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Mass. Court Says Constitution Protects Filming On-Duty Police
Even in a country and a world where copyright can be claimed as an excuse to prevent you from taking a photo of a giant sculpture in a public, tax-paid park, and openly recording visiting police on your own property can be construed as illegal wiretapping, it sometimes seems like the overreach of officialdom against people taking photos or shooting video knows no bounds. It's a special concern now that seemingly everyone over the age of 10 is carrying a camera that can take decent stills and HD video. It's refreshing, therefore, to read that a Federal Appeals Court has found unconstitutional the arrest of a Massachusetts lawyer who used his phone to video-record an arrest on the Boston Common. (Here's the ruling itself, as a PDF.) From the linked article, provided by reader schwit1: "In its ruling, which lets Simon Glik continue his lawsuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston said the wiretapping statute under which Glik was arrested and the seizure of his phone violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights."
The police just learned an important lesson: Don't charge lawyers with the stupid rules you use to get away with shit.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
So, when is the arresting officer going to be charged with violating the civil rights of the videographer? Don't police make some sort of oath to uphold the law, and this ruling makes it clear that the officer violated the law, thus breaking their oath, shouldn't that get them fired as well?
The real issue here is "government violates the law with impunity and nobody cares."
Learn to love Alaska
This isn't a Massachusetts court. This is a federal court that actually knows what the 1st Amendment is, and more importantly thinks that it matters. The Supreme Judicial Court, which is the Massachusetts high court, has had its chance to look at this law more than once, and has come to the wrong conclusion every time. It took a federal court to realize what any moron should know - that prohibiting citizens from recording public officials doing their jobs on a public street is an invitation to abuse.
You have no right to "be heard" and such a "right" means destroying other people's freedoms. The right to refuse to support something is just as much of a right as it is to support something. For example, if you disagree with the Ku Klux Klan's message, you don't have to support them, you don't have to give to them financially, etc. On the other hand, if there was a right "to be heard" it would mean that everyone would have to pay money to support the KKK's message, otherwise it would infringe on their rights. What we (should) have now is a better balance, the KKK is free to say what they want, people are free to support them if they wish, but you don't have to listen to them if you don't want to and you certainly don't have to financially support them.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Citation Needed.
Frankly a single instance of a cop using either illegal coercion or force on a citizen who is only suspected of a crime is an unwelcome sight in a country that aspires to rule of law and liberty.
Why would the DA punish one of his own thugs?
DA's are elected. Cops aren't.
If there's one thing I've learned from watching 10,000 cop procedurals, it's that if the DA dares charge even en ex-cop with anything, all the other cops will "lose" evidence resulting in a 0% conviction rate, and then he won't get reelected because he'll seem incompetent. Somehow the cops don't get reprimanded for losing evidence and botching investigations and contaminating evidence. Also somehow DA's threaten to not press charges as a way to punish cops for not towing the line, so I guess the absurd "We'll let criminals go and that'll make YOU look bad but not us!" threat can be used both ways? Or maybe TV doesn't reflect reality all that much? WHO KNOWS.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
You don't lose your rights by being a pain in the ass. The legitimacy of her case is untouched by her being a loud protester of all trades.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: 'I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.'
Cute, but fallacious. SOME taxes buy civilization. Some are simply squandered. Some buy oppression, including of those who pay the taxes. Some buy wars we didn't need. There's also a lack of causality. If a building falls on you tomorrow, we still have civilization. Something like 50% of USians don't pay taxes (ok, federal income) and yet we still have way more government than many of us want. Those of you who don't think that are, in my not so humble opinion, just ignorant of how the sausage is made. It also assumes paying taxes is the only way to get civilization, or the best. It makes as much sense as "I like amputations. With them I remove splinters from my fingertips." or "I like chemotherapy. With it I slow or stop cancer." In both cases the end is great, but if there's a way to do it with fewer or no amputations, less or no chemotherapy, or lower or no taxes, that's obviously much better.
The no-nonsense version of this quote would be "I like civilization, and I accept some taxation as the price we have to pay for it."
And the only reason the internet was created by the government is because it was simply the only organization with enough computers to create the internet.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Absolutely, 100% I would prefer them dead to abusing due process.
Private companies which are currently doing their best to unmake the Internet and turn it into an AOL redux.
There have been a couple of cases of the internets picking up on a police officer making a wrong call that was an understandable mistake (such as a plain-clothed off duty officer pulling a gun on a motorcyclist). But by far what show up are genuine abuses: officers ruthlessly beating compliant suspects while surveillance cam operators intentionally look the other way. Unarmed men lying on the floor in a prone position getting shot in the back. Rodney King, which reflected the abusive police interactions in LA at the time. Or even this interpretation of this law itself, where your only protection against abuses is considered illegal on a BS technicality. And these show up in the destruction of evidence (collecting cell phones) and denial of evidence (the surveillance camera footage).
Personally, I think we do give officers a lot of moderated attitude. A friend had a gun pulled on him at a (15 mph) speeding stop by a trainee officer. The elder officer overseeing her pulled her aside, taught her proper procedure, and let my friend off with a non-documented warning. It was a completely non-procedure way of dealing with an officer drawing her gun without provocation, but it was handled well. I had a gun drawn on me for having a broken white plastic Halloween samurai sword as a teenager. But the professionalism of the officer never made me feel in danger.
A lot of these officers are not used to being on the internet. They're not used to the level of abuse where if 10,000 people are calling for the immediate dismemberment of you and your family, you're doing fine. Someone makes a flash video of you beating down dancing flower children, it pretty much goes with the territory. Unfortunately, most people don't have a thick enough skin for the internet, and it is sad that this may be their first exposure (except the beating down of the dancing flower children cop. That guy deserved it.)
95% of the officers I've interacted with have been professional, helpful (or at least trying to be), and safety-conscious. But some are abusive when they think they can get away with it, and the only protection we have is documentation. The moment we lose the right to document our interactions with the police, is the moment the police go from helpful to a threat. And that puts everyone, civillians and police, at risk.
The ______ Agenda
Dead cops and dead marines is your preference, coward?
Honestly? I think there's more than enough cops. Way too many, if you ask me.
Think about it for a minute. How many "law enforcement" agencies have jurisdiction over you where you sit right now? "Just a few", you might think... Let's count, then, shall we?
We'll assume, for the sake of argument, that you live inside a major city. We will also only count the offices that can legally break into your house with "probable cause", and maintain staff trained and equipped for exactly that.
1: City Police
2: County Police (Sheriff)
3: State Police
4: Federal Marshals
5: FBI
Nothing surprising so far, right?
6: Border Patrol (in a surprising large number of places that aren't actually near a "border")
7: Department of Homeland Security
8: Drug Enforcement Agency
9: Internal Revenue Service (yes, they maintain personnel for "active" law enforcement duties)
10: Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
11: Public School District Police Department ("Resource" Officers - yes, they are real police, and yes, they can break into your house to arrest you)
12: Local College Police Department (see above)
13: Highway Patrol (admittedly a bit of a stretch, but there are several circumstances where it is perfectly legal and within their jurisdiction to "assist" in a raid or otherwise break into your home)
So in this list, there are twelve agencies (thirteen if you want to count "edge cases") that, without a doubt, are capable of breaking into your home to arrest you. These are just the ones that have jurisdiction and authority to break into your private residence, regardless of its location within the United States, to "detain" you. There are also plenty of localized "special task forces" that can be granted "the duties and privileges of rank pertaining to" law enforcement officers, if they don't already have them, for the special purpose of terrorizing^W protecting citizens. Shiny badges and guns seem to make lots and lots of people more than a little power-mad.
To make it worse, there are agencies such as the New London, Connecticut Police Department, who require their officers to be unintelligent in order to make them more likely to follow orders without thinking, and "less likely to get bored".
Youtube is full of normal, law-abiding folks who have been killed or seriously injured by those charged to protect and serve, with little or no provocation. One of my favorite clips is a Boston Area Rapid Transit Officer shooting a man in the back while he is face down on the ground in handcuffs. A favorite headline of mine is the man who died falling from a second story ledge after being tazed by law enforcement officers. Another of my favorite stories is the school resource officer who tazed a fourteen-year-old girl who wasn't even being threatening, she just wasn't doing exactly what she was told quite quickly enough.
There's plenty of reason for ordinary, average, law-abiding citizens to hate and fear law enforcement officers. We get new ones every day. How much fear, uncertainty, and doubt can this institution resist?
I, for one, applaud "dead cops and dead marines" when they overstep their bounds while applying deadly force. Enforcing the law does not place one above it.
Also, I wonder how long it will be before the surveillance society we live in is "good enough" that an audio/video record of any given subject will be available for anything and everything that person has done in the past [24 hours|7 days|30 days|ever in their life]... more importantly, is that a bad thing? Could we do away with [some|most|all] of the law enforcement [officers|agencies] at that point?
As for being a coward... well, say it to my face.
(Yes, the irony is implicit, and the internet is full of tough guys).
--
I may sound paranoid, but is it paranoia if they really are out to get you?
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