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

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

[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: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.