
Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police - mikecane
http://abcnews.go.com/US/TheLaw/videotaping-cops-arrest/story?id=11179076
======
Groxx
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
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
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
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.

------
Sukotto
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.

~~~
Groxx
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.

------
mike-cardwell
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.

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

~~~
apu
Why'd you leave the ACLU?

~~~
pg
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
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
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).

------
tokenadult
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-A...](http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Ex-Cop-Reveals-
Arrested/dp/1556526377)

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
" _Hat tip to him._ " (<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).

------
arethuza
The UK equivalent:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/21/police-
search...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/21/police-search-
mobile-phone-court)

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.

------
adolph
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
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.

------
brianbreslin
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).

------
DanielBMarkham
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.

~~~
CodeMage
_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
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.

~~~
loewenskind
I think you're exaggerating a bit here. First off, the frog thing is a myth.
If you ever actually try to boil a frog you will find that no matter how
slowly you do it, it eventually gets uncomfortable and jumps out.

Stupid people do stupid things. Always have and always will. The difference
now is just the scale and how far their stupidity can travel.

If you get off on worrying a more interesting thing to worry about is what
role governments are going to play. The more technologically we advanced the
less we need them. Of course they don't like this at all. Today we've been
saved because they (a) haven't fully grasp what e.g. the internet means and
(b) where they have, they haven't been "tech savvy" enough to do anything
about it. Both of these will change in time. What's going to happen when they
decide to try and roll everything back a few notches after we've all gotten
used to the convenience?

Personally I think it will work out in the end because it always has so far
(and I can't do much about it in any case) but my scenario has more potential
for trouble than yours I think.

------
RyanMcGreal
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>

~~~
jacquesm
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.

------
ssp
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
Why can't they separate the audio?

------
SeriousGuy
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
16 years is about what he'd get if he killed the officer instead!

~~~
SeriousGuy
no in that case they would execute him by a firing squad and tweet about it
(sick)

------
mtomczak
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.

------
scotty79
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.

------
motters
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>

------
ErrantX
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 :(

~~~
danhood
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-
spe...](http://carlosmiller.com/2010/04/16/maryland-motorcyclist-
spends-26-hours-in-jail-on-wiretapping-charge-for-filming-cop-with-gun/)

~~~
ErrantX
Oh blimey :D ok then I retract that comment!

------
sleight42
I'm surprised that no one bad mentioned this:
<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
That bill carries no legal weight; it's an opinion, not a law.

------
davidwparker
Print version: <http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=11179076>

------
mikecane
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-
vi...](http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/steroid-rage-viagra-
failure/)

------
VladRussian
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.

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

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

------
sukuriant
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-
spe...](http://carlosmiller.com/2010/04/16/maryland-motorcyclist-
spends-26-hours-in-jail-on-wiretapping-charge-for-filming-cop-with-gun/)

------
buzzblog
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
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_rat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate)

~~~
stcredzero
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.

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

------
nailer
Great article. But for Reddit, not HN.

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

