Cook County Judge Says Law Banning Recording Police Is Unconstitutional

schwit1 writes "A Cook County judge Friday ruled the state's controversial eavesdropping law unconstitutional. The law makes it a felony offense to make audio recordings of police officers without their consent even when they're performing their public duties. Judge Stanley Sacks, who is assigned to the Criminal Courts Building, found the eavesdropping law unconstitutional because it potentially criminalizes 'wholly innocent conduct.' The decision came in the case of Christopher Drew, an artist who was arrested in December 2009 for selling art on a Loop street without a permit. Drew was charged with a felony violation of the eavesdropping law after he used an audio recorder in his pocket to capture his conversations with police during his arrest."

Comments

No Problem

[aix tom]

The "Police" will just join the RIAA and then sue people on the angle that they recorded their performance.

Hello, context here

[Rogerborg]

The law attempted to prevent audio or video recording anyone without their consent, not just police.

Of course - of course - it was abused by Illinois' finest, but that wasn't really who it was intended to protect.

Re:Link to Article Please

[buchner.johannes]

Yes, here is a particularly interesting one (don't get distracted by the filename)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/if-you-pull-out-your.ars

Re:You can't have it both ways

[AngryDeuce]

Oh, they're not worried about their dash cams. They can always "lose" the footage if it's too damaging...

Re:deal with it

[Ihmhi]

This is an opportunity for geeks to do something useful here.

What we need is a device with a video camera and microphone. Once the "record" button is depressed, it records and automatically uploads everything it captures to an off-site server that is secured w/ encryption. Moreover, it doesn't stop recording until a code is entered (to prevent a cop from tampering with it). With the cheapness of electronics nowadays we could probably create something like this for less than a hundred bucks (fees for transmission notwithstanding).

Or maybe just an iPhone/Android app...

Re:You can't have it both ways

[causality]

McCarren says police dislocated her shoulder and tore her rotator cuff in the incident. Neither she nor her cameraman, Peter Hakel, was ever charged with any violations.

That's strange. I'm not a lawyer so I hope someone will correct me if I am wrong, but as I understand it, if a cop physically harms you but does not charge you with resisting arrest, he is effectively admitting he assaulted you for no reason.

At the time of the incident county officials, including County Executive Jack Johnson, said none of the cameras in the seven police cars was working.

Ever heard of a contract of adhesion? It's when a big entity like your insurance company draws up a standard contract. You have little or no ability to negotiate the wording or terms of the contract. It's a take-it-or-leave-it deal. The flip side is that any unclear or unspecified terms in that contract are automatically interpreted in your favor.

We need a concept like that for police and their "broken" dashboard cameras. If the cameras are faulty or footage is missing, it is assumed that whatever story the citizen tells is the correct one. Overnight, police departments would suddenly start doing a better job maintaining their "faulty" equipment.