The War on Cameras

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The link is to a very well written article that highlights a growing problem. I've noticed more and more that it's not just officers saying certain things were not allowed to be photographed and giving flimsy reasoning, but officers and courts having a leg to stand on with ambiguous wire tapping laws.

http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/the-war-on-cameras/

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Michael Allison, a 41-year-old backyard mechanic from southeastern Illinois, faces up to 75 years in prison for an act most people don’t realize is a crime: recording public officials.

Allison lives in Bridgeport, Illinois, and often spends time at his mother’s house in Robinson, one county to the north. Both towns have abandoned property (or “eyesore”) ordinances prohibiting the parking of inoperable or unregistered vehicles on private property except in enclosed garages. These rules place a substantial burden on hobbyists like Allison; to obey the law he must either build a garage—which he says isn’t an option, given his property and his income—or register, plate, and pay insurance on every car he fixes up, even though he never drives them on public roads. So Allison kept working on his cars, and the city of Bridgeport kept impounding them: in 2001, 2003, and 2005.

In 2007 Allison filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging the law was a violation of his civil rights and a scheme to collect revenue through impound fees. He then resumed tinkering with unregistered vehicles in his mother’s driveway in Robinson. By Allison’s account, police officers in Robinson began harassing him with threats of fines or arrest for violating that town’s ordinance, though Allison alleges the harassment was personal—retaliation for his lawsuit back in Bridgeport. That’s when he began recording his conversations with cops.

In late 2008, Allison went to the Robinson police station, tape recorder in hand, and asked the chief to tell his officers either to name the law he was violating and issue him a citation or leave him alone. Not long after, two Robinson police officers showed up at his mother’s property and, while he was working on his mother’s car in her driveway, wrote Allison a citation for violating the eyesore ordinance. Allison openly recorded the conversation with a digital recorder. A court date was scheduled for January 2010.

The day before the trial, Allison went to the Crawford County Courthouse to request a court reporter for the proceedings. “If they were going to convict me of this bogus ordinance violation, I wanted to be sure there was a record of it for my lawsuit,” he says. As he spoke with Crawford County Circuit Court Clerk Angela Reinoehl, Allison showed her his digital recorder, although he says in this instance he wasn’t recording. “I held out the tape recorder to make it clear that if they weren’t going to make a record of this ridiculous farce, I was going to make sure I had one,” he says.

Reinoehl denied the request, but Allison’s promise to record the proceedings apparently came through loud and clear. Just after he walked through the courthouse door the next day, Allison says Crawford County Circuit Court Judge Kimbara Harrell asked him whether he had a tape recorder in his pocket. He said yes. Harrell then asked him if it was turned on. Allison said it was. Harrell then informed the defendant that he was in violation of the Illinois wiretapping law, which makes it a Class 1 felony to record someone without his consent. “You violated my right to privacy,” the judge said.

Allison responded that he had no idea it was illegal to record public officials during the course of their work, that there was no sign or notice barring tape recorders in the courtroom, and that he brought one only because his request for a court reporter had been denied. No matter: After Harrell found him guilty of violating the car ordinance, Allison, who had no prior criminal record, was hit with five counts of wiretapping, each punishable by four to 15 years in prison. Harrell threw him in jail, setting bail at $35,000.

Allison’s predicament is an extreme example of a growing and disturbing trend. As citizens increase their scrutiny of law enforcement officials through technologies such as cell phones, miniature cameras, and devices that wirelessly connect to video-sharing sites such as YouTube and LiveLeak, the cops are increasingly fighting back with force and even jail time—and not just in Illinois. Police across the country are using decades-old wiretapping statutes that did not anticipate iPhones or Droids, combined with broadly written laws against obstructing or interfering with law enforcement, to arrest people who point microphones or video cameras at them. Even in the wake of gross injustices, state legislatures have largely neglected the issue. Meanwhile, technology is enabling the kind of widely distributed citizen documentation that until recently only spy novelists dreamed of. The result is a legal mess of outdated, loosely interpreted statutes and piecemeal court opinions that leave both cops and citizens unsure of when recording becomes a crime.

‘It Just Depends on the Circumstances’

A national debate over recording on-duty police officers erupted in 2010 after two high-profile incidents in Maryland.

The first was in March, shortly after the University of Maryland men’s basketball team beat Duke. Among the Maryland students who spilled onto the College Park campus to celebrate were Jack McKenna and Benjamin Donat. As the two capered down the street with other Terps fans, they were stopped by two officers from the Prince George’s County Police Department on horseback. Seconds later, three additional riot police confronted McKenna and Donat on foot. McKenna was soon arrested and charged with assault and resisting arrest.

According to police reports, McKenna confronted the officers, verbally provoked them, assaulted them, and then fought when they tried to detain him. But several students at the scene captured the incident on their cell phone cameras. In those videos, later posted on the Internet, McKenna appears to do nothing to provoke the police. Instead, the riot cops stop McKenna, throw him up against a wall, and begin beating him with their batons. Attorney Christopher Griffiths, who is representing both students, says they suffered cuts, contusions, and concussions. After the videos appeared on the Internet, Prince George’s County suspended four of the officers, and the charges against McKenna were dropped.

The second incident came on April 13, about the same time McKenna’s case began to make national news. Maryland State Trooper David Uhler pulled over motorcyclist Anthony Graber for speeding and reckless driving. Graber had a video camera mounted to his helmet that was recording at the time of the stop. Uhler, dressed in street clothes, emerged from his unmarked car with gun drawn, yelling. Graber was given only a traffic ticket, but he was miffed at Uhler’s behavior. So he posted the video on YouTube. Days later, Maryland State Police conducted an early-morning raid on Graber’s home, held Graber and his parents for 90 minutes, confiscated computer equipment, arrested him, and took him to jail.
Graber was charged with two felonies. The first was violating Maryland’s wiretapping law by recording Uhler without the trooper’s consent. The second was “possession of an intercept device,” a provision in the same law that was intended for bugs and wiretaps but in this case referred to Graber’s video camera, a device that is perfectly legal to own and use in just about any other context. Thanks to legislation written to prevent the surreptitious interception of communications, Graber faced up to 16 years in prison for recording a cop during a public traffic stop.

Wiretapping statutes apply to audio recordings, with or without video. Maryland is one of 12 states with a wiretapping law that requires consent from all parties to a conversation for someone to legally record it. But in 10 of those 12 states, including Maryland, the statute says a violation occurs only when the offended party has a reasonable expectation that the conversation is private. This privacy provision prevents people who record public meetings or inadvertently pick up conversations while shooting video in public from accidentally committing felonies. Civil liberties advocates argue that on-duty police officers, like people attending city council meetings or walking down a public street, do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. For Graber to be convicted under Maryland’s wiretapping law, a prosecutor would have to argue that Uhler—a police officer who had pulled over a motorist, drawn his gun, and yelled at the guy on the side of a busy highway—had a reasonable expectation that the encounter would remain private.
 
Both Illinois and Maryland have wiretap laws that are under review. It's legal in all other states, but don't expect to be greeted with smiles.
Carlos Miller's blog, Photography is Not a Crime has a lot of articles about photographers (and videographers) rights. It has an anti-cop spin, but some interesting articles.
 
... It has an anti-cop spin...

Hard to have a pro-cop spin when doing such work. Most groups involved in cop-watching are only interested in bad cops because we do no need to worry about good cops :D

Police and judicial abuse is nothing new, it has been going on for a long time. Ask Leonard Peltier, the longest jailed political prisoner in the world who has been behind bars for 33 years and counting... The big problem with such things is that most people are not concerned until it happens to them. The most common reaction is that you must have done something to warrant such treatment...

All I can do is repeat what has been said so often before: Know your rights and the laws concerning what you do. When involved in such a situation, remain calm and business like.

And join a copwatch group in your area. If there isn't one, create one.

CopWatch : Ian Inaba, Lisa Hsu : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
 
Leonard Peltier - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Since he was convicted of 2 murders, and appeals have upheld both convictions, most would disagree Mr. Peltier is a political prisoner.

I'm sure you've heard of The Innocence Project. Innocent people in prison, Wow, what a surprise.

As for Peltier, you may want to read a bit more than Wiki which btw, in most high schools, is not considered a valid source of info...

Read this book for example:
Amazon.com: In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (9780140144567): Peter Matthiessen: Books

The book itself is a great example of the abuses of power by the police and justice system. Some of the people involved in this scandal kept the book off the shelves for 8 years by suing the publisher and author... but they lost in the end.
 
does that mean the judge could jail the owner of a store that has security cameras? This does not make sense to me. It just sounds like the officials did not like the guy so the searched for a way to make an example of him. What BS.
 
you may want to read a bit more than Wiki which btw, in most high schools, is not considered a valid source of info...

Often you are right but we have here an article with 42 references, all linked and publicly available. The interesting thing is wikipedia is not considered a valid source or info in most places where it's references are. :)
 
does that mean the judge could jail the owner of a store that has security cameras? This does not make sense to me. It just sounds like the officials did not like the guy so the searched for a way to make an example of him. What BS.

It depends. A judge could probably put some one in court in some states, especially if they're running surveillance cameras without having a sign up to warn patrons, but do you really think a judge would endanger their carreer?

The other problem I see with that, is even though it's a private establishment, is it seen as a public location? Is there an expectation of privacy? And that's where this law is getting abused. Judges and officers in some locations are saying that they have a reasonable expectation of privacy during a traffic stop, but the individuals who are pulled over do not.
 
"Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."

Congress does a lot of things it shouldn't do...

I know it's a very touchy subject around here, but this one sentence has wildly different meanings depending on who you ask:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
To me, 'permit' is just a nice way to say 'infringement'. Other people have other opinions, and I'm OK with that.
(There is also some disagreement on just what 'militia' means ... but that's a topic best discussed elsewhere.)

Plus, when this sort of thing really affects you, it's not Congress that you're dealing with.
 
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Judges and officers in some locations are saying that they have a reasonable expectation of privacy during a traffic stop, but the individuals who are pulled over do not.

:lmao: Why would a police officer, a public servant, have any expectation of privacy while doing his job, a public service? The idea stinks like hell if you ask me.


Often you are right but we have here an article with 42 references, all linked and publicly available. The interesting thing is wikipedia is not considered a valid source or info in most places where it's references are. :)

A black man gets lynched; there are 42 witnesses who didn't see a black man getting lynched. Does that mean a black man did not get lynched?

Why don't we ask the aborigines how they look at this? History books in white dominated countries are written by whites, including the references, and are white male centered. Get over it.
 
Why don't we ask the aborigines how they look at this? History books in white dominated countries are written by whites, including the references, and are white male centered.

Very true. But the burden of proof lies on the person who opposes the popular opinion. Any reference written by a person can be cited, and ultimately it's the reader's task to believe what is read. That's the downfall of the wiki, it's freely editable but any line with a citation is passable in any type of academic situation be it highschool or university thesis.

To drive this point home, Wikipedia also says: "Gravitation, or gravity, is a natural phenomenon in which objects with mass attract one another." Do you agree or disagree with this, and if you agree would you accept this description in an academic publication, and would it make a difference to you if it were quoted from wikipedia or from another encyclopaedia even if the quote was the same?

Err that is all, no need to answer I don't want to derail the thread further, PM me if you wish.
 
"Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."

Congress does a lot of things it shouldn't do...

I know it's a very touchy subject around here, but this one sentence has wildly different meanings depending on who you ask:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
To me, 'permit' is just a nice way to say 'infringement'. Other people have other opinions, and I'm OK with that.
(There is also some disagreement on just what 'militia' means ... but that's a topic best discussed elsewhere.)

Plus, when this sort of thing really affects you, it's not Congress that you're dealing with.

I couldn't resist...

 
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Judicial abuse is related to police abuse is related to historical abuse...

But if VI feels I am derailing his thread, I'll be happy to shut up.


Why don't we ask the aborigines how they look at this? History books in white dominated countries are written by whites, including the references, and are white male centered.

Very true. But the burden of proof lies on the person who opposes the popular opinion. Any reference written by a person can be cited, and ultimately it's the reader's task to believe what is read. That's the downfall of the wiki, it's freely editable but any line with a citation is passable in any type of academic situation be it highschool or university thesis.

To drive this point home, Wikipedia also says: "Gravitation, or gravity, is a natural phenomenon in which objects with mass attract one another." Do you agree or disagree with this, and if you agree would you accept this description in an academic publication, and would it make a difference to you if it were quoted from wikipedia or from another encyclopaedia even if the quote was the same?

Err that is all, no need to answer I don't want to derail the thread further, PM me if you wish.

Nothing personal Garbz. I mentioned the Aborigines because you are in Australia. If you were still in Austria, I would have mentioned the Roms. And if you were in the US, I would have talked of the Blacks or the Indians.

Now, you are correct that "the burden of proof lies on the person who opposes the popular opinion" but only in the legal sense. And judicial abuses is what we are discussing here, unless I am mistaken.

Earlier I mentioned the "Innocence Project" which shows that the opinion of the majority/popular opinion (the jury in this case) can be wrong. I also mentioned Leonard Peltier. He was convicted while the other two defendants in the same case (but different trial venue) were let go...


Yes, it is the responsibility of the reader to differentiate between the BS and the reality when reading and that is exactly why Wiki is such a joke. Anyone can post anything there and the uninformed have to decide which is which according to their lack of knowledge. :lmao:

Sounds like a photo forum to me.
 

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