I’ve seen a lot of stories over the last several months about police harrassing, and often arresting citizens who filmed them committing acts that were perceived to be unjust, or outside the bounds of their lawful duties. Police officers have to understand that the folks who pay their salaries have a right to observe and record them performing their duties – and, they have the right to report them if they break the law. Dishonest cops, understandably, don’t want this to happen. Glenn Reynolds (the Instapundit) writes about two high-profile cases where citizen videographers were acquitted from charges they were “wiretapping” the police while filiming their misconduct:
In Massachusetts, meanwhile, the right of citizens to record the police has been upheld by the United States Court of Appeals For The First Circuit in the case of Glik v. Cunniffe. Passerby Simon Glik caught sight of three police officers arresting a young man. Hearing an onlooker shout that the officers were hurting the man, Glik turned on his cellphone and began capturing video. The police officers objected to being recorded, arresting Glik and charging him with violating the state’s “wiretap” law by recording them without their consent, seizing his camera and memory chip as evidence.
The U.S. Court of Appeals held that the right to record police officers in public is a “clearly established” part of the First Amendment’s protections, and held the officers were thus not entitled to qualified immunity, meaning that they could be sued for their actions. The decision partially rectifies a situation in which for ordinary citizens, ignorance of the law is no excuse, but for police officers and other government officials, it’s an excuse that protects them from being sued.
In these cases, the courts (and juries) stood up for what should be an obvious proposition: Police officers, doing their jobs on the public dime, don’t have any sort of privacy right against the citizens who pay their salaries. Those who feel otherwise — mostly police officers and those connected with them — need to rethink the relationship of government to the citizenry, and perhaps reread the Constitution’s prohibition on “titles of nobility.”
In an era when government feels free to record citizens whenever they’re out in public, government officials need to recognize that this recording business works both ways. Want a surveillance society? Be prepared to live in it.
Read the rest: You have a right to record the police.
