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Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

398 points by mikecane 16y ago

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
I wish I had ten upvotes for this. Or a hundred. I love devil's advocate, so I'll say this just as a way of keeping things in perspective: not a lot of folks would want people videotaping everything they did at work and putting it on YouTube (along with criticisms) I know it would drive me nuts. Society as a whole is going to have to go through some major contortions as people get their heads wrapped around the idea that everything -- and I mean everything -- is going to be digitized and recorded. Cops are pushing back first, but I expect lots more professions to have problems with this as well. A huge shift is going to be that most folks are going to learn exactly what policing is all about. Overall I think this is going to be good, but hell if I'd want to have to live through the changes if I were a policeman.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  I wish all cars came with black boxes and 360-degree video coverage so that we could voluntarily supply this information. People lie when they get into a fender bender. (Note: if you live in a neighborhood where people key cars, either stop parking like a douche or you need to move to a better neighborhood. If people feel free to vandalize in a place, they'll also do other crime.) I'd pay $300 for a device I could just forget about until I needed it. If I recall correctly, video cameras without sound do not violate most wiretapping laws.
  - DanielBMarkham 16y ago
    I had a teenage girl rear-end my car and total it back in the 90s. I was pulling out on to a 4-lane road at night in an underpowered car, she was 1/3 mile away. She dropped her cell phone about the time I pulled out, so she never even saw me, even though I was in her lane for ten seconds or more. She slammed into me at about 65. I was doing maybe 30. It was a hell of a wreck. Thank the stars nobody got hurt. At the time she was very apologetic, humbled, and embarrassed. She was crying -- it was quite a sight. The trooper wrote her up, and I gently made sure the trooper noted that she said this was her fault. Three months later when the court date came, it was a different girl. By then she had convinced herself that we were at fault -- she was not speeding or doing anything wrong, we had pulled out in front of her without giving her time to slow down I honestly think she didn't feel like she was lying. Memory is just a funny thing. I wish we had one of the cams you're talking about. Seems like there is a tremendous need for them (hint! hint!)
    - stcredzero 16y ago
      Something similar happened to me. Get into a situation with a hot-headed cop, a cute shaken looking young woman, and things might not be so favorable for impartial justice. (She was trying to pass me on the right, when I was already in the right lane, by driving over the demarcated roadside parking spaces.) Better if I don't think about it too much.
    - a-priori 16y ago
      I honestly think she didn't feel like she was lying. Memory is just a funny thing. She may not have been, at least as far as she knew. Memory is a funny thing. Memories are malleable when they're active -- when the event has just happened, and each time it's recalled thereafter. They can be expanded or changed if new information is prevented, especially when it comes authority figures... such as alternate theories from parents in denial that their little girl could be so careless. Each time a memory is recalled is an opportunity for it to change, and surely she remembered it many many times over those three months. Another thing is that as memories change, they tend to become more ordinary ('schematic', in psychology lingo). Dropping your cell phone and plowing into a car is not a normal thing, but people get cut off all the time. It's easy to imagine something like that happening, so it's natural that the memory would change to fit a scenario like that. It's not directly related, but to give you an idea of how radically memories can be changed, this is a video talking about a study where they created a memory from scratch. It's called the 'lost in the mall' study, and it's a fairly famous study in memory research: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQr_IJvYzbA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQr_IJvYzbA
  - Nelson69 16y ago
    I started sketching notes for this a couple years back. Some stupid parking lot altercation where someone started lying.. With the costs of flash and cameras becoming so inexpensive and the amount of wireless access around (GSM or Wifi) I was thinking you Tivo style record like 2 to 8 hours of video just with a circular buffer then if a triggering event happens (hazard button pressed, the record button pressed, a crash is detected, air bags deploy, the alarm triggers.. there are others) you store the video from the circular buffer and store live recorded until told not to. Then when you can contact the internet via wifi or possibly gsm, start off loading the video to some server. It seems like onstar already has most of the hard stuff done, they just need some dvr type stuff. 2 cameras in a dome light like area could pretty much cover 270 to maybe a full 360 degree view of the car. I'd guess it's like $1000, just from some past experiences, which isn't terribly unreasonable. On the server there are 2 ways to access the video, the owner's password or a law enforcement key that could be accessed with proper court documents. The other thing I was thinking, it's clearly an owner protection device but if you had some sort of encoded radio signal like they use to change the traffic signal lights. All of the cars in an area could be used to help when there is an Amber alert or some major crime was happening. For a moving violation like that, why does a gun need to be drawn? Was there a threat of violence or just stupidity? The motorcyclist stopped on his own, right?
    - stcredzero 16y ago
      For a moving violation like that, why does a gun need to be drawn? Was there a threat of violence or just stupidity? The motorcyclist stopped on his own, right? I'm a mild-mannered introvert. I have a rust belt near-midwest accent and the benefit of an east-coast Ivy League education. Yet, I have had traffic cops escalate levels of hostility on me even though I am doing my level best to be polite and cooperative. I've also noted that some policemen like to arbitrarily order you around, even when you aren't causing trouble. I've read something about problem steroid use in police causing mood disorders and excess aggression, and this seems to fit very well. I also suspect that this is also connected with my having long hair and being non-white.
    - nitrogen 16y ago
      If there's going to be a camera in my car, it's going to be under my control, not remotely accessible by a third party who may or may not be police on a legitimate investigation.
  - MartinCron 16y ago
    Wiretapping laws only apply to places and scenarios where one could have a reasonable assumption of privacy. As long as you're not driving through my bedroom, you're all right with me.
    - hga 16y ago
      Not true in Illinois, where they explicitly made it illegal to tape cops. Although in all fairness the state laws on wiretapping are designed to protect the guilty (e.g. only the Feds can secretly legally wiretap anyone in the state).
      - MartinCron 16y ago
        I'm operating under the optimistic assumption that the Illinois statues will eventually be found unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.
        hga 16y ago
        One hopes so, but as you stated it ("Wiretapping laws only apply...") this is demonstrably not true. Case law in Massachusetts is also unambiguous in twisting the "on it's face" potentially reasonable law into a law like that in Illinois (the MA courts are fond of this sort of thing). It remains to be seen what the Maryland courts do, especially since this case happened about the same time as a notable police brutality incident where it was only a citizen's video that allowed the truth to prevail. And I've seen enough authority friendly atrocities, ones that don't break down neatly along 4-1-4 "conservative"-"Kennedy"-"liberal" lines, that I'm not even close to 100% sure the Supremes will do the right thing, assuming they even deign to hear such a case. (On the other hand, the two cases I was most thinking of, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_v._Michigan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_v._Michigan and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London do break down that neatly ... except the sides flip. I would cite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McConnell_v._Federal_Election_Commission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McConnell_v._Federal_Election_C... but I don't even want to start to break down who voted how.)
- patio11 16y ago
  I think we all, given a few minutes of reflection, would be glad that we're not judged on a 30 second edited video highlights reel of the worst decisions we've ever made. Particularly not one which stripped the context out of the video. That said, I'm much less concerned about videotaping cops on the street and more concerned with VPI -- videotaped police interrogations. Unlike videotaping cops on the street, they'd mostly be to the benefit of poor & minority suspects rather than tech-savvy twentysomethings who enjoy protesting as a lifestyle. The imposition on the cops is minimal (since the interrogation is theoretically under their control) and the justice gains are huge, and this can be compellingly sold to the cops as in their best interests. (You'll clear more cases with less court time because routine videos of lying perps will cause most of them to take the freaking deal like you want them to.)
  - DanielBMarkham 16y ago
    I hadn't thought about videotaping interrogations. Interesting. Perhaps the question is: what parts of police activity shouldn't be videotaped and published, and why? Undercover busts maybe. You can't spend five years growing a policeman into what looks like a drug dealer only to have him outed on YouTube in ten seconds. Or do we get rid of all undercover police work? Need to think about that some more.
    - BrandonM 16y ago
      Stop making the consumption of drugs illegal, and it's no longer necessary to have a policeman that looks like a drug dealer.
      - rmc 16y ago
        Even if you make drugs legal, we still need undercover operations to deal with criminal organisations. What about the groups that kill people for money, or extort 'protection money', or groups that rob banks? Unless you want to make murder, arson and theft legal, you need to go undercover in these groups.
        16y ago
- openfly 16y ago
  If not for the liberal use of cameras the world would never have heard of Neda in Iran. The US is effectively on a path to making it illegal to spread truth... maybe it is just a small sliver of truth. But I would rather be judged on that small sliver of truth than end up in a situation where it is my word against a police officer. It's an interesting question though.
- tsally 16y ago
  not a lot of folks would want people videotaping everything they did at work Did you know if you get a Top Secret clearance, you have to have anything related to your work release reviewed for the rest of your life? Being awarded privileges by the government comes with additional responsibility. Videotaping the police is the same as monitoring people who work with classified information; it's just part of the job. If someone is uncomfortable with that s/he should find a different job.
  - Retric 16y ago
    I was thinking that the law may only apply to audio recordings as security cameras without such recordings are able to record without breaking the law. So the reality is they are already subject to the similar levels of monitoring. PS: If that's the case it seems like cop/cam might be a marketable product.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - michael_h 16y ago
    > you have to have anything related to your work release reviewed for the rest of your life I'm not sure that this is true.
    - Dove 16y ago
      I don't know about that, but you do see notices all the time that say things like, "Use of this or any other DoD interest computing system constitutes consent to monitoring at all times. . . information placed in this system is not subject to any expectation of privacy." It just comes with the territory. Some jobs are more private, some are more public. Bank tellers, customer service reps, talk show hosts, members of Congress. They all get recorded routinely while working, and for different reasons. Seems to me police interactions are a natural thing to make part of the public record.
      - 16y ago
- CodeMage 16y ago
  Society as a whole is going to have to go through some major contortions as people get their heads wrapped around the idea that everything -- and I mean everything -- is going to be digitized and recorded. That is precisely one of the things that give me the shivers about the society today. I understand Mr. Graber's motivation. I also agree wholeheartedly that the "reasonable expectation of privacy" rule has to be applied consistently, i.e. if a police officer can videotape me over the course of his or her work, then I should be allowed to videotape that officer. That said, what gives me the shivers is that our expectations of privacy, in general, seem to be sliding down a slippery slope of justified surveillance. The first time I read "1984", I was still in school (not even university yet) and it etched itself onto my mind precisely because it's so damn plausible. Everyone would love to think it's impossible because "we would never stand for it", but things keep changing slowly. A commonplace example is your workplace, where your employer can monitor all your activities on their computers (and I mean all, not just network communication), record your business phone calls or videotape you. Also, it has become commonplace to have to do a drug test when applying for a job. Another example is the highway toll system here in Santiago, Chile. Certain highways require you to have a device installed in your car to transit them. Instead of waiting in line at a toll booth, your device communicates with a gate under which your car passes and your billed monthly. Every gate also has cameras to record cases of infractions, when a car without the device passes under the gate. Sure, there are laws and rules that control how all this information can be used. Yet it keeps creeping me out to think that this information is available to multitude of people. Now that information of all sorts can be shared easily and readily on a global scale, it seems even scarier. Now you can be embarrassed, humiliated, falsely accused or harassed literally in front of the whole world. What creeps me out even more is that our expectations of privacy seem to be eroding slowly. If we're so indifferent to being under surveillance in public or at work because it makes it easier to prove who's right and who's wrong, why does it seem so implausible that in some future we would accept the same things in our homes? After all, wouldn't it help cut down on domestic violence and child abuse? I hope I'm not coming across as a borderline paranoid nutjob, but I just felt the need to address the issue.
  - DanielBMarkham 16y ago
    Don't sound like a nut-job to me. It's insane the degree to which people are willing to record and distribute every little bit of their lives. And by insane, I don't mean a good thing. The techno-wonks will tell you that it's all evolving to some kind of wonderful singularity nirvana. But do we really want to become The Borg? Because either we either fiercely keep our lives and thoughts private and personal, or we share everything. Right now there's middle ground, but it's eroding quickly. Seriously. I don't think most people have a clue to how they are giving up their personalities and inner lives or what impact this is going to have on the world. It's like boiling the frog. Each year we share more and more -- first blogs, then tweets, then FB status updates, then location-aware tweets. Soon it will be lifetime webcams that you wear. Each little step folks come out and try to say something like "gee! It's getting hot in here! The water is going to boil!" but then they get shot down with a variation of 1) it's just a small change, and 2) it does more good than harm. Water's going to boil soon, folks. Hope you like it that way. 'Cause there is no stopping it. (It's like if we all got super-powers over the space of 50 years. People think super-powers would rock, but in reality the world would go into the shitter. People would be flying all over the place, knocking of banks, etc. It would be a catastrophe. But it would happen so slowly that there wouldn't really be a moment that you could point your finger at and say there! There is the place where we crossed the line. It's always little good, little bad, works for some folks, sucks for others, etc) It may be a great thing that we're moving towards. But it's not going to be human.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > not a lot of folks would want people videotaping everything they did at work Not a lot of folks carry lethal weapons as part of their job. Not a lot of folks can land you in jail as part of their job. As the ones authorized to use violence and lethal force in order to do their jobs, they should be subject to additional scrutiny.
- mikecane 16y ago
  Hey, I walk down the street and there are private security cameras. I don't feel put upon. The cops are being paid to do a job. WE are their employers. If WE want to tape them, we damn well should be able to -- hell, not "able" to, it's our RIGHT. FYI: I'm in NYC, where the cops are notorious for refusing to give their names or shield numbers and have perfected a jig to move around and prevent people from reading their shield IDs. And also, during protests, they're outright covering them up with tape. EDIT for a bad sentence structure. And then a typo.
- MartinCron 16y ago
  not a lot of folks would want people videotaping everything they did at work and putting it on YouTube It comes down to reasonable expectation of privacy. If anyone is doing work in a public place, it doesn't matter if they are police officers or trash collectors, they don't have any expectation of privacy. The 1984 comparisons are bogus. 1984 was about total surveillance as one of many tools of a totalitarian regime. The cameras in 1984 weren't just out in public, they were in everyone's homes. If you want to do anything privately, do it in a reasonably private place. Problem solved.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Being a police officer is a tough job. It should be a tough job, it comes with a huge amount of responsibility and an enormous capacity for abuse of power. As it turns out though, there is an easy way to avoid the difficulties of police work, and that is choosing a different career.
Groxx 16y ago
There's just something massively wrong with "public servants" claiming they can't be photographed while performing a public service. Bullshit. There would be no complaints if some of them weren't incriminating abusive cops. Notice how many of the cases against photographing are in potential (or blatant) police-abuse situations. The public and the government should be applauding citizens for helping to maintain control, not punishing.
- sophacles 16y ago
  Yes, there would be complaints. Once they adjust to the video taping they will forget the tapes are there and act as they would anyway. The big difference comes because the douches would get caught sooner, as everyone would know a complaint would actually have merit. The cynic in me worries that it would work out this way instead tho: As video of the cops being douches becomes commonplace, people just come to accept it, and it becomes difficult to file a complaint because the official response would be "oh cops are just douches, you shouldn't have gone outside if you cared". Worse, the public attitude would be the same, therefore not voting for, or even voting against, rules holding cops accountable.
  - Groxx 16y ago
    I fear that as well, but if there's enough pressure, the "always on tape" mentality might win out, and good cops could get the recognition they deserve, as well as significantly more evidence (and more accurate - witnesses are pretty bad) for many crimes. If nothing else, it's better than the alternative; when it's your word vs a cop, who's going to be trusted? Disallowing this would encourage abusers. Honestly, I see this as a publicly-run oversight committee. It should be hard to be a cop - a lot of power and respect goes with the title (typically). And if there are fewer abusers, that's likely to increase.
    - vaksel 16y ago
      exactly...like that cop video that surfaced a little while ago of a cop freeing a dog that got caught on the fence and then when he went to his car he found it sitting in his seat. it got that department a ton of positive publicity right now the only times you hear about cops is when they do the bad stuff.
ErrantX 16y ago
Was the camera obscured - as it appears to be? In which case I can kinda see the issue they have (i.e. unaware of being filmed). That seems different from most of the other cases where the filming was pretty overt. Still; it is an extremely bad reaction even so. The thing that shocked me most was.... he drew his gun. Are things really that bad that a traffic stop requires a drawn weapon? Jesus :(
- Groxx 16y ago
  edit: danhood found a pic of the camera + helmet, and it fits compared to the video (IMO). Not obscured at all (also IMO). Go give them the points :) ----- original comment below ----- Obscured: probably. It's a helmet-camera, so it's likely small, and may not appear as such at first glance. But still. One's behavior should not change when being recorded, especially not a cop.
- danhood 16y ago
  I saw an interview with with Mr. Graber on the local news - the camera was in clear view of the officer. A pic of the helmet he was wearing at the time can be found in this article... http://carlosmiller.com/2010/04/16/maryland-motorcyclist-spends-26-hours-in-jail-on-wiretapping-charge-for-filming-cop-with-gun/ http://carlosmiller.com/2010/04/16/maryland-motorcyclist-spe...
  - ErrantX 16y ago
    Oh blimey :D ok then I retract that comment!
- stonemetal 16y ago
  More police are killed during routine traffic stops than during any other activity in the US. So yes things are sadly that bad. The last time I was pulled over for a traffic violation the officer refused to shake my hand because he needed it free to be able to draw his weapon(or so he claimed).
  - moxiemk1 16y ago
buzzblog 16y ago
These prosecutions aren't just wrong, they're un-American. How police and prosecutors sworn to uphold the law can abuse it to this extent boggles the mind.
- politicalist 16y ago
  The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, so it unfortunately looks very American. (If "American" refers to the US alone.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    Indeed. The US laws at various levels are riddled with outdated laws, some centuries old, which can often be conservative enough to do the Taliban proud. At their discretion, the police can decide to enforce one of these on you, which gives them arbitrary power to oppress anyone who pisses them off enough.
  - arethuza 16y ago
    Good grief - that's almost 1%. I thought the UK rate was rather high but that's about five times more!
RyanMcGreal 16y ago
I used to think Steve "wearable PC" Mann was a crackpot, but his sousveillance [1] argument is making more and more sense. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Funny you should say that, I've always thought of him as being ahead of his time. When I read snowcrash I immediately linked the 'gargoyle' character with Steve Mann.
Sukotto 16y ago
Funny how "If you're not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear" only works when the authorities are recording what you say and do and not when you do the same to them.
- pierrefar 16y ago
  Google is taking a similar line: http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-people http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-... http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-12-07-n83.html http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-12-07-n83.html
- Groxx 16y ago
  And yet if someone records me in a public space, I wouldn't have a legal-leg to stand on if I tried to get them jailed / fined / whatever for doing so. Funny.
- helium 16y ago
  There is a huge difference between being monitored whilst performing your duty that you're being paid for by taxpayers and being spied upon in your own private life.
mike-cardwell 16y ago
When its your word against that of a policeman, you've not got much hope. It pisses the police off when you introduce evidence which takes that advantage away from them. All of a sudden they can no longer fall back to lying to defend themselves.
ssp 16y ago
Doesn't this mean a defense attorney could get publicly recorded video or audio evidence thrown out on the grounds that it was illegal wiretapping?
- username3 16y ago
  Why can't they separate the audio?
openfly 16y ago
The cops in all these cases should be charged with treason.
nailer 16y ago
Great article. But for Reddit, not HN.
- jquery 16y ago
  Two years ago this would have been the top comment.
arethuza 16y ago
The UK equivalent: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/21/police-search-mobile-phone-court http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/21/police-search... According to the Terrorism Act you aren't allowed to take pictures of police if the pictures might be of use to a terrorist - which seems to have been translated into a blanket ban on taking any pictures.
SeriousGuy 16y ago
wow 16 years for filimng a police officer who is handing him a ticket! and that guy is in armed forces, good luck with keeping morale of your troops high.
- Devilboy 16y ago
  16 years is about what he'd get if he killed the officer instead!
  - SeriousGuy 16y ago
    no in that case they would execute him by a firing squad and tweet about it (sick)
brianbreslin 16y ago
I'm friends with Carlos Miller who is mentioned in this article. He runs a blog "Photography Is Not a Crime" which has won him several awards. You'd be surprised how many people are getting harassed by cops after they document their encounters with them (outside of the prosecutions).
adolph 16y ago
I really hope that Maryland removes their law against recording public officials and adds a law against recording obnoxious public stunts. This particular case is a really bad example of the “war on photography” because the motorcyclist is not an innocent photographer but a traffic provocateur. Like many, I've followed Radley Balko's articles for some time and have a growing sense of paranoia/constitutional outrage regarding false arrest. I think there are a couple of interesting phenomena here. Some folks may not like the two ideas below but I offer them as a conversation starter for understanding what is happening instead of just venting outrage (which is cool too). 1.) Growing ubiquity of recording equipment formerly thought of as "surveillance equipment.” In the not distant past, very small cameras were specialty equipment only available to certain people. In that time, the common thinking was that a person should have some highly-motivated intent for using such stuff because it was very expensive and if you weren't in law enforcement or a PI, then your use was probably not for good. 2.) Law is complex and large, so law enforcement uses some heuristic of propriety instead of actual laws. My impression is that law enforcement people contain a large but not all-encompassing menu of crimes and use some form of pattern matching to compare the behavior of other humans to this menu. Since it is inefficient to compare every rule to each encounter with other people, law enforcement people use the general feeling they get from an encounter to first signal that something is "wrong" and then guide them to a particular item from the crime menu or reach into the foggier area of laws off their personal menu. Fitting idea 1 with idea 2, it makes sense that there would be an unofficial "war on recording" by law enforcement as the propriety value of the law heuristic is driven in part by cultural values which in turn are slowly influenced by technology. In this case, technology change has occurred more quickly than many people’s sense of probity.
- dlytle 16y ago
  This case isn't about a traffic provocateur; it's about a traffic provocateur being charged with wiretapping laws for taping his police encounter. To be more exact, the problem is that instead of facing a speeding ticket or (at most) a misdemeanor traffic violation, he's going to have to fight a charge that could carry 16 years of imprisonment.
mikecane 16y ago
Why being able to tape the cops matters. One of the most popular posts on a prior blog I did: http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/steroid-rage-viagra-failure/ http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/steroid-rage-vi...
known 16y ago
Never talk to police. Let a criminal lawyer or some competent authority do the talking for you.
pg 16y ago
The ACLU should make these cases a priority. I'd join again if they did.
- apu 16y ago
  Why'd you leave the ACLU?
  - pg 16y ago
    The most recent time, because they sent me a deluge of junkmail. They seemed to have morphed into a marketing organization that also did some legal work. Maybe the problem was that I gave them more than the normal amount of money; maybe the more you give them the more mail they send you.
    - apu 16y ago
      Actually this is a huge problem that regularly deters me (and my parents) from donating more. 95% of organizations view a single donation as an all-access pass to send junk mail, emails, and in many cases even phone calls with "updates" and requests for more money. Sometimes I want to be able to say to organizations: "I would love to support your cause, but not if it means I have to deal with all your crap afterwards!"
      - hga 16y ago
        Indeed. I'm on a small, limited fixed budget and I've found that the amount I can afford to donate to most non-profits is smaller than the amount they'll spend soliciting me afterwords before they give up. I think that's just going to leave me donating money to my alma mater, which actually has to worry about it's overall budget (in a lot of non-profits someone's making serious money sending out all that stuff, e.g. the NRA's PR firm has outright captured it in a weird twist on public choice regulatory capture).
    - philwelch 16y ago
      Many political organizations do this. The NRA will even call your house in the middle of dinner. Is it ever possible to donate anonymously?
jcl 16y ago
Are there any states with laws in place to explicitly protect citizens from this kind of abuse?
scotty79 16y ago
Isn't there some kind of law that citizens have right to record public servant on duty? In Poland you can record policeman on duty (provided that he does not work under cover at the time). Also police cannot routinely record you during for example being pulled over to check your driving licence. That said practice is that policemen routinely record citizens on such occasions and try to make life miserable for the people who record them by even arresting them on false pretenses.
perpetuity 16y ago
SO when a citizen is videotaped in public without their consent can we arrest the entire city government?
davidwparker 16y ago
Print version: http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=11179076 http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=11179076
sleight42 16y ago
I'm surprised that no one bad mentioned this: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-hc298/show http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-hc298/show. HC RES 298 is directly related to this issue. If you have a congressman on the House Judiciary Committee, you should be chewing his ear off on the phone, by email, or better still in person!
- macemoneta 16y ago
  That bill carries no legal weight; it's an opinion, not a law.
motters 16y ago
If they're in a public place the police should be just like anyone else when it comes to taking photos or videos. The Ian Tomlinson case is the best example I can think of which demonstrates why videoing police activities can serve an important civic purpose. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Ian_Tomlinson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Ian_Tomlinson
mtomczak 16y ago
My experience with the legal system has been limited to a handful of vehicular violations and one tour of jury duty. But from that limited perspective, I cannot see why the justice system should minimize useful facts. Apart from the laws that protect other rights incompatible with perfect knowledge.... As a maxim, justice should never hide from evidence.
tokenadult 16y ago
The Maryland law is different from the law in other states. The article text reads, "A dozen states require all parties to consent before a recording is made if there is a 'reasonable expectation of privacy."" First of all, it's very dubious that a state law enforcement officer would consider himself to have an expectation of privacy while interacting with citizens in public places. Fortunately, most states have a more reasonable body of law (like mine) and allow any party to an interaction to record the interaction without permission of the other parties (which is also the rule of federal law on taping interstate telephone conversations, absent a more restrictive rule of state law). It's outrageous that members of the public can be prosecuted for recording the public activities of law enforcement officers. It is also unusual for such a prosecution to be possible. After edit: Another HN thread a while back recommended the book Arrest-Proof Yourself: An Ex-Cop Reveals How Easy It Is for Anyone to Get Arrested, How Even a Single Arrest Could Ruin Your Life, and What to Do If the Police Get in Your Face http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Ex-Cop-Reveals-Arrested/dp/1556526377 http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Ex-Cop-Reveals-A... which I greatly enjoyed reading and which my son is reading this week. There is a lot of good information there about how and why to stay out of trouble with the police.
- hga 16y ago
  "Hat tip to him." (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1371363 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1371363) You're welcome; I'm very glad to learn that someone with your background believes it to be good (I don't have any formal legal or law enforcement background).
VladRussian 16y ago
An employer is allowed to monitor and record employees at the place of work. Applying to police - public is allowed to monitor and record police on public property.
sukuriant 16y ago
Small thing I was noticing, that at least one of the comments to an article[1] makes reference to. The police officer outside of uniform pulled a gun on a man on a bike. In states where citizens are allowed to have equivalent force against an attacker, that police officer could have been shot because he was, as seen in the video, "some dude that jumps out of a car, pulls a gun and says nothing of his being a cop". He is very fortunate, however unwise in that situation. I do hope he learns from it and is removed if this sort of habit is found again. [1] http://carlosmiller.com/2010/04/16/maryland-motorcyclist-spends-26-hours-in-jail-on-wiretapping-charge-for-filming-cop-with-gun/ http://carlosmiller.com/2010/04/16/maryland-motorcyclist-spe...

398 points by mikecane 16y ago

I wish I had ten upvotes for this. Or a hundred. I love devil's advocate, so I'll say this just as a way of keeping things in perspective: not a lot of folks would want people videotaping everything they did at work and putting it on YouTube (along with criticisms) I know it would drive me nuts. Society as a whole is going to have to go through some major contortions as people get their heads wrapped around the idea that everything -- and I mean everything -- is going to be digitized and recorded. Cops are pushing back first, but I expect lots more professions to have problems with this as well. A huge shift is going to be that most folks are going to learn exactly what policing is all about. Overall I think this is going to be good, but hell if I'd want to have to live through the changes if I were a policeman.

stcredzero 16y ago
I wish all cars came with black boxes and 360-degree video coverage so that we could voluntarily supply this information. People lie when they get into a fender bender. (Note: if you live in a neighborhood where people key cars, either stop parking like a douche or you need to move to a better neighborhood. If people feel free to vandalize in a place, they'll also do other crime.) I'd pay $300 for a device I could just forget about until I needed it. If I recall correctly, video cameras without sound do not violate most wiretapping laws.
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  I had a teenage girl rear-end my car and total it back in the 90s. I was pulling out on to a 4-lane road at night in an underpowered car, she was 1/3 mile away. She dropped her cell phone about the time I pulled out, so she never even saw me, even though I was in her lane for ten seconds or more. She slammed into me at about 65. I was doing maybe 30. It was a hell of a wreck. Thank the stars nobody got hurt. At the time she was very apologetic, humbled, and embarrassed. She was crying -- it was quite a sight. The trooper wrote her up, and I gently made sure the trooper noted that she said this was her fault. Three months later when the court date came, it was a different girl. By then she had convinced herself that we were at fault -- she was not speeding or doing anything wrong, we had pulled out in front of her without giving her time to slow down I honestly think she didn't feel like she was lying. Memory is just a funny thing. I wish we had one of the cams you're talking about. Seems like there is a tremendous need for them (hint! hint!)
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    Something similar happened to me. Get into a situation with a hot-headed cop, a cute shaken looking young woman, and things might not be so favorable for impartial justice. (She was trying to pass me on the right, when I was already in the right lane, by driving over the demarcated roadside parking spaces.) Better if I don't think about it too much.
  - a-priori 16y ago
    I honestly think she didn't feel like she was lying. Memory is just a funny thing. She may not have been, at least as far as she knew. Memory is a funny thing. Memories are malleable when they're active -- when the event has just happened, and each time it's recalled thereafter. They can be expanded or changed if new information is prevented, especially when it comes authority figures... such as alternate theories from parents in denial that their little girl could be so careless. Each time a memory is recalled is an opportunity for it to change, and surely she remembered it many many times over those three months. Another thing is that as memories change, they tend to become more ordinary ('schematic', in psychology lingo). Dropping your cell phone and plowing into a car is not a normal thing, but people get cut off all the time. It's easy to imagine something like that happening, so it's natural that the memory would change to fit a scenario like that. It's not directly related, but to give you an idea of how radically memories can be changed, this is a video talking about a study where they created a memory from scratch. It's called the 'lost in the mall' study, and it's a fairly famous study in memory research: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQr_IJvYzbA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQr_IJvYzbA
- Nelson69 16y ago
  I started sketching notes for this a couple years back. Some stupid parking lot altercation where someone started lying.. With the costs of flash and cameras becoming so inexpensive and the amount of wireless access around (GSM or Wifi) I was thinking you Tivo style record like 2 to 8 hours of video just with a circular buffer then if a triggering event happens (hazard button pressed, the record button pressed, a crash is detected, air bags deploy, the alarm triggers.. there are others) you store the video from the circular buffer and store live recorded until told not to. Then when you can contact the internet via wifi or possibly gsm, start off loading the video to some server. It seems like onstar already has most of the hard stuff done, they just need some dvr type stuff. 2 cameras in a dome light like area could pretty much cover 270 to maybe a full 360 degree view of the car. I'd guess it's like $1000, just from some past experiences, which isn't terribly unreasonable. On the server there are 2 ways to access the video, the owner's password or a law enforcement key that could be accessed with proper court documents. The other thing I was thinking, it's clearly an owner protection device but if you had some sort of encoded radio signal like they use to change the traffic signal lights. All of the cars in an area could be used to help when there is an Amber alert or some major crime was happening. For a moving violation like that, why does a gun need to be drawn? Was there a threat of violence or just stupidity? The motorcyclist stopped on his own, right?
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    For a moving violation like that, why does a gun need to be drawn? Was there a threat of violence or just stupidity? The motorcyclist stopped on his own, right? I'm a mild-mannered introvert. I have a rust belt near-midwest accent and the benefit of an east-coast Ivy League education. Yet, I have had traffic cops escalate levels of hostility on me even though I am doing my level best to be polite and cooperative. I've also noted that some policemen like to arbitrarily order you around, even when you aren't causing trouble. I've read something about problem steroid use in police causing mood disorders and excess aggression, and this seems to fit very well. I also suspect that this is also connected with my having long hair and being non-white.
  - nitrogen 16y ago
    If there's going to be a camera in my car, it's going to be under my control, not remotely accessible by a third party who may or may not be police on a legitimate investigation.
- MartinCron 16y ago
  Wiretapping laws only apply to places and scenarios where one could have a reasonable assumption of privacy. As long as you're not driving through my bedroom, you're all right with me.
  - hga 16y ago
    Not true in Illinois, where they explicitly made it illegal to tape cops. Although in all fairness the state laws on wiretapping are designed to protect the guilty (e.g. only the Feds can secretly legally wiretap anyone in the state).
    - MartinCron 16y ago
      I'm operating under the optimistic assumption that the Illinois statues will eventually be found unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.
      - hga 16y ago
        One hopes so, but as you stated it ("Wiretapping laws only apply...") this is demonstrably not true. Case law in Massachusetts is also unambiguous in twisting the "on it's face" potentially reasonable law into a law like that in Illinois (the MA courts are fond of this sort of thing). It remains to be seen what the Maryland courts do, especially since this case happened about the same time as a notable police brutality incident where it was only a citizen's video that allowed the truth to prevail. And I've seen enough authority friendly atrocities, ones that don't break down neatly along 4-1-4 "conservative"-"Kennedy"-"liberal" lines, that I'm not even close to 100% sure the Supremes will do the right thing, assuming they even deign to hear such a case. (On the other hand, the two cases I was most thinking of, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_v._Michigan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_v._Michigan and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London do break down that neatly ... except the sides flip. I would cite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McConnell_v._Federal_Election_Commission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McConnell_v._Federal_Election_C... but I don't even want to start to break down who voted how.)
patio11 16y ago
I think we all, given a few minutes of reflection, would be glad that we're not judged on a 30 second edited video highlights reel of the worst decisions we've ever made. Particularly not one which stripped the context out of the video. That said, I'm much less concerned about videotaping cops on the street and more concerned with VPI -- videotaped police interrogations. Unlike videotaping cops on the street, they'd mostly be to the benefit of poor & minority suspects rather than tech-savvy twentysomethings who enjoy protesting as a lifestyle. The imposition on the cops is minimal (since the interrogation is theoretically under their control) and the justice gains are huge, and this can be compellingly sold to the cops as in their best interests. (You'll clear more cases with less court time because routine videos of lying perps will cause most of them to take the freaking deal like you want them to.)
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  I hadn't thought about videotaping interrogations. Interesting. Perhaps the question is: what parts of police activity shouldn't be videotaped and published, and why? Undercover busts maybe. You can't spend five years growing a policeman into what looks like a drug dealer only to have him outed on YouTube in ten seconds. Or do we get rid of all undercover police work? Need to think about that some more.
  - BrandonM 16y ago
    Stop making the consumption of drugs illegal, and it's no longer necessary to have a policeman that looks like a drug dealer.
    - rmc 16y ago
      Even if you make drugs legal, we still need undercover operations to deal with criminal organisations. What about the groups that kill people for money, or extort 'protection money', or groups that rob banks? Unless you want to make murder, arson and theft legal, you need to go undercover in these groups.
      - 16y ago
openfly 16y ago
If not for the liberal use of cameras the world would never have heard of Neda in Iran. The US is effectively on a path to making it illegal to spread truth... maybe it is just a small sliver of truth. But I would rather be judged on that small sliver of truth than end up in a situation where it is my word against a police officer. It's an interesting question though.
tsally 16y ago
not a lot of folks would want people videotaping everything they did at work Did you know if you get a Top Secret clearance, you have to have anything related to your work release reviewed for the rest of your life? Being awarded privileges by the government comes with additional responsibility. Videotaping the police is the same as monitoring people who work with classified information; it's just part of the job. If someone is uncomfortable with that s/he should find a different job.
- Retric 16y ago
  I was thinking that the law may only apply to audio recordings as security cameras without such recordings are able to record without breaking the law. So the reality is they are already subject to the similar levels of monitoring. PS: If that's the case it seems like cop/cam might be a marketable product.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- michael_h 16y ago
  > you have to have anything related to your work release reviewed for the rest of your life I'm not sure that this is true.
  - Dove 16y ago
    I don't know about that, but you do see notices all the time that say things like, "Use of this or any other DoD interest computing system constitutes consent to monitoring at all times. . . information placed in this system is not subject to any expectation of privacy." It just comes with the territory. Some jobs are more private, some are more public. Bank tellers, customer service reps, talk show hosts, members of Congress. They all get recorded routinely while working, and for different reasons. Seems to me police interactions are a natural thing to make part of the public record.
    - 16y ago
CodeMage 16y ago
Society as a whole is going to have to go through some major contortions as people get their heads wrapped around the idea that everything -- and I mean everything -- is going to be digitized and recorded. That is precisely one of the things that give me the shivers about the society today. I understand Mr. Graber's motivation. I also agree wholeheartedly that the "reasonable expectation of privacy" rule has to be applied consistently, i.e. if a police officer can videotape me over the course of his or her work, then I should be allowed to videotape that officer. That said, what gives me the shivers is that our expectations of privacy, in general, seem to be sliding down a slippery slope of justified surveillance. The first time I read "1984", I was still in school (not even university yet) and it etched itself onto my mind precisely because it's so damn plausible. Everyone would love to think it's impossible because "we would never stand for it", but things keep changing slowly. A commonplace example is your workplace, where your employer can monitor all your activities on their computers (and I mean all, not just network communication), record your business phone calls or videotape you. Also, it has become commonplace to have to do a drug test when applying for a job. Another example is the highway toll system here in Santiago, Chile. Certain highways require you to have a device installed in your car to transit them. Instead of waiting in line at a toll booth, your device communicates with a gate under which your car passes and your billed monthly. Every gate also has cameras to record cases of infractions, when a car without the device passes under the gate. Sure, there are laws and rules that control how all this information can be used. Yet it keeps creeping me out to think that this information is available to multitude of people. Now that information of all sorts can be shared easily and readily on a global scale, it seems even scarier. Now you can be embarrassed, humiliated, falsely accused or harassed literally in front of the whole world. What creeps me out even more is that our expectations of privacy seem to be eroding slowly. If we're so indifferent to being under surveillance in public or at work because it makes it easier to prove who's right and who's wrong, why does it seem so implausible that in some future we would accept the same things in our homes? After all, wouldn't it help cut down on domestic violence and child abuse? I hope I'm not coming across as a borderline paranoid nutjob, but I just felt the need to address the issue.
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  Don't sound like a nut-job to me. It's insane the degree to which people are willing to record and distribute every little bit of their lives. And by insane, I don't mean a good thing. The techno-wonks will tell you that it's all evolving to some kind of wonderful singularity nirvana. But do we really want to become The Borg? Because either we either fiercely keep our lives and thoughts private and personal, or we share everything. Right now there's middle ground, but it's eroding quickly. Seriously. I don't think most people have a clue to how they are giving up their personalities and inner lives or what impact this is going to have on the world. It's like boiling the frog. Each year we share more and more -- first blogs, then tweets, then FB status updates, then location-aware tweets. Soon it will be lifetime webcams that you wear. Each little step folks come out and try to say something like "gee! It's getting hot in here! The water is going to boil!" but then they get shot down with a variation of 1) it's just a small change, and 2) it does more good than harm. Water's going to boil soon, folks. Hope you like it that way. 'Cause there is no stopping it. (It's like if we all got super-powers over the space of 50 years. People think super-powers would rock, but in reality the world would go into the shitter. People would be flying all over the place, knocking of banks, etc. It would be a catastrophe. But it would happen so slowly that there wouldn't really be a moment that you could point your finger at and say there! There is the place where we crossed the line. It's always little good, little bad, works for some folks, sucks for others, etc) It may be a great thing that we're moving towards. But it's not going to be human.
rbanffy 16y ago
> not a lot of folks would want people videotaping everything they did at work Not a lot of folks carry lethal weapons as part of their job. Not a lot of folks can land you in jail as part of their job. As the ones authorized to use violence and lethal force in order to do their jobs, they should be subject to additional scrutiny.
mikecane 16y ago
Hey, I walk down the street and there are private security cameras. I don't feel put upon. The cops are being paid to do a job. WE are their employers. If WE want to tape them, we damn well should be able to -- hell, not "able" to, it's our RIGHT. FYI: I'm in NYC, where the cops are notorious for refusing to give their names or shield numbers and have perfected a jig to move around and prevent people from reading their shield IDs. And also, during protests, they're outright covering them up with tape. EDIT for a bad sentence structure. And then a typo.
MartinCron 16y ago
not a lot of folks would want people videotaping everything they did at work and putting it on YouTube It comes down to reasonable expectation of privacy. If anyone is doing work in a public place, it doesn't matter if they are police officers or trash collectors, they don't have any expectation of privacy. The 1984 comparisons are bogus. 1984 was about total surveillance as one of many tools of a totalitarian regime. The cameras in 1984 weren't just out in public, they were in everyone's homes. If you want to do anything privately, do it in a reasonably private place. Problem solved.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
Being a police officer is a tough job. It should be a tough job, it comes with a huge amount of responsibility and an enormous capacity for abuse of power. As it turns out though, there is an easy way to avoid the difficulties of police work, and that is choosing a different career.

Groxx 16y ago

There's just something massively wrong with "public servants" claiming they can't be photographed while performing a public service. Bullshit. There would be no complaints if some of them weren't incriminating abusive cops. Notice how many of the cases against photographing are in potential (or blatant) police-abuse situations. The public and the government should be applauding citizens for helping to maintain control, not punishing.

sophacles 16y ago
Yes, there would be complaints. Once they adjust to the video taping they will forget the tapes are there and act as they would anyway. The big difference comes because the douches would get caught sooner, as everyone would know a complaint would actually have merit. The cynic in me worries that it would work out this way instead tho: As video of the cops being douches becomes commonplace, people just come to accept it, and it becomes difficult to file a complaint because the official response would be "oh cops are just douches, you shouldn't have gone outside if you cared". Worse, the public attitude would be the same, therefore not voting for, or even voting against, rules holding cops accountable.
- Groxx 16y ago
  I fear that as well, but if there's enough pressure, the "always on tape" mentality might win out, and good cops could get the recognition they deserve, as well as significantly more evidence (and more accurate - witnesses are pretty bad) for many crimes. If nothing else, it's better than the alternative; when it's your word vs a cop, who's going to be trusted? Disallowing this would encourage abusers. Honestly, I see this as a publicly-run oversight committee. It should be hard to be a cop - a lot of power and respect goes with the title (typically). And if there are fewer abusers, that's likely to increase.
  - vaksel 16y ago
    exactly...like that cop video that surfaced a little while ago of a cop freeing a dog that got caught on the fence and then when he went to his car he found it sitting in his seat. it got that department a ton of positive publicity right now the only times you hear about cops is when they do the bad stuff.

ErrantX 16y ago

Was the camera obscured - as it appears to be? In which case I can kinda see the issue they have (i.e. unaware of being filmed). That seems different from most of the other cases where the filming was pretty overt. Still; it is an extremely bad reaction even so. The thing that shocked me most was.... he drew his gun. Are things really that bad that a traffic stop requires a drawn weapon? Jesus :(

Groxx 16y ago
edit: danhood found a pic of the camera + helmet, and it fits compared to the video (IMO). Not obscured at all (also IMO). Go give them the points :) ----- original comment below ----- Obscured: probably. It's a helmet-camera, so it's likely small, and may not appear as such at first glance. But still. One's behavior should not change when being recorded, especially not a cop.
danhood 16y ago
I saw an interview with with Mr. Graber on the local news - the camera was in clear view of the officer. A pic of the helmet he was wearing at the time can be found in this article... http://carlosmiller.com/2010/04/16/maryland-motorcyclist-spends-26-hours-in-jail-on-wiretapping-charge-for-filming-cop-with-gun/ http://carlosmiller.com/2010/04/16/maryland-motorcyclist-spe...
- ErrantX 16y ago
  Oh blimey :D ok then I retract that comment!
stonemetal 16y ago
More police are killed during routine traffic stops than during any other activity in the US. So yes things are sadly that bad. The last time I was pulled over for a traffic violation the officer refused to shake my hand because he needed it free to be able to draw his weapon(or so he claimed).
- moxiemk1 16y ago

buzzblog 16y ago

These prosecutions aren't just wrong, they're un-American. How police and prosecutors sworn to uphold the law can abuse it to this extent boggles the mind.

politicalist 16y ago
The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, so it unfortunately looks very American. (If "American" refers to the US alone.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...
- stcredzero 16y ago
  Indeed. The US laws at various levels are riddled with outdated laws, some centuries old, which can often be conservative enough to do the Taliban proud. At their discretion, the police can decide to enforce one of these on you, which gives them arbitrary power to oppress anyone who pisses them off enough.
- arethuza 16y ago
  Good grief - that's almost 1%. I thought the UK rate was rather high but that's about five times more!

RyanMcGreal 16y ago

I used to think Steve "wearable PC" Mann was a crackpot, but his sousveillance [1] argument is making more and more sense. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance

jacquesm 16y ago
Funny you should say that, I've always thought of him as being ahead of his time. When I read snowcrash I immediately linked the 'gargoyle' character with Steve Mann.

Sukotto 16y ago

Funny how "If you're not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear" only works when the authorities are recording what you say and do and not when you do the same to them.

pierrefar 16y ago
Google is taking a similar line: http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-people http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-... http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-12-07-n83.html http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-12-07-n83.html
Groxx 16y ago
And yet if someone records me in a public space, I wouldn't have a legal-leg to stand on if I tried to get them jailed / fined / whatever for doing so. Funny.
helium 16y ago
There is a huge difference between being monitored whilst performing your duty that you're being paid for by taxpayers and being spied upon in your own private life.

mike-cardwell 16y ago

When its your word against that of a policeman, you've not got much hope. It pisses the police off when you introduce evidence which takes that advantage away from them. All of a sudden they can no longer fall back to lying to defend themselves.

ssp 16y ago

Doesn't this mean a defense attorney could get publicly recorded video or audio evidence thrown out on the grounds that it was illegal wiretapping?

username3 16y ago
Why can't they separate the audio?

openfly 16y ago

The cops in all these cases should be charged with treason.

nailer 16y ago

Great article. But for Reddit, not HN.

jquery 16y ago
Two years ago this would have been the top comment.

arethuza 16y ago

The UK equivalent: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/21/police-search-mobile-phone-court http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/21/police-search... According to the Terrorism Act you aren't allowed to take pictures of police if the pictures might be of use to a terrorist - which seems to have been translated into a blanket ban on taking any pictures.

SeriousGuy 16y ago

wow 16 years for filimng a police officer who is handing him a ticket! and that guy is in armed forces, good luck with keeping morale of your troops high.

Devilboy 16y ago
16 years is about what he'd get if he killed the officer instead!
- SeriousGuy 16y ago
  no in that case they would execute him by a firing squad and tweet about it (sick)

brianbreslin 16y ago

I'm friends with Carlos Miller who is mentioned in this article. He runs a blog "Photography Is Not a Crime" which has won him several awards. You'd be surprised how many people are getting harassed by cops after they document their encounters with them (outside of the prosecutions).

adolph 16y ago

I really hope that Maryland removes their law against recording public officials and adds a law against recording obnoxious public stunts. This particular case is a really bad example of the “war on photography” because the motorcyclist is not an innocent photographer but a traffic provocateur. Like many, I've followed Radley Balko's articles for some time and have a growing sense of paranoia/constitutional outrage regarding false arrest. I think there are a couple of interesting phenomena here. Some folks may not like the two ideas below but I offer them as a conversation starter for understanding what is happening instead of just venting outrage (which is cool too). 1.) Growing ubiquity of recording equipment formerly thought of as "surveillance equipment.” In the not distant past, very small cameras were specialty equipment only available to certain people. In that time, the common thinking was that a person should have some highly-motivated intent for using such stuff because it was very expensive and if you weren't in law enforcement or a PI, then your use was probably not for good. 2.) Law is complex and large, so law enforcement uses some heuristic of propriety instead of actual laws. My impression is that law enforcement people contain a large but not all-encompassing menu of crimes and use some form of pattern matching to compare the behavior of other humans to this menu. Since it is inefficient to compare every rule to each encounter with other people, law enforcement people use the general feeling they get from an encounter to first signal that something is "wrong" and then guide them to a particular item from the crime menu or reach into the foggier area of laws off their personal menu. Fitting idea 1 with idea 2, it makes sense that there would be an unofficial "war on recording" by law enforcement as the propriety value of the law heuristic is driven in part by cultural values which in turn are slowly influenced by technology. In this case, technology change has occurred more quickly than many people’s sense of probity.

dlytle 16y ago
This case isn't about a traffic provocateur; it's about a traffic provocateur being charged with wiretapping laws for taping his police encounter. To be more exact, the problem is that instead of facing a speeding ticket or (at most) a misdemeanor traffic violation, he's going to have to fight a charge that could carry 16 years of imprisonment.

mikecane 16y ago

Why being able to tape the cops matters. One of the most popular posts on a prior blog I did: http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/steroid-rage-viagra-failure/ http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/steroid-rage-vi...

known 16y ago

Never talk to police. Let a criminal lawyer or some competent authority do the talking for you.

pg 16y ago

The ACLU should make these cases a priority. I'd join again if they did.

apu 16y ago
Why'd you leave the ACLU?
- pg 16y ago
  The most recent time, because they sent me a deluge of junkmail. They seemed to have morphed into a marketing organization that also did some legal work. Maybe the problem was that I gave them more than the normal amount of money; maybe the more you give them the more mail they send you.
  - apu 16y ago
    Actually this is a huge problem that regularly deters me (and my parents) from donating more. 95% of organizations view a single donation as an all-access pass to send junk mail, emails, and in many cases even phone calls with "updates" and requests for more money. Sometimes I want to be able to say to organizations: "I would love to support your cause, but not if it means I have to deal with all your crap afterwards!"
    - hga 16y ago
      Indeed. I'm on a small, limited fixed budget and I've found that the amount I can afford to donate to most non-profits is smaller than the amount they'll spend soliciting me afterwords before they give up. I think that's just going to leave me donating money to my alma mater, which actually has to worry about it's overall budget (in a lot of non-profits someone's making serious money sending out all that stuff, e.g. the NRA's PR firm has outright captured it in a weird twist on public choice regulatory capture).
  - philwelch 16y ago
    Many political organizations do this. The NRA will even call your house in the middle of dinner. Is it ever possible to donate anonymously?

jcl 16y ago

Are there any states with laws in place to explicitly protect citizens from this kind of abuse?

scotty79 16y ago

Isn't there some kind of law that citizens have right to record public servant on duty? In Poland you can record policeman on duty (provided that he does not work under cover at the time). Also police cannot routinely record you during for example being pulled over to check your driving licence. That said practice is that policemen routinely record citizens on such occasions and try to make life miserable for the people who record them by even arresting them on false pretenses.

perpetuity 16y ago

SO when a citizen is videotaped in public without their consent can we arrest the entire city government?

davidwparker 16y ago

Print version: http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=11179076 http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=11179076

sleight42 16y ago

I'm surprised that no one bad mentioned this: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-hc298/show http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-hc298/show. HC RES 298 is directly related to this issue. If you have a congressman on the House Judiciary Committee, you should be chewing his ear off on the phone, by email, or better still in person!

macemoneta 16y ago
That bill carries no legal weight; it's an opinion, not a law.

motters 16y ago

If they're in a public place the police should be just like anyone else when it comes to taking photos or videos. The Ian Tomlinson case is the best example I can think of which demonstrates why videoing police activities can serve an important civic purpose. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Ian_Tomlinson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Ian_Tomlinson

mtomczak 16y ago

My experience with the legal system has been limited to a handful of vehicular violations and one tour of jury duty. But from that limited perspective, I cannot see why the justice system should minimize useful facts. Apart from the laws that protect other rights incompatible with perfect knowledge.... As a maxim, justice should never hide from evidence.

tokenadult 16y ago

The Maryland law is different from the law in other states. The article text reads, "A dozen states require all parties to consent before a recording is made if there is a 'reasonable expectation of privacy."" First of all, it's very dubious that a state law enforcement officer would consider himself to have an expectation of privacy while interacting with citizens in public places. Fortunately, most states have a more reasonable body of law (like mine) and allow any party to an interaction to record the interaction without permission of the other parties (which is also the rule of federal law on taping interstate telephone conversations, absent a more restrictive rule of state law). It's outrageous that members of the public can be prosecuted for recording the public activities of law enforcement officers. It is also unusual for such a prosecution to be possible. After edit: Another HN thread a while back recommended the book Arrest-Proof Yourself: An Ex-Cop Reveals How Easy It Is for Anyone to Get Arrested, How Even a Single Arrest Could Ruin Your Life, and What to Do If the Police Get in Your Face http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Ex-Cop-Reveals-Arrested/dp/1556526377 http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Ex-Cop-Reveals-A... which I greatly enjoyed reading and which my son is reading this week. There is a lot of good information there about how and why to stay out of trouble with the police.

hga 16y ago
"Hat tip to him." (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1371363 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1371363) You're welcome; I'm very glad to learn that someone with your background believes it to be good (I don't have any formal legal or law enforcement background).

VladRussian 16y ago

An employer is allowed to monitor and record employees at the place of work. Applying to police - public is allowed to monitor and record police on public property.

sukuriant 16y ago

Small thing I was noticing, that at least one of the comments to an article[1] makes reference to. The police officer outside of uniform pulled a gun on a man on a bike. In states where citizens are allowed to have equivalent force against an attacker, that police officer could have been shot because he was, as seen in the video, "some dude that jumps out of a car, pulls a gun and says nothing of his being a cop". He is very fortunate, however unwise in that situation. I do hope he learns from it and is removed if this sort of habit is found again. [1] http://carlosmiller.com/2010/04/16/maryland-motorcyclist-spends-26-hours-in-jail-on-wiretapping-charge-for-filming-cop-with-gun/ http://carlosmiller.com/2010/04/16/maryland-motorcyclist-spe...