RECORD A COP, GO TO JAIL
Jan. 2nd, 2011 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogITEM: Radney Balko of Reason.com writes a long but worthwhile article on the War On Cameras – i.e. the growing trend of people using cameraphones to videotape encounters with law enforcement officials – and being arrested for it.
Put another way, if you think you’ve been unfairly stopped by a police officer – or if you see one, say, beating someone up – and you pull out yr iPhone to tape it, either as evidence or as a back-up in case yr version of events conflicts with the officer’s, the act of recording can get you arrested and convicted.
Bruce Schneier explains why this is important, and why the police are wrong:
Know yr rights,
This is dF
Put another way, if you think you’ve been unfairly stopped by a police officer – or if you see one, say, beating someone up – and you pull out yr iPhone to tape it, either as evidence or as a back-up in case yr version of events conflicts with the officer’s, the act of recording can get you arrested and convicted.
As citizens increase their scrutiny of law enforcement officials through technologies such as cell phones, miniature cameras, and devices that wirelessly connect to video-sharing sites such as YouTube and LiveLeak, the cops are increasingly fighting back with force and even jail time—and not just in Illinois. Police across the country are using decades-old wiretapping statutes that did not anticipate iPhones or Droids, combined with broadly written laws against obstructing or interfering with law enforcement, to arrest people who point microphones or video cameras at them. Even in the wake of gross injustices, state legislatures have largely neglected the issue.
Bruce Schneier explains why this is important, and why the police are wrong:
Being able to record the police is one of the best ways to ensure that the police are held accountable for their actions. Privacy has to be viewed in the context of relative power. For example, the government has a lot more power than the people. So privacy for the government increases their power and increases the power imbalance between government and the people; it decreases liberty. Forced openness in government -- open government laws, Freedom of Information Act filings, the recording of police officers and other government officials, WikiLeaks -- reduces the power imbalance between government and the people, and increases liberty. [...]
I think we need a law that explicitly makes it legal for people to record government officials when they are interacting with them in their official capacity. And this is doubly true for police officers and other law enforcement officials.
I think we need a law that explicitly makes it legal for people to record government officials when they are interacting with them in their official capacity. And this is doubly true for police officers and other law enforcement officials.
Know yr rights,
This is dF
