Court Case To Test Legality of Recording the Police With Your Cell Phone

suraj.sun sends this excerpt from Ars Technica: "If you pull out your cell phone to make a video of police officers arresting a suspect, are you 'secretly recording' them? 'No' seems like the obvious answer, but that's precisely the claim that three police officers made to justify their arrest of a Boston man. In arguments before the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on Wednesday, the city also denied the man's claim that his First or Fourth Amendment rights had been violated. The case will be an important test of whether the Constitution protects individuals' right to record the police while they are on duty. Many states have 'one-party notification' wiretapping laws that allow any party to a conversation to secretly record it. But under the strict 'two-party notification' laws in Massachusetts, it's a crime to 'secretly record' audio communications unless 'all parties to such communication' have given their consent. The police arrested Glik for breaking this law. For good measure, they also charged Glik—who did no more than stand a few feet away with his cell phone—with 'aiding the escape of a prisoner' and 'disturbing the peace.'"

Comments

Checks and balances

[Nethemas the Great]

It's a good thing the US was founded with the notion of check and balances so as to prevent abuse of power...

Re:Checks and balances

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't someone already appeal that law? Seems like it, with all the BS going on like this today. I sure hope a judge throws this crap out and displays some anger about this kind of crap, but sadly the cops are probably friends with the prosecutor and he is golf buddies with the judge, and as such checks and balances ends up just being more lip service to keep us minions quiet and paying our taxes.

Re:Checks and balances

[naz404]

The police are public employees, they are salaried with taxes you pay them. Therefore, you are their bosses and they are working on *YOUR* time. You have the right to record and monitor what they do at work.

They're your goddam employees and you have the right to make sure they don't engage in shenanigans on YOUR time.

Moreover, one of the judges in one of the states (forgot which) already ruled that it is legal to record police who are on active duty because during then, they're "in public space", and not subject to the same privacy laws with wiretaps, etc. This was covered in a previous slashdot story.

Re:Checks and balances

[betterunixthanunix]

Let this be a lesson to all those people who, when confronted with an overly broad law, say, "Well, yes, you could go after innocent people with this, but the police would not do such thing; they need this law to make it easier for them to get the bad guys." Laws should be narrow, precise, and low in number; nobody should ever be confused about why they are being arrested, and nobody should ever be surprised to find out they have broken a law. The police have far too much power, and far too many ways to justify arresting someone, and we should be talking about ways to solve that problem, rather than making it worse.

Re:Checks and balances

[TheLink]

The biggest reason there are so many laws on the books are because most laws do not have a stated lifespan/expiry, and there is no "de-legislative" body dedicated to removing/repealing laws they think should not be there :),

The legislature has the power to repeal laws, but they are usually too busy making laws...

Re:Checks and balances

[betterunixthanunix]

The problem with narrow and precise means that you need more laws to cover all of the things that should, justly, be illegal.

We are way past that point right now. We live in a world where people can go to prison for possession of certain comic books. You can be arrested and imprisoned for growing a plant. Teenagers have been arrested for photographing themselves. Court cases often come down to arguments about a person's "intent" and not what the person actually did. It is becoming uncommon for defendants to face only one criminal accusation.

As I said, nobody should ever be surprised when they are arrested -- people who break the law should not have any doubt as to whether or not what they are doing is illegal, unless they never had access to a single book or television. "Narrow and precise" does not mean "so extremely narrow that the law is meaningless," it means a legal system with clearly defined boundaries between "legal" and "illegal." There will always been edge cases and situations where it is not entirely clear if a law was broken, which is why we have a system of appeals, but for the most part people should be able to say with confidence that they are not in violation of the law.

While I agree that as a whole it should be reduced there are many places where it should be expanded

Where do you think our criminal code needs to be expanded? I cannot think of any such category of behavior, but maybe I am not creative enough.

Re:Police have no expectation of privacy

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

no it doesnt! you are a fool. If the guy is down or restrained he is down or restrained. If the freakin' video shows the guy was restrained or incapacitated and they KEPT GOING, then no "context" is needed. This is obvious, and the cops want to justify their use of force... they are trained and paid to know how to deal with this. Not act like a scared granma with a shotgun.