Video Taping the Police and Your Rights

[WaTcHeR]

I'm no lawyer, but as a working photographer, I try to understand the law as it applies to digital photography as best I can. That's no easy feat: Laws are often confusing, and a lot of people rely on "common sense" when it comes to guessing what's legal. But sometimes the law doesn't always make sense. A while back I wrote two articles on the subject: "Your Photos, Your Rights, and the Law," and "More on Your Photos and the Law." I recently heard about a few incidents that made me think it's time to take another look at the legal side of photography.

There's a lot of confusion about what's legal to photograph and where it's okay to use a camera. This has gotten even more challenging in our post-9/11 world, in which some people are suspicious of anyone with a long lens.
Photography's Golden Rule

The most important thing to know about your rights as a photographer: In general, you can photograph anything or anyone as long as you are on public property. Public property includes city streets, municipal parks, and national parks and forests. Nonetheless, Internet photography forums are chock full of tales about people who have been challenged or harassed when using a camera in public. Check out dpreview.com for an example of this sort of thing.

It's important to realize that public property does not include places like the mall, parking lots, churches, or amusement parks. These might appear to be public locations, but they are actually private property--and management can tell you to put the camera away or ask you to leave.

Nonetheless, many interesting events happen on public property. Auto accidents, fires, and crimes in progress are all the sorts of things that we photographers would be thrilled to capture with the camera stowed in the glove compartment. Be smart about how you do this, though: Keep a respectful distance; stay out of the way of emergency responders; and never cross a police barricade.
What to Do When Challenged

Unfortunately, law enforcement does not always understand your rights as a photographer. Photography forums are also brimming with tales about people who have been stopped, questioned, and sometimes even detained by police when using a camera in public. It's understandable: Police officers cannot possibly commit thousands of laws to memory, and consequently they have to react to real-world situations using their own judgment. If you're shooting photos near an auto accident, for example, and a police officer orders you to stop, my advice is to comply. There will be opportunities to lodge a complaint with the police or educate your local sheriff's office about First Amendment rights. In the moment, though, being obstinate can get you arrested for failing to comply with the direction of a police officer, which is a separate and very punishable offense.

While being challenged by the police can be frightening, being confronted by ordinary citizens can be just as problematic. A friend of mine recently went to see a concert and was told he couldn't bring his camera inside since he was clearly a "professional photographer." When he pressed the bouncer for more details, he was told that the camera lens had to be shorter than an inch. The club's intent was obvious: They wanted to limit photography to point-and-shoot cameras and mobile phones. However, the rules were confusing and unlikely to produce the desired effect. Case in point: My friend put a short lens on his digital SLR and had his girlfriend carry the telephoto lens in her bag.

Of course, the bouncer was within his rights to impose rules for using cameras within the club. One thing he can't do: Confiscate the camera or your memory card. If you'd like to read more about your rights, and possible remedies if your rights get trampled, visit The Photographer's Right, a Web page maintained by a real lawyer--so you can trust what he says a lot more than me. The page even contains a downloadable summary of your rights and what to do if you're challenged. I highly recommend reading it carefully.

There Are Always Exceptions

Even though the general rules about where you can photograph are pretty simple, there are always exceptions and complications. Even from a public road, you can't necessarily photograph government and military buildings, for example, and local statutes may apply. New York City is embroiled in an effort to limit public photography, for instance. See "Picture New York Without Pictures of New York" for a fascinating look at how photo rights in the Big Apple are changing.


http://www.pcworld.com/article/159046/y ... e_law.html

[WaTcHeR]

[WaTcHeR]

[WaTcHeR]

Boston Cops are the biggest pussies in America! Boston Cops harassing me for taking photos of perp that knocked down a cyclist. Cops like the one in the video should have their nuts cuts off for treating American citizens that way.

[WaTcHeR]

Digital audio recorder in pocket earns man wiretapping charges


Got a digital voice recorder like one of these? Watch out how you use it or you could land yourself in scorching legal trouble. One man recently found that out the hard way, after he was arrested and discovered to be recording the goings-on with just such a device in his pocket. Not only is he now facing charges for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and trespassing, he's also charged with unlawful wiretapping and possessing a device for wiretapping.

The story goes that one Chi Quang Truong was embroiled in a dispute with a Massachusetts auto service center, which didn't repair his car as quickly as Truong wanted. Truong got into a verbal scuffle with the service shop and the police were called. Apparently Truong was recording all of this -- for reasons unknown -- using a device stowed in his pocket, and cops added the wiretapping charges to his rap sheet during his arrest.

But wait a second: Don't you need a wire to get charged with wiretapping? I thought so too, and the theory here is that since Truong didn't have explicit permission to record the conversation (memories of Linda Tripp), he was slapped with the additional charges. In 12 states (California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington) you're required to get the permission of all parties on the line before making any kind of recording. In the rest of the country, any single member that's part of the conversation can legally record it without consent from the other parties. And as Network World notes, wiretapping laws largely extend to in-person communications now, so no wire is required.

Still, does the punishment really fit the crime? Wiretapping is a class D felony, and that can mean (based on my admittedly limited understanding of criminal statutes) up to 12 years in prison. While Truong is unlikely to face anything that severe (and, in all probability, will have the wiretapping charges dropped as his prosecution progresses), he probably shouldn't be facing charges for any of this. And "possession of a wiretapping device"? Yikes. Even my iPhone has a voice recorder feature built in. I'm in possession of such a device any time I step out in public.

Check your own pockets, briefcase, purse, or backpack: You might be a criminal!




http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/150820

[WaTcHeR]

[WaTcHeR]

[WaTcHeR]

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.

Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.

The legal justification for arresting the "shooter" rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where "no expectation of privacy exists" (Illinois does not) but in practice this exception is not being recognized.

Massachusetts attorney June Jensen represented Simon Glik who was arrested for such a recording. She explained, "[T]he statute has been misconstrued by Boston police. You could go to the Boston Common and snap pictures and record if you want." Legal scholar and professor Jonathan Turley agrees, "The police are basing this claim on a ridiculous reading of the two-party consent surveillance law - requiring all parties to consent to being taped. I have written in the area of surveillance law and can say that this is utter nonsense."

The courts, however, disagree. A few weeks ago, an Illinois judge rejected a motion to dismiss an eavesdropping charge against Christopher Drew, who recorded his own arrest for selling one-dollar artwork on the streets of Chicago. Although the misdemeanor charges of not having a peddler's license and peddling in a prohibited area were dropped, Drew is being prosecuted for illegal recording, a Class I felony punishable by 4 to 15 years in prison.

In 2001, when Michael Hyde was arrested for criminally violating the state's electronic surveillance law - aka recording a police encounter - the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld his conviction 4-2. In dissent, Chief Justice Margaret Marshall stated, "Citizens have a particularly important role to play when the official conduct at issue is that of the police. Their role cannot be performed if citizens must fear criminal reprisals…." (Note: In some states it is the audio alone that makes the recording illegal.)

The selection of "shooters" targeted for prosecution do, indeed, suggest a pattern of either reprisal or an attempt to intimidate.

Glik captured a police action on his cellphone to document what he considered to be excessive force. He was not only arrested, his phone was also seized.

On his website Drew wrote, "Myself and three other artists who documented my actions tried for two months to get the police to arrest me for selling art downtown so we could test the Chicago peddlers license law. The police hesitated for two months because they knew it would mean a federal court case. With this felony charge they are trying to avoid this test and ruin me financially and stain my credibility."

Hyde used his recording to file a harassment complaint against the police. After doing so, he was criminally charged.

In short, recordings that are flattering to the police - an officer kissing a baby or rescuing a dog - will almost certainly not result in prosecution even if they are done without all-party consent. The only people who seem prone to prosecution are those who embarrass or confront the police, or who somehow challenge the law. If true, then the prosecutions are a form of social control to discourage criticism of the police or simple dissent.

A recent arrest in Maryland is both typical and disturbing.

On March 5, 24-year-old Anthony John Graber III's motorcycle was pulled over for speeding. He is currently facing criminal charges for a video he recorded on his helmet-mounted camera during the traffic stop.

The case is disturbing because:

1) Graber was not arrested immediately. Ten days after the encounter, he posted some of he material to YouTube, and it embarrassed Trooper J. D. Uhler. The trooper, who was in plainclothes and an unmarked car, jumped out waving a gun and screaming. Only later did Uhler identify himself as a police officer. When the YouTube video was discovered the police got a warrant against Graber, searched his parents' house (where he presumably lives), seized equipment, and charged him with a violation of wiretapping law.

2) Baltimore criminal defense attorney Steven D. Silverman said he had never heard of the Maryland wiretap law being used in this manner. In other words, Maryland has joined the expanding trend of criminalizing the act of recording police abuse. Silverman surmises, "It's more [about] ‘contempt of cop' than the violation of the wiretapping law."

3) Police spokesman Gregory M. Shipley is defending the pursuit of charges against Graber, denying that it is "some capricious retribution" and citing as justification the particularly egregious nature of Graber's traffic offenses. Oddly, however, the offenses were not so egregious as to cause his arrest before the video appeared.

Almost without exception, police officials have staunchly supported the arresting officers. This argues strongly against the idea that some rogue officers are overreacting or that a few cops have something to hide. "Arrest those who record the police" appears to be official policy, and it's backed by the courts.

Carlos Miller at the Photography Is Not A Crime website offers an explanation: "For the second time in less than a month, a police officer was convicted from evidence obtained from a videotape. The first officer to be convicted was New York City Police Officer Patrick Pogan, who would never have stood trial had it not been for a video posted on Youtube showing him body slamming a bicyclist before charging him with assault on an officer. The second officer to be convicted was Ottawa Hills (Ohio) Police Officer Thomas White, who shot a motorcyclist in the back after a traffic stop, permanently paralyzing the 24-year-old man."

When the police act as though cameras were the equivalent of guns pointed at them, there is a sense in which they are correct. Cameras have become the most effective weapon that ordinary people have to protect against and to expose police abuse. And the police want it to stop.

Happily, even as the practice of arresting "shooters" expands, there are signs of effective backlash. At least one Pennsylvania jurisdiction has reaffirmed the right to video in public places. As part of a settlement with ACLU attorneys who represented an arrested "shooter," the police in Spring City and East Vincent Township adopted a written policy allowing the recording of on-duty policemen.

As journalist Radley Balko declares, "State legislatures should consider passing laws explicitly making it legal to record on-duty law enforcement officials."

Wendy McElroy is the author of several books on anarchism and feminism. She maintains the iconoclastic website ifeminists.net as well as an active blog at wendymcelroy.com.

The author of this post can be contacted at tips@gizmodo.com

http://gizmodo.com/5553765/are-cameras-the-new-guns

[WaTcHeR]

PORTSMOUTH — A New Castle man arrested at a July 4 house party is charged with a count of wiretapping, alleging he used his cell phone to film the police response.

A press release about the party where 20 people were charged did not disclose the wiretapping arrest, but police confirmed Tuesday that Adam H. Whitman, 20, of New Castle was arrested for wiretapping. However, the charge is likely to be dismissed and/or replaced with another charge, possibly disorderly conduct or obstructing government administration, said Capt. Mike Schwartz.

The police spokesman said Whitman was “impaired by alcohol” when he was arrested and when the case was later reviewed, wiretapping didn't seem to be “a viable charge.” According to the sergeant, police continue to review the case which entails files from city police, as well as officers from the responding towns of New Castle, Rye, Greenland and state troopers.

Police officers stole two cell phones, one of them Whitman's, said Schwartz.


http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/ ... -100709886

[WaTcHeR]

PORTSMOUTH — A New Castle man arrested at a July 4 house party is charged with a count of wiretapping, alleging he used his cell phone to film the police response.

A press release about the party where 20 people were charged did not disclose the wiretapping arrest, but police confirmed Tuesday that Adam H. Whitman, 20, of New Castle was arrested for wiretapping. However, the charge is likely to be dismissed and/or replaced with another charge, possibly disorderly conduct or obstructing government administration, said Capt. Mike Schwartz.

Capt. Mike Schwartz said Whitman was “impaired by alcohol” when he was arrested and when the case was later reviewed, wiretapping didn't seem to be “a viable charge.” So we'll just dream some other charge, because you don't mess with the police or record them!

Police officers stole two cell phones, one of them Whitman's, said Schwartz.

I'm assuming this is in New Hampshire? Below is the law for recording.

New Hampshire

It is a felony to intercept or disclose the contents of any telecommunication or oral communication without the consent of all parties. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 570-A:2-I. It is punishable by imprisonment of one to seven years. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann § 625:9. However, it is only a misdemeanor if a party to a communication, or anyone who has the consent of only one of the parties, intercepts a telecommunication or oral communication. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann § 570-A:2-I. Misdemeanors are punishable by imprisonment up to one year. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann § 625:9.

Any person whose telecommunication or oral communication is intercepted or disclosed has a civil cause of action against any person who unlawfully obtains such communication and is entitled to recover: actual damages at a rate of $100 per day or $1,000, whichever is greater; punitive damages; and reasonable attorney fees or other litigation costs. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann § 570-A:11.



It's not illegal to video tape the police, it's the "audio" recording that the government has made illegal. The kid wasn't recording private citizens, he was recording public servants as the American public should have that right. But you always have those pussy ass officers that want to charge you with everything they can, so to have the chance of sticking their tongues up the asshole of the government.

[WaTcHeR]

Simon Glik, a lawyer, was walking down Tremont Street in Boston when he saw three police officers struggling to extract a plastic bag from a teenager’s mouth. Thinking their force seemed excessive for a drug arrest, Glik pulled out his cellphone and began recording.

Within minutes, Glik said, he was in handcuffs.

“One of the officers asked me whether my phone had audio recording capabilities,’’ Glik, 33, said recently of the incident, which took place in October 2007. Glik acknowledged that it did, and then, he said, “my phone was seized, and I was arrested.’’

The charge? Illegal electronic surveillance.

Jon Surmacz, 34, experienced a similar situation. Thinking that Boston police officers were unnecessarily rough while breaking up a holiday party in Brighton he was attending in December 2008, he took out his cellphone and began recording.

Police confronted Surmacz, a webmaster at Boston University. He was arrested and, like Glik, charged with illegal surveillance.

There are no hard statistics for video recording arrests. But the experiences of Surmacz and Glik highlight what civil libertarians call a troubling misuse of the state’s wiretapping law to stifle the kind of street-level oversight that cellphone and video technology make possible.

“The police apparently do not want witnesses to what they do in public,’’ said Sarah Wunsch, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, who helped to get the criminal charges against Surmacz dismissed.

Boston police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll rejected the notion that police are abusing the law to block citizen oversight, saying the department trains officers about the wiretap law. “If an individual is inappropriately interfering with an arrest that could cause harm to an officer or another individual, an officer’s primary responsibility is to ensure the safety of the situation,’’ she said.

In 1968, Massachusetts became a “two-party’’ consent state, one of 12 currently in the country. Two-party consent means that all parties to a conversation must agree to be recorded on a telephone or other audio device; otherwise, the recording of conversation is illegal. The law, intended to protect the privacy rights of individuals, appears to have been triggered by a series of high-profile cases involving private detectives who were recording people without their consent.

In arresting people such as Glik and Surmacz, police are saying that they have not consented to being recorded, that their privacy rights have therefore been violated, and that the citizen action was criminal.

“The statute has been misconstrued by Boston police,’’ said June Jensen, the lawyer who represented Glik and succeeded in getting his charges dismissed. The law, she said, does not prohibit public recording of anyone. “You could go to the Boston Common and snap pictures and record if you want; you can do that.’’

Ever since the police beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1991 was videotaped, and with the advent of media-sharing websites like Facebook and YouTube, the practice of openly recording police activity has become commonplace. But in Massachusetts and other states, the arrests of street videographers, whether they use cellphones or other video technology, offers a dramatic illustration of the collision between new technology and policing practices.

“Police are not used to ceding power, and these tools are forcing them to cede power,’’ said David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Ardia said the proliferation of cellphone and other technology has equipped people to record actions in public. “As a society, we should be asking ourselves whether we want to make that into a criminal activity,’’ he said.

In Pennsylvania, another two-party state, individuals using cellphones to record police activities have also ended up in police custody.

But one Pennsylvania jurisdiction has reaffirmed individuals’ right to videotape in public. Police in Spring City and East Vincent Township agreed to adopt a written policy confirming the legality of videotaping police while on duty. The policy was hammered out as part of a settlement between authorities and ACLU attorneys representing a Spring City man who had been arrested several times last year for following police and taping them.

In Massachusetts, Wunsch said Attorney General Martha Coakley and police chiefs should be informing officers not to abuse the law by charging civilians with illegally recording them in public.

The cases are the courts’ concern, said Coakley spokesman Harry Pierre. “At this time, this office has not issued any advisory or opinion on this issue.’’

Massachusetts has seen several cases in which civilians were charged criminally with violating the state’s electronic surveillance law for recording police, including a case that was reviewed by the Supreme Judicial Court.

Michael Hyde, a 31-year-old musician, began secretly recording police after he was stopped in Abington in late 1998 and the encounter turned testy. He then used the recording as the basis for a harassment complaint. The police, in turn, charged Hyde with illegal wiretapping. Focusing on the secret nature of the recording, the SJC upheld the conviction in 2001.

“Secret tape recording by private individuals has been unequivocally banned, and, unless and until the Legislature changes the statute, what was done here cannot be done lawfully,’’ the SJC ruled in a 4-to-2 decision.

In a sharply worded dissent, Chief Justice Margaret Marshall criticized the majority view of a law that, in effect, punished citizen watchdogs and allowed police officers to conceal possible misconduct behind a “cloak of privacy.’’

“Citizens have a particularly important role to play when the official conduct at issue is that of the police,’’ Marshall wrote. “Their role cannot be performed if citizens must fear criminal reprisals when they seek to hold government officials responsible by recording, secretly recording on occasion, an interaction between a citizen and a police officer.’’

Since that ruling, the outcome of Massachusetts criminal cases involving the recording of police by citizens has turned mainly on this question of secret vs. public recording.

Jeffrey Manzelli, 46, a Cambridge sound engineer, was convicted of illegal wiretapping and disorderly conduct for recording MBTA police at an antiwar rally on Boston Common in 2002. Though he said he had openly recorded the officer, his conviction was upheld in 2007 on the grounds that he had made the recording using a microphone hidden in the sleeve of his jacket.

Peter Lowney, 39, a political activist from Newton, was convicted of illegal wiretapping in 2007 after Boston University police accused him of hiding a camera in his coat during a protest on Commonwealth Avenue.

Charges of illegal wiretapping against documentary filmmaker and citizen journalist Emily Peyton were not prosecuted, however, because she had openly videotaped police arresting an antiwar protester in December 2007 at a Greenfield grocery store plaza, first from the parking lot and then from her car. Likewise with Simon Glik and Jon Surmacz; their cases were eventually dismissed, a key factor being the open way they had used their cellphones.

Surmacz said he never thought that using his cellphone to record police in public might be a crime. “One of the reasons I got my phone out . . . was from going to YouTube where there are dozens of videos of things like this,’’ said Surmacz, a webmaster at BU who is also a part-time producer at Boston.com.

It took five months for Surmacz, with the ACLU, to get the charges of illegal wiretapping and disorderly conduct dismissed. Surmacz said he would do it again.

“Because I didn’t do anything wrong,’’ he said. “Had I recorded an officer saving someone’s life, I almost guarantee you that they wouldn’t have come up to me and say, ‘Hey, you just recorded me saving that person’s life. You’re under arrest.’


http://www.boston.com/news/local/massac ... ecordings/

[WaTcHeR]

Authorities say they have evidence that Luis Soto was near a bank that was robbed in Berlin, Conn. Was there an eyewitness? No.

Soto was reportedly betrayed by his cell phone. Federal authorities sought reams of records from phone companies. They said the data -- which lists which cell towers handled certain calls -- revealed that Soto was not only close to the bank, but he was close to other suspects in the robbery.

Should law enforcement agencies be able to obtain this sort of information without a warrant? That's a question that will soon be debated in a U.S. District Court in Connecticut.

Defense lawyers and advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation say the way the government obtained the cell information constitutes an unreasonable search and seizure.

"It really is a search, a modern-day search," said David McGuire, an attorney with the Connecticut chapter of the ACLU. "It's not really any different in our perspective than … [police] going in and searching a location without a warrant."

But while Americans might reasonably expect that the government can't eavesdrop on conversations without a warrant, law enforcement officials say people have no reasonable expectation that their cell phone's whereabouts is a private matter.


http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1 ... s=newswire

[KC]

Cop harasses videographer, then admits it was solely to "intimidate" him

By Carlos Miller - carlosmiller.com

Adam Mueller of Cop Block was videotaping a motorcycle cop from a respectable distance in a New Jersey strip mall parking lot when the cop got off his bike and stormed toward him in an aggressive manner.

The following exchange took place:

"Give me your license, insurance and registration card," the cop ordered.

"Am I under arrest?" Mueller aske More..d.

"Did I say that?" the cop responded.

"Am I legally required to do that?" Mueller asked.

"Yeah, if I ask you for it," the cop lied.

"I don't know if that's true sir, can you show me that law," Mueller said. "You're getting very aggressive with me, sir, I don't like that at all."

"I didn't do anything to you," Mueller added.

"What's your problem?" the cop asked.

"Nothing," Mueller said.

"What are you doing?" the cop demanded.

"I'm filming a public official, that's what I'm doing."

"And I'm asking you for ID," the cop said.

"I don't have to answer that question."

"Oh really, you're a lawyer now."

The altercation was interrupted by a couple beckoning the officer to report a man who had passed out in on a nearby sidewalk.

Mueller ended up informing a sergeant who had also responded to the man passed out about the motorcycle cop's aggressive behavior.

The motorcycle cop ended up driving towards Mueller to apologize for the incident, blaming his behavior on the fact that he had a long day.

Yes, try that excuse next time you go off on a client or customer.

"The whole point was to intimidate you to back off," the cop eventually admitted.

Yes, we know that was the point. We just didn't think he'd be stupid enough to admit it on camera.

Kudos to Mueller for keeping his cool and not backing down.

[KC]

Cop breaks skater's camera

We were filming in downtown LA when my camera was manhandled by a police officer.
The thing is, it doesn't show what happens after he grabs it, the record button was accidentally pressed when I was trying to prevent my camera from being taken into his hand lens-first. Stuff like this isn't okay, I'm going to talk with a lawyer. He pretty much tossed it onto the hood of his cop car, where it sat in the hot Los Angeles sun on a black, metal surface for about an hour while I was handcuffed in his back seat-- for FILMING!!!!

[WaTcHeR]

[WaTcHeR]

[WaTcHeR]

[WaTcHeR]

[WaTcHeR]

[WaTcHeR]

[WaTcHeR]