Illegal to record an on-duty officer?
thefreemanonline.org
thefreemanonline.org
If someone really is obstructing police work, then the current statutes against obstructing police work are applicable. Police should be limited to enforcing those and not try to criminalize photography.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polavision,_Polachrome_and_Pola... for more information.
I can't see a need to permit the recording or some guy who sells tickets for a municipal railway, or sweeps the streets and is paid by the local authority (although I don't particularly see the need to ban it, either).
I figure, public place is public place. If you can take a picture of A, why not B, and how does one enforce that anyway? I'd think it'd fall on the side of free speech, similar to how you can tell someone about police abuse.
How is any person not photographable in a public place?
How about when he's letting his friends ride for free or engaged in some other misbehavior?
You want privacy - do it on your time. As long as it's my money paying you, the default is that I get to observe and record, just like any other employer. This is especially true for folks engaged in law enforcement.
The only possible exception is undercover, but if you're made.... No exception for plainclothes - if you've identified yourself as a cop, you're fair game.
First, require district attorneys to prosecute people who take pictures of officers rescuing kittens.
Second, clearly distinguish between electronic surveillance and a photograph. a digital camera should not be subject to both laws. pick one and stick to it.
On a different note, I have spent a lot of time in developing countries, and some of the most consistent hallmarks are ridiculous bans on photographing anything government-related. Laws like this in the US make me worry about the country sliding backwards into dysfunction.
The dangerous underlying issue is applying statutes to situations that they were not written to cover. If the government wants to make it illegal to videotape police officers, the law should say "it is a class 1 felony to videotape police officers". If the intentions of what a law prohibits is not made clear, how can people be expected to comply? When the law can be shaped to cover whatever a prosecutor dislikes about a particular person, then law becomes a tool of oppression, not a way to ensure an orderly society. How can I not violate the law if I don't know what the law is!?
The second dangerous underlying issue is that it is not clearly illegal to pass such a law.
People tend to misuse the expression "police state", but if these convictions stick, that is exactly what this is. When you are legally unable to prepare evidence in your own defense, there might as well not be a criminal justice system at all.
I propose that we pass a law, perhaps with a clever name like the "PROTECT CHILDREN act" (you make the backronym), that makes it a Class I felony for any police officer or other government official acting in an official capacity to interfere with any video recording of events that would otherwise occur in the plain view of the recorder. (You can't go into someone's home and videotape the police, but you can videotape the police when they come to arrest you.)
This will never happen, though. Oh well, at least everyone has McDonalds and a big-screen TV...
That is what I find most hilarious about this. We are supposed to submit to warrantless wiretapping, and routine public recording because it "makes us safer". Yet Police aren't required to do the same.
> The UK has abolished self defence,
The most recent cause celebre on this was a robber being given permanent brain damage after escaping the scene of the robbery. The attack was not self defence, and frankly, the brothers who joined in the attack got off very lightly indeed.
In reality, reasonable force in defending oneself and others is allowed, and is interpreted by juries, so how can you possible argue self defence has been "abolished?"
> compromised the legal protection against double jeopardy,
Only in the event of important new evidence, i.e. DNA that couldn't be done at the time due to lack of science. Not ideal perhaps, but you have to draw a line somewhere, and smarter people than you or I supported it.
> lifted many restrictions against government agents entering one's home.
Any more details on this one, citation/statute?
> Political speech is less free as in the United States as well.
The HRA mostly fixes that although there is not an inalienable right to free speech. Since there isn't in the USA either, are you sure it is measurably less free?
> There's also the sizable DNA database
Declared illegal by our highest court, and currently being fixed by the government in the proposed Freedom (Great Repeal) Bill, as is ID cards, right to protest and so on.
> and the CCTV itself (which is still controlled by the government, and hence on the other side of the table from any recordings made by citizens).
CCTV is generally controlled by local shopping centres or business associations, or local councils. I recently visited our local council CCTV control room and was interested to discover they actually won't let the police into the viewing room, except for a specific operation (which has to authorised by the chief of police and the head of the CCTV stuff on the council). They will report crimes to the police, but the police cannot trawl or watch their system. So, I really don't see what the problem with CCTV really is. It watches the public, but so could a council employee up a hill with a telescope. It remembers, but only for a limited time, and so could the same council employee with a pencil and paper.
The biggest argument against CCTV is it is a total waste of money, doesn't reduce or deter crime, and is not backed up with any proper evidence of efficacy whatsoever.
I agree the UK has been going in the wrong direction, but I don't think it is as bad as you say, and I am offended by the continual denigration of the UK compared to America, as if America was the capital of human rights and civil liberties, and we still have the star chamber.
Also, you didn't mention the most worrying thing of all - the powers the police have been using to prevent climate change protest. Regardless of your views on climate change, the fact public resources have been so heavily diverted to protect commercial interests worries me much, much more. That way fascism lies.
That said, there seem to be promising signs that the new Con/LibDem coalition is putting things in the right direction. It's encouraging that you folks threw out the Labour party, and it's more encouraging that you seemed to do it for many of the right reasons. (I feel comfortable saying things like that because I have a feeling many British people feel the same way about us and the Republicans.) Of course, it remains to be seen whether the new boss is really any better than the old boss.
I don't really mean to denigrate the UK. The UK's done things in recent years that are very worrying. They're probably par for the course for European countries, but given the traditions of civil liberties we share, a lot of us have higher expectations for the UK.
And not just sort of illegal. Class 1 felony punishable 4-15 years in prison illegal.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010...
The key seems to be how evident it is that the person is recording. If it is at all not obvious to the police that a recording is being made, it is illegal. If you put a microphone or camera in their face however it is OK.
Here's a story mostly focused on what happened the day before I was there: http://cbs2chicago.com/local/north.avenue.beach.2.1714897.ht...
There hasn't been a ton of news coverage about the recent problems at North Ave Beach beyond the article above, but I was able to find a few videos of the violence on YouTube like this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDd5-QfjDXM&has_verified=...
It seems to me that the focus of the videos is more on how the cops are treating the criminals than what the criminals are doing (assaulting police officers and acting like idiots in the video above). A lot of comments on the Second City Cop blog - http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com - have indicated that law enforcement officers in Chicago are becoming extremely hesitant to act because they are worried about how their actions may look on camera.
Yes, "citizen journalists" with cell phone cameras will help to curb police abuse, but they will also discourage use of force by police officers when it is justified. The video above isn't the best example since the cops do end up using force to restrain some of the perpetrators, but they do seem to show a decent amount of restraint. In the situation that I saw, the cops seemed wary of getting involved.
The situation that I witnessed opens up a number of other issues, but my point is that I want the people who are paid to protect me to be fully empowered to do what they need to do to quell situations like a massive gang fight on the beach.
I don't think that passing laws prohibiting citizens from recording on-duty officers is the right way to go about this, but I do think that citizens and the media need to be more understanding of the fact that sometimes it is necessary for cops to use force. A 30 second YouTube clip doesn't always tell the whole story, yet these types of videos can ruin an officer's career.
Social media is a great thing for Democracy. I think that recording police is a good thing. I just think that knee-jerk reactions to news that comes in bits and pieces can be extremely damaging to our society. Our law enforcement officers shouldn't be afraid of making the right decision because an edited video clip will make it look like abuse.
I guess this comes down to a difference of opinion. I'd much rather have the police use too little force on occasion than too much force on occasion.
But it is only natural that officers who are putting their lives on the line naturally prefer to err on the side of caution, which means bringing more than sufficient force to bear.
This just provides an incentive for the police to wear their own cameras, no? Wouldn't this solve your problem?
What if it became irregular for a policeman to be on the stand retelling events that occurred while he was on duty but not to have video corroboration? In a future world where all police wear cameras while on duty, and the court expects to see all relevant footage, not just the footage picked out by the prosecution or by the defence? Wouldn't this be a good thing?
For instance, suppose that man A punches man B, and a policeman sees it. But suppose his camera just happened to be turned the wrong way or momentarily obscured at the time so the video footage doesn't actually show the moment where man A punches man B. With this ambiguous footage available, juries might be hesitant to convict, even though multiple witnesses saw it happen, because the jury expected to be able to see it with their own eyes.
I suppose another objection is that police officers would then have a whole new responsibility: they'd have to constantly worry about aiming their camera in the right direction. That means that a policeman who should be trying to, say, break up a fight will instead be concentrating on making sure he has his camera pointed at the fight.
Beyond this, I am rather offended that it seems to be ok for any number of local governments, businesses, and who knows who else to record me as I go about my daily business out in the world, and then claim it's somehow not ok for me to do the same to the police, or anyone else, in a public setting.
The sentence length mentioned strikes me as severe, seems the law is being use in a way that differs from the original intent.
From personal experience, back in 1991 I was with a group of friends, one of whom was using a camcorder to record a police officer. The cop threatened him, exclaiming "Get that camera thing away from me!".
The difference now is the ubiquity of video recording devices, and thus increased perceived urgency on the part of police to defend themselves against them.
What goes around comes around, if transparency is a 'good thing' and we're all to be tracked and followed then it stands to reason that police officers can and should be tracked and followed by citizens, as long as the recordings do not interfere with the police work.
Well, at least the public ones.
This is scary and ridiculous at the same time.
While I understand your rhetorical point, as a citizen of Massachusetts, I can certainly say that I do not feel that I "deserve" to be treated in this manner. Sure, I'll make my voice heard on this issue, but the case discussed in this article represents primarily a decision by the executive branch (police and prosecutors) to apply a law commonly used for wiretapping in this case, and then by the courts to uphold this decision. It's not as if we held a referendum to criminalize filming of police officers.
This is the worst part of this. Frivolous lawsuits, okay, but seeing this blatant violation of the spirit of the law upheld really sucks.
Thanks for writing me with your concerns on %TOPIC_NOT_FOUND%. I will soon be writing up a law to prevent this from happening again.
Thanks,
%GOVERNOR_NAME%
In the UK the "war on photography" has been going on for at least the last few years. For an example see http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2010/feb/21/police-arrest...
Good.
The classical wiretap laws are based on a theory of trespass. It is trespass and vandalism to plant a bug in someone's office. Recordings from the bug are not a violation of some nebulous (and expandable) right to privacy, but rather the ill-gotten gains of a crime.
And what are the cops thinking, anyway? When you place yourself outside the protections of the law, you are outside the protections of the law. If I get beaten and robbed with impunity, and locked up for 20 years if I try to protect myself, I'll simply kill every cop that so much as looks at me wrong.