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:Checks and balances

[hairyfeet]

As someone who has a scar on the back of his head and a shoulder that hurts when it rains because of a cop that started with, and I quote "God damned niggers and fucking hippies, I don't know which I hate more" (BTW said "nigger" was a baptist minister I was taking to a revival to raise money for the homeless) I can say the reason why cops want to be able to throw your ass in jail if you dare to take their picture is a hell of a lot of them are roid raged "bullies with badges" that frankly took the job to get off on being absolute fucking pricks.

For a good example of why they want the cameras stopped I'd suggest you watch the largest gang in America and then you tell me what makes the actions in the video ANY different from the large scale intimidation tactics done by the brown shirts and the black shirts in times past? And before anyone says Godwin you watch the video and tell me that isn't large scale intimidation designed to suppress those that the blue shirts consider "undesirable". As I said I still have a scar from being a white person with hair the wrong length associating with a race the blue shirt considered undesirable.

Police have no expectation of privacy

[WillAdams]

when performing official duties for the good of the public.

If their supervisor showed up, they'd have to fully disclose everything which they were doing, ditto internal affairs, the police chief / superintendent, or a government functionary whose bailiwick involved the performance of their current duties.

If they have something to hide, which they don't want revealed in court, they need to find some other line of work.

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.

Re:Police have no expectation of privacy

[starfishsystems]

Case in point: Robert Dziekanski, a Polish traveller to Canada who was neglected for several hours in the airport immigration area, and who was then tasered to death by four RCMP officers within a few seconds of their arrival on the scene.

The RCMP confiscated this video and only released it after enormous public pressure. Imagine what would have happened without this evidence. As it was, the police failed to separately debrief those officers in order to plausibly minimize the appearance of collusion. The same four officers are now charged with perjury after telling a fabricated story in which Dziekanski "attacked them with a stapler." This is the story which the RCMP administration vigorously defended and then ultimately abandoned - all at public cost.

During the inquiry, the RCMP introduced massive procedural delays upon request to produce the internal documents recorded as a result of the incident. After documents were finally released, they were found to be incomplete. Significant among these, a police email suggested the officers made plans to taser Dziekanski even before they saw him. The RCMP lawyer eventually withdrew in tears after acknowledging the omission.

This is what the police did in the face of independent evidence. Imagine what would have happened without this video as evidence.

Re:At least you still get a trial hear with a jury

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

Yet the jury is given such specific instructions that if they don't know their rights as a juror before serving on the jury, then the judge has nearly complete control over what happens.

bogus charges

[Khashishi]

The charges were dropped, of course, since they had no chance of standing up in court. The point was to intimidate the guy and put him in jail. The problem is that cops can just arrest you for a bogus charge and then drop the charges later. You get screwed anyway.