BS

Man Facing 75 Years In Jail For Filming Police

What's wrong with you people in Illinois? Stand up and give this DA a call! Public servants working for YOU have no right to privacy when they are performing their duties. A camera is a important tool in self protection.

After all, If they aren't doing anything wrong there shouldn't be a problem. It should be welcomed. I believe that is what you would be told by officials in regards to many situations.


State's Attorney: Thomas R. Wiseman
Email: twiseman@crawfordcountycentral.com

Office Location:
105 Douglas Street

Robinson, IL 62454

Phone: 618.546.1505
Fax: 618.544.4912

Talk about abuse of power, we can be wire tapped video taped without knowledge or consent but if you record the authorities you're a criminal.

America is not the same country I once knew, I wonder IF and when the American people will rise up and say enough is enough...

First Circuit Court of Appeals Rules that Citizens Can Videotape Police
Tiffany Kaiser - August 31, 2011 1:33 PM

The filming of government officials while on duty is protected by the First Amendment, said the Court

The First Circuit Court of Appeals reached a crucial decision last Friday allowing the public to videotape police officers while they're on the clock.

The decision comes after a string of incidents where individuals have videotaped police officers and were arrested. Police officers across the United States believed citizens didn't have the right to videotape them as they conducted official duties, but issues like police brutality put the issue up for debate.

One instance where a citizen was arrested for videotaping an officer was when Khaliah Fitchette, a law-abiding teenager from New Jersey, boarded a bus in Newark. Two police officers boarded the bus as well to remove a drunken man. Fitchette began taping the police officers because of how they were handling the man, and a police officer instructed her to stop recording them. When Fitchette refused, she was arrested and placed in the back of a cop car for two hours while the officers took her phone to delete the video. Fitchette was then released, but she and her mother then filed suit against the Newark Police Department with the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Another example involves Simon Glik, a passerby on the Boston Common. He used his cell phone to tape police officers when the Boston police were punching a man. Citizens surrounding the scene were saying, "You're hurting him." Glik never interfered with the police officers' actions, but recorded the entire incident. The police officers ended up charging Glik with violating a wiretap statute that prohibits secret recording, even though the police officers admitted that they knew Glik was recording them. He was also charged with disturbing the peace and aiding the escape of a prisoner.

While all charges against Glik were dropped due to lack of merit, he still decided to join forces with the ACLU and file a civil rights suit to prevent a similar incident from occurring with others.

On Friday, August 26, 2011, the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which is New England's highest federal court just below the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled that citizens are allowed to videotape law officials while they conduct official duties.

The city's attorneys made the argument that police officers should have been exempt from a civil rights lawsuit in the first place in this case because the law is unclear as to whether there's a "constitutionally protected right to videotape police" conducting their daily duties in public.

"The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within these principles [of protected First Amendment activity].," said the Court. "Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting the free discussion of governmental affairs."

The Court added that the police officers should have understood this all along, and that videotaping public officials is not limited to the press.

"Moreover, changes in technology and society have made the lines between private citizen and journalist exceedingly difficult to draw," the Court continued. "The proliferation of electronic devices with video-recording capability means that many of our images of current events come from bystanders with a ready cell phone or digital camera rather than a traditional film crew, and news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper. Such developments make clear why the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status."

The Court concluded that police officers are to expect to deal with certain "burdens" as citizens practice First Amendment rights, but that there needs to be a healthy balance between police officers being videotaped while acting irresponsibly and the harassment of officers with recording devices while they're conducting their duties responsibly.

http://www.dailytech.com/First%2BCir...ticle22587.htm

Victory for liberty and the right to videotape public officials

Hear ye, hear ye!!

The First Circuit Court of Appeals--the highest federal court for New England just below the U.S. Supreme Court--last Friday handed down a ground-breaking decision defending our right to videotape the police and other public officials as they engage in their official duties--including when, as in this case, the cops appear to be beating a man on the Boston Common.

As I described in my June 8 "On Liberty" blog, the case involved Simon Glik, a passerby on the Boston Common who pulled out his cell phone video camera when he saw the Boston police punching a man as bystanders shouted, "You're hurting him."

Rather than walk away, Simon pulled out his cell phone. Standing 10 feet away, he videotaped the incident. Although he never interfered with the officers' actions, the police arrested Simon--handcuffing him and seizing his phone. They charged him with violating a wiretap statute that prohibits secret recording (although police admit that they were aware Simon was not acting secretly), aiding the escape of a prisoner, and disturbing the peace.

A court subsequently threw out all criminal charges against Simon as lacking merit. But the effort to intimidate him was clear.

So Simon and the ACLU filed a civil rights suit to ensure that other innocent people won't be similarly arrested for doing what most people would consider a civic duty--documenting public instances of police misconduct.

On Friday, the First Circuit agreed. In a decision that reads like an ode to the First Amendment as key to both liberty and democracy, the court wrote:

"The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within these principles [of protected First Amendment activity]. Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting the free discussion of governmental affairs."

Attorneys for the city argued that police should have been immune from a civil rights lawsuits in this case because, they asserted, the law is unclear as to whether there is a "constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public".

Making the law crystal clear, the Court responded: "Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative."

The Court further stated that such protections should have been clear to the police all along, noting that the right to videotape police carrying out their duties in a public forum is "fundamental and virtually self-evident", particularly on the Boston Common--the "apotheosis of a public forum."

The Court also made it clear that the right to videotape public officials isn't limited to the press. Rather, the Court noted, "the public's right of access to information is coextensive with that of the press."

"Moreover, changes in technology and society have made the lines between private citizen and journalist exceedingly difficult to draw," the Court continued. "The proliferation of electronic devices with video-recording capability means that many of our images of current events come from bystanders with a ready cell phone or digital camera rather than a traditional film crew, and news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper. Such developments make clear why the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status."

The Court also acknowledged the need for balance between holding public officials "accountable when they exercise power irresponsibly and the need to shield officials from harassment, distraction, and liability when they perform their duties reasonably."

Nonetheless, the court concluded, "In our society, police officers are expected to endure significant burdens caused by citizens' exercise of their First Amendment right."

"[T]hough not unqualified, a citizen's right to film government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public space is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment."

http://boston.com/community/blogs/on...nd_the_ri.html

Here's a pretty interesting link on this subject:

http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/0...war-on-cameras

You have every right to film in a public place. You can only be prohibited from filming in privately owned locations. So you can film a bank from the public street. You can be told NOT to film the bank if you are on THEIR property.

So filming police officers while in public is permissable, no matter if they are behaving or not. If they are standing there, or running after a suspect or picking their nose, doesn't matter as long as you're in a public place. You cannot interfere in their duties, i.e. get between them and a suspect, shove a camera into their face when they are trying to work, etc. But filming them is not prohibited, and I've never seen a single instance where they could produce a law that said it was. Officers that try to say you cannot film them are wrong, but sometimes they figure if they say it, you'll leave.

Similiarly, for any member of the public, anyone can film YOU, including the authorities(i.e. traffic cameras, security cameras) if you are in public. So the people saying that the city installing cameras in public places are 'trampling our rights to privacy' are also wrong. If you are in public, you can be filmed. Same for celebrities whining about the papapazzi filming them. If they're in public, suck it up. Of course, crowding up and blocking your walking path is another issue, not just "filming".

I'm happy to see some higher courts upholding the law on this. I recently saw a film(obviously editted to show the 'best bits') where people filmed sensitive buildings like a bank, a Consulate and a corporate headquarters building. The buildings' security came out to insist they could not film the buildings/people entering or exiting the buildings. The excuses ranged from security issues to copyright infringement. The camera operators(some just with small handheld cameras, some with tripods and professional cameras and some with video cameras)were calm and explained they were merely taking pictures for themselves(which was technically a lie, they were doing so for this video) and that it was not a commercial exercise(which was probably true since I don't think they were making money, just doing a social experiment). They asked "Why?" they could not film, but were not confrontational.

*one man was standing on bank property, and had to move back 5 feet to the 'public' sidewalk, otherwise all were on public property.

Almost all the security insisted it was against the law, and eventually called the police(which the camera operators readily agreed they should do). In EVERY case, the police were shown that the camera people were standing in a public zone and taking pictures and the police agreed there was nothing illegal about them doing so. Not one police officer said it was illegal or that they had to leave.

So now the courts are upholding the law, and reenforcing that it IS legal to film in public.

My own brother was attacked and beaten by local police, throwing him on the ground and hitting him as well as slamming him up against the car, all because he was texting our father to tell him he needed his help. They actually pulled him OUT of the police car to do it!

Case Against Michael Allison Dropped

http://reason.com/blog/2011/09/20/il...ejects-eavesdr

Michael Allison, an Illinois man who faced a potential sentence of 75 years in prison for recording police officers and attempting to tape his own trial, caught a break last week when a state judge declared the charges unconstitutional. "A statute intended to prevent unwarranted intrusions into a citizen’s privacy cannot be used as a shield for public officials who cannot assert a comparable right of privacy in their public duties," wrote Circuit Court Judge David Frankland. "Such action impedes the free flow of information concerning public officials and violates the First Amendment right to gather such information."

Allison, who figures prominently in Radley Balko's January cover story about "The War on Cameras," recorded his interactions with police officers during a long-running dispute over cars he was working on at his home in Bridgeport and his mother's home in Robinson. When he was cited for violating Robinson's "eyesore" ordinance, he brought a tape recorder to his trial because he had been informed that there would be no official transcript of the proceedings. The judge accused Allison of violating her privacy, thereby committing a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison under the state's eavesdropping law; she threw in four more charges after discovering that he had recorded his police encounters as well.

Judge Frankland ruled that Allison had a First Amendment right to record the police officers and court employees. And while a ban on recording devices in the courtroom might be justified, he said, the eavesdropping charge was inappropriate. As applied in this case, Frankland said, the eavesdropping law "includes conduct that is unrelated to the statute's purpose and is not rationally related to the evil the legislation sought to prohibit. For example, a defendant recording his case in a courtroom has nothing to do with an intrusion into a citizen's privacy but with distraction."

A few days before Frankland's ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit heard a First Amendment challenge to the eavesdropping statute, one of the country's strictest. Last month a Chicago jury acquitted a woman who was charged with eavesdropping after she recorded a conversation with internal affairs officers to document that they were encouraging her to drop a sexual harassment complaint. Also last month, in a case involving a Boston man charged with eavesdropping for capturing an arrest on his cell phone, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit said such recording is a "basic and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment." Yesterday I noted a California case where exercising that right led to a California man's acquittal.

Originally Posted by Dennis Hultman

Case Against Michael Allison Dropped

http://reason.com/blog/2011/09/20/il...ejects-eavesdr