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Appeals Court: You Have the Right To Film the Police (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A divided federal appeals court is ruling for the First Amendment, saying the public has a right to film the police. But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in upholding the bulk of a lower court's decision against an activist who was conducting what he called a "First Amendment audit" outside a Texas police station, noted that this right is not absolute and is not applicable everywhere. The facts of the dispute are simple. Phillip Turner was 25 in September 2015 when he decided to go outside the Fort Worth police department to test officers' knowledge of the right to film the police. While filming, he was arrested for failing to identify himself to the police. Officers handcuffed and briefly held Turner before releasing him without charges. Turner sued, alleging violations of his Fourth Amendment right against unlawful arrest and detention and his First Amendment right of speech. The 2-1 decision Thursday by Judge Jacques Wiener is among a slew of rulings on the topic, and it provides fresh legal backing for the so-called YouTube society where people are constantly using their mobile phones to film themselves and the police. A dissenting appellate judge on the case -- Edith Brown Clement -- wrote Turner was not unlawfully arrested and that the majority opinion from the Texas-based appeals court jumped the gun to declare a First Amendment right here because one "is not clearly established."
The US Supreme Court has ruled that gathering evidence in support of one's claims -- particularly against the government -- is an integral part of the freedoms of speech and seeking redress. There's a huge difference between someone saying "X happened, trust me" and "X happened, here's video proof", especially when X is something they governed clearly should not be doing.
That doesn't mean the right to record public servants is unqualified, but it's definitely broad.
Judge Clement's dissenting opinion did not say that citizens aren't allowed to film the police.
This hearing was about whether he should just sue the city, or of he could also sue the individual officers personally, given the particular details of the events, and the particular circumstances at the time. The law on this question depends on those details.
Clement believes that the city is liable in this particular instance, not the individual officers personally.
There's no general principle at being decided in this case. Though it was mentioned that citizens generally have a right to film police in the conduct of their duties, that was settled law - as the the opinion mentioned, there is no circuit court split or anything on that question.
The hearing was about whether he should sue only the city of Fort Worth, or also sue the individual officers personally.
The law about that is the officer os personally liable for monetary damages only if *all* reasonable cops would know that what they did was unconstitutional, because there was clearly established law covering those specific actions in that particular circumstance. In all other cases, the offended party can sue the city or state that the cop works for.
A couple of examples:
A cop is interviewing a suspect. When the suspect just sits there, refusing to talk, the cop hits the suspect with a stick in an attempt to force a false confession. The officer would be personally liable because it's *clearly established* that such behavior is violates the suspect's Constitutional rights. No reasonable cop could think it's okay to hit the guy.
On the other hand:
Two weeks after a police station in Dallas is shot at, a guy is hiding in bushes across the street from a police station near Dallas. Cops approach to see what's going on. The guy is filming the police station (casing it?). Cops ask for ID. The guy asks to speak to a supervisor. The cops call their supervisor to come over, handcuffing the guy for five minutes until the supervisor arrives. Did they violate his Constitutional rights? Maybe. Does every reasonable officer *know* that what they did violates his civil rights? No, an officer might reasonably *think* it's okay to cuff the guy for five minutes. There's not *clearly established law* that in the situation described, they can't cuff him while awating the supervisor he requested. Therefore he can sue the city the cops work for, but can't sue the individual cops personally.
The second scenario above, in which a reasonable cop might mistakenly think cuffing him for a minute is okay, is patterned after the actual events in this case. In reality, he wasn't hiding in the bushes. I added that to make it a better example, an example of a scenario where a reasonable cop might be unsure of what they can and can't legally do.
Griswold v. Connecticut - the government has no business peering into your bedroom
note well - constitutional rights apply to government actions, your right to privacy, or free press, or whatever, is that the government can't interfere. A private party might invade your privacy, but that's not a constitutional thing..
But subsequent to Griswold, the idea of privacy has extended virtually everywhere, including actual laws protecting citizens against disclosure of private information collected by the government. "Privacy Act"