume that I could be recording, in one fasion or another, what you say. If you trust me to keep that confidence is up to you.
I see the privacy arguments of a 2-party system, I just think they are invalid. It is basically saying "I should have privacy, even when I do things that break privacy." As the saying goes, if two people know it, it's not a secret. So if you tell me, you should assume I can tell others, if I wish, regardless of if it's jsut me telling them from memory, or having a recording of it.
To me it's similar to photography laws (which are fairly uniform). You can photograph my house from public property, there's nothing I can do to stop you. You can't come on my property, of course, or circumvent barriers I have, but you can stand on the street and take pictures (or video) to your hearts content. Thus, if I want to have privacy, I need to keep my blinds closed. If I am standing on my porch naked, I can't get pissed that you took a picture of me. I have no expectation of privacy, because I'm publicly visible, even if I'm on my property.
I don't think he could have released the video. As I understand it, the police seized the tape when he brought it to them (he should've copied it first), then came to his house and ripped the cameras off the walls.
They still haven't returned the cameras (or the tape, I think) and they still maintain that he broke the law (maybe they're right, but if so, that law is despicable and just wrong).
They say he was disrespectful to them. That may be, but they still owe him a public apology for what they did.
-Rich