Illegal to record an on-duty officer?

I'm looking forward to when one of these laws gets challenged in court and finally thrown out for good. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy if you're a public employee, on duty, in a public place. It doesn't matter how much you try to torture the words "reasonable", "private", or "public"<p>If someone really is obstructing police work, then the current statutes against obstructing police work are applicable. Police should be limited to enforcing those and not try to criminalize photography.

I immediately wondered how the Rodney King case would have been different if it was affected by a law of this kind. Does anyone know if the video footage would have been inadmissable?<p>On a different note, I have spent a lot of time in developing countries, and some of the most consistent hallmarks are ridiculous bans on photographing anything government-related. Laws like this in the US make me worry about the country sliding backwards into dysfunction.

It will be interesting to watch the outcomes of the appeals.<p>The dangerous underlying issue is applying statutes to situations that they were not written to cover. If the government wants to make it illegal to videotape police officers, the law should say "it is a class 1 felony to videotape police officers". If the intentions of what a law prohibits is not made clear, how can people be expected to comply? When the law can be shaped to cover whatever a prosecutor dislikes about a particular person, then law becomes a tool of oppression, not a way to ensure an orderly society. How can I not violate the law if I don't know what the law is!?<p>The second dangerous underlying issue is that it is not clearly illegal to pass such a law.<p>People tend to misuse the expression "police state", but if these convictions stick, that is exactly what this is. When you are legally unable to prepare evidence in your own defense, there might as well not be a criminal justice system at all.<p>I propose that we pass a law, perhaps with a clever name like the "PROTECT CHILDREN act" (you make the backronym), that makes it a Class I felony for any police officer or other government official acting in an official capacity to interfere with any video recording of events that would otherwise occur in the plain view of the recorder. (You can't go into someone's home and videotape the police, but you can videotape the police when they come to arrest you.)<p>This will never happen, though. Oh well, at least everyone has McDonalds and a big-screen TV...

But I thought the surveillance rule was "If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear"?<p>That is what I find most hilarious about this. We are supposed to submit to warrantless wiretapping, and routine public recording because it "makes us safer". Yet Police aren't required to do the same.

A few well known photogs need to get together and launch a "Film the 5-0" day where everyone just goes out and films cops for a day. Bring the issue to a head instead of quietly letting them pass more restrictive laws like they have in the UK.

Why the question mark? If you live in Illinois, Massachusetts, or Maryland, the title reads "It is illegal to record an on-duty officer."<p>And not just sort of illegal. Class 1 felony punishable 4-15 years in prison illegal.

I agree that police abuse is a problem, and I also agree that laws like the ones mentioned in the article are an obscene violation of our liberties; however, I'm starting to see the problems that recording officers can cause. I was recently leaving North Avenue Beach after playing beach volleyball when a gang fight erupted. Hundreds of kids started mobbing each other and causing all kinds of mayhem. I got out of there quickly, so I don't know what exactly went down, but I do know that the day before there was an attack on joggers, fights, arrests, and even a shooting.<p>Here's a story mostly focused on what happened the day before I was there: <a href="http://cbs2chicago.com/local/north.avenue.beach.2.1714897.html" rel="nofollow">http://cbs2chicago.com/local/north.avenue.beach.2.1714897.ht...</a><p>There hasn't been a ton of news coverage about the recent problems at North Ave Beach beyond the article above, but I was able to find a few videos of the violence on YouTube like this one:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDd5-QfjDXM&#38;has_verified=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDd5-QfjDXM&#38;has_verified=...</a><p>It seems to me that the focus of the videos is more on how the cops are treating the criminals than what the criminals are doing (assaulting police officers and acting like idiots in the video above). A lot of comments on the Second City Cop blog - <a href="http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com</a> - have indicated that law enforcement officers in Chicago are becoming extremely hesitant to act because they are worried about how their actions may look on camera.<p>Yes, "citizen journalists" with cell phone cameras will help to curb police abuse, but they will also discourage use of force by police officers when it is justified. The video above isn't the best example since the cops do end up using force to restrain some of the perpetrators, but they do seem to show a decent amount of restraint. In the situation that I saw, the cops seemed wary of getting involved.<p>The situation that I witnessed opens up a number of other issues, but my point is that I want the people who are paid to protect me to be fully empowered to do what they need to do to quell situations like a massive gang fight on the beach.<p>I don't think that passing laws prohibiting citizens from recording on-duty officers is the right way to go about this, but I do think that citizens and the media need to be more understanding of the fact that sometimes it is necessary for cops to use force. A 30 second YouTube clip doesn't always tell the whole story, yet these types of videos can ruin an officer's career.<p>Social media is a great thing for Democracy. I think that recording police is a good thing. I just think that knee-jerk reactions to news that comes in bits and pieces can be extremely damaging to our society. Our law enforcement officers shouldn't be afraid of making the right decision because an edited video clip will make it look like abuse.

I think the benefit of people being able to record police officers in action far outweighs any disadvantages.<p>Beyond this, I am rather offended that it seems to be ok for any number of local governments, businesses, and who knows who else to record <i>me</i> as I go about my daily business out in the world, and then claim it's somehow not ok for me to do the same to the police, or anyone else, in a public setting.

"Drew is being prosecuted for illegal recording, a Class I felony punishable by 4 to 15 years in prison."<p>The sentence length mentioned strikes me as severe, seems the law is being use in a way that differs from the original intent.

This is, of course, a terrible thing, but it's nothing new.<p>From personal experience, back in 1991 I was with a group of friends, one of whom was using a camcorder to record a police officer. The cop threatened him, exclaiming "Get that camera thing away from me!".<p>The difference now is the ubiquity of video recording devices, and thus increased perceived urgency on the part of police to defend themselves against them.

So are the viewers on you tube co conspirators complicit for failing to report a crime?<p>This is scary and ridiculous at the same time.

I find this all very disturbing. One of the principles of democracy is transparency and government accountability. Clearly at this time the citizens of Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland and wherever else this happens deserve the government they make for themselves. I would like to see a broad ranging Supreme Court ruling allowing everyone the right to film in public. If not by the court, then some action by Congress.

&#62; 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.<p>This is the worst part of this. Frivolous lawsuits, okay, but seeing this blatant violation of the spirit of the law upheld really sucks.

I've written my governor on this. We'll see what kind of canned half-assed response it gets.

This sounds like they're basically copied what's been happening in the UK, where photographers in public places have been harassed and sometimes arrested. The excuse given is usually that photographs could aid terrorists in planning an attack, but of course the notion that terrorists abstain from using Flickr, Google street view or Google Earth is absurd.<p>In the UK the "war on photography" has been going on for at least the last few years. For an example see <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2010/feb/21/police-arrest-photographer" rel="nofollow">http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2010/feb/21/police-arrest...</a>

"A lot of comments on the Second City Cop blog - <a href="http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com</a> - have indicated that law enforcement officers in Chicago are becoming extremely hesitant to act because they are worried about how their actions may look on camera."<p>Good.

And then who watches the police? This is how police states are finalized.

Anything a cop says is copyrighted by the police department.

Best part of all this is if you are filming something and the police approach you, and don't give you an opportunity to turn off your camera, you are going to commit a crime whether you like it or not!

Actually, most state constitutions protect recording in public places. The free speech clauses allow making, transmitting, and publishing anything you want, and an audio recording is simply a publication of one record to yourself. To put it another way, if an audio recording can be prohibited, then the same law could also provide for summary execution for taking pencil and paper notes, which is a patent civil rights violation. This is a matter of established black letter law, with precedents out the wazoo.<p>The classical wiretap laws are based on a theory of trespass. It is trespass and vandalism to plant a bug in someone's office. Recordings from the bug are not a violation of some nebulous (and expandable) right to privacy, but rather the ill-gotten gains of a crime.<p>And what are the cops thinking, anyway? When you place yourself outside the protections of the law, you are outside the protections of the law. If I get beaten and robbed with impunity, and locked up for 20 years if I try to protect myself, I'll simply kill every cop that so much as looks at me wrong.