Justice Department Defends Peoples' Right to Record

[Andara Bledin]

Justice Dept. defends public’s constitutional ‘right to record’ cops (article at Ars Technica)

The headline pretty much speaks for itself.

The Justice Department has stated, plainly and clearly, that the citizens of the US have the right to record the public conduct of the police, and that any police who take action against such are in violation.

The letter is pretty unambiguous that police need to pretend that people recording their activities are not there unless there is a specific reason not to (related to interference, inciting, or safety).

^-.-^

[HYHYBT]

Good luck getting them to abide by this consistently.

[crashhelmet]

Wasn't there somewhere that just passed a law/ordinance that you'd be arrested if you recorded the police without their permission?

[Rageaholic]

Good, there's been too much abuse of police power. If they are going to monitor us, we should be able to monitor them.

[Anthony K. S.]

I can understand barring people from recording police activity if they're actually getting in the police officers' way or otherwise interfering with the officers' work. Or if it's a dangerous situation where people in the area could get hurt.

But apart from that ... I'm not a lawyer, but when you do something in public, doesn't that kind of automatically make it public information?

What is the logic of prohibiting people from recording something like that?

It reminds me of a time when a television reporter was trying to talk to a man. I don't remember what the story was, but this man was an official who was involved in some sort of scandal, and he clearly wanted to avoid media attention.

He held his hand up at the cameras and said, "I did not authorize you to film me."

The reporter replied, "This is a public street, sir."

I'm pretty sure the reporter was right. Again, I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think that people have any legal expectation of privacy when they're standing on a public street.

So, basically, my take on this is :

If you don't like the idea of somebody having a recording of something you did ... then maybe you shouldn't have done it in a public place to begin with.

[Mytical]

<snip> If you don't like the idea of somebody having a recording of something you did ... then maybe you shouldn't have done it in a public place to begin with.

QFT, QFE, quoted because it just dang rocks. So ^ this..so much this.