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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."
All the way to the Supreme Court, and we can have a final ruling that recording public officials in public is, you know, legal.
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...
That makes me optimistic, if we see a shift in the law accompanied by the reasonable expectation that *anyone* could potentially be carrying a recoding device, perhaps we will see a moderation in police behavior.
You are missing the recent case in Rochester where a woman was arrested on her own front lawn for videotaping an arrest going on just off of her property. IIRC the D.A. decided to not bring the case to trial, but the police continued to harass the woman and a demonstration held against the arrest. There was also a news conference with one of those great police organisations going off about how the video recording makes them "less safe."
What bollocks... if the tables were turned you know the police would scream that there was no expectation of privacy on a public street... and the woman was standing on her very own lawn.
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.
This ruling is in line with Comm v. Hyde. There is NOTHING new about this ruling, at least regards the recording issue. There is nothing wrong with OPENLY recording cops in MA or anyone else who are speaking in normal voice in public. By being in public, they are forfeiting their privacy. This is inline with 4th Amendment thinking.
In technical terms, the above is 3rd party recording that is not considered 3rd party eavesdropping because there is no REP (reasonable expectation of privacy).
Now, what this ruling DOES bring as new is the cops who think that they have veto power over your OPEN recording of them are now on notice, in federal court you have zero shelter from the liability of arresting someone because you don't like that they are recording you in public. This is new. The cops are not being granted qualified immunity and are on the hook for the damages of denying Glik his rights by improperly arresting him. That is a step in the right direction.
The problem here is if you are recording your interaction with a cop, what does that cop have to do to stop your recording? "Detain" you, that is what. Once they do, for their "safety" of course, they now control your recording equipment and can turn it off. Nothing in the above ruling changes this. They can do this, beat you to a pulp, or just ignore you to illustrate both extremes, and there will be no record of it.
What has not changed is Comm v. Hyde which makes 2nd party recording a privacy issue. This is not the case in 38 other states but here in MA, people are presumed to have a REP right from secret recording even when the recorders are privy to what is being said. That is absurd if you dissect it, but that is where Hyde dropped us. So for an example, if party A has a conversation with B, A can't record it because B supposedly has a REP privacy right yet A has heard everything B said. They were having a conversation for christ's sake. B gave up their privacy to the statements once they engaged in said conversation. So A can detail the conversation to whomever will listen but if B denies what was said or that the conversation even took place, it becomes a he said, she said situation. Now, who does this protect? It protects B. It protects liars, cheats and thieves. Because it allows them to lie about what took place. There is a line in Hyde where the SJC basically acknowledges this by stating to allow surreptitious recording of cops will allow the citizens to monitor and find corruption.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
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.
Someone who goes to cort
If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
I know my taxes aren't buying any type of civilization in the middle east, despite the trillions going there. In fact, my tax dollars are doing the exact opposite by creating anarchy, pollution, death, and destruction. If those things are the hallmarks of civilization, well, you can keep it.
Most everything you list is a local function BTW. Maybe the world be a better and safer place if government was not allowed to be so large. The scale of death and destruction my county could cause is a mere fraction of that my country is causing, and my county could still build roads and put out fires (I live in a donor state BTW, without the Feds, we'd have MORE money for these things than we do now).
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
IANAL but reading the ruling made it clear to me that in states where wiretapping laws imply that it be done secretly then it's important to hold your recording device in plain sight. Many states define audio wiretapping in terms of "intercepting" the audio which this appellate court has determined to mean "secretly". The ruling states that since Glik was holding his cell phone in plain view then he was not doing anything in secret and thus was not wiretapping. You don't have to annouce that you are taking pictures or videos, however. Just holding it where the officers could have seen it is sufficient. But if they ask you if you are taking videos or pictures or recording then you should probably answer truthfully. YMMV so check your state's laws before relying on this ruling.
Of course, if officers cannot see it they would be unlikely to arrest you. So apparently just by them noticing the device would be evidence that it was not done in secret and therefore not wiretapping and therefore not "probable cause" for an arrest.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
According to the Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_First_Circuit
The states covered by the USCoA for the First Circuit are:
District of Maine
District of Massachusetts
District of New Hampshire
District of Puerto Rico
District of Rhode Island
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.
Private companies which are currently doing their best to unmake the Internet and turn it into an AOL redux.
You're still off a bit. This case is more recent, circa 2007. It references a 1983 law and cases which brought the law into existence as well as recent cases that drive the point home. but the case comes from actions that happened on October 1 2007.
However, this isn't about whether the cops did wrong or not with this ruling. It's about whether they believed they were in the right at the time of the actions. You see, many law enforcement and government officials have an immunity to prosecution and civil suits if their actions were intended to be lawful but are somehow not. An example of this in action would be a cop speeding with his lights and sirens on to get to an accident scene and render assistance and getting into an accident of his own. He would be removed from liability for the accident and insurance would take care of property damage. But if he was speeding like that to get back to the station for shift change, then he's liable for all the crap you or i would be liable for should be do the same.
So the guy involved filed a suit, the cops said- we have immunity-, the judge said no you do not-, they appealed-, the appeals court said, not only do you not have immunity, there is good reason to believe you knew you were violating the constitutional rights of this kid when you took the actions you did.
The title of this story is a bit misleading. While the appeals court said there is a right to film police in public while on duty, it said so in the respect that the lawsuit against the police can go forward. But on another note, it pointed to where this constitutional right to film the cops has already been well settled by other case law and indicates that any law attempting to suppress it would meet the same problems their claim to immunity met.