I do not pay attention to the Libertarian Alliance Forum, but many do of course, and according to one of these guys, Sean Gabb recently posted there a link to this:
It is a video clip of a bolshy brummy filming a couple of policemen. The policemen spot him doing this and tell him to stop. He tells them to take a hike. He is breaking no laws. He also, as if interchangeably, says: “I’m doing nothing wrong”, and of course I agree. But, however right, and however desirable from the point of view of restraining the misdeeds of the powerful, how long before this kind of behaviour becomes illegal in Britain? I actually worry that too much publicity might be given to stuff like this, because it may give our meddling legislators ideas (was it wise to do this posting?)
Somebody told me last night (I think it was Perry de Havilland) that it is already illegal in some states of the USA to record the police. Commenters here often say that freedom etc. is doomed in Britain and that if you want such things you must emigrate to the USA. Hm.
At present the British Government already films whatever it wants. But cheap video cameras are rapidly becoming so small that soon everyone else who is inclined – rather than just wannabee spies and private investigators with money to burn – may be filming whatever they want, wherever they want. How will that play out, I wonder?
Cheers for the link Brian… The Little Man has been sleeping somewhat of late, and we need to kick ourselves back into gear… I’ll stick up here what I stuck up there in commentary, because I think it’s equally appropriate.
and Mr. de havilland knows of what he speaks as in many states (such as washington state, massachusetts and new hamphire that i know of) it is indeed illegal to record an officer in the course of him preforming his duty.
they of course are free to record you when they pull you over.
Well technology will take care of this.
Pretty soon cameras will be pin sized, worn like a lapel badge and attached to a huge( in capacity) hard drive and mike.
How will the police know whether they are being filmed or not?
I already have video facility in my top pocket digital camera and video facility on my phone.
No, they are on a hiding to nothing trying to make filming the police illegal. What is good for the goose is good for the gander after all.
Shame on Mass and New Hampshire though!
What do they call it, The Rodney King Law?
The first thing that comes across to me, is both parties are bloody stupid. My partner is a police officer, and the officers in this instance really should have checked if it was an offence.
That said, the guy behind the camera was a idiot. The police *asked* him to stop filming and he got arsey, they checked status and left. No harm, no foul. The only thing the police are guilty of here is dealing with the situation poorly and rushing in before checking status.
Every officer I’ve met is in favour of police having cameras on thier helmet/vest recording everything they see and hear for protection from aligations of abuse. Living with a copper has really made me see just how hamstrung the police are by our joke of a justice system. By and large they are good people doing a hard job.
In a few states, it’s illegal to record a conversation unless all parties are aware of the recording. They’re the so-called “two party” states. That’s how Linda Tripp got spanked: Maryland is like that, and her recording of her conversation with Monica Lewinski about the sex act that wasn’t a sex act violated MD state law.
Up here Where the Columbines Grow, we’re a one-party state: the recorder in my pocket has saved me no end of grief when some asshat didn’t like being told to go talk to the judge about his driving, and tried to claim that I called him lots of bad words and slammed his fingers in the car door. (Yes, was investigated for that exact complaint. The tape recording of him threatening to find my house and rape my then-wife helped me more than him.)
BTW: Shame on Massachusetts for even existing. I think we should grant them independence whether they want it or not.
I believe that recording anything that is out in public, such as on the sidewalk, is legal. And from what I remember, anyone that was brought to trial for recording the police has had the law found unConstitutional, but I could easily be mistaken on that.
Oh but they have. They are making the law up on the spot and trying to goad chummy into making a public order offence.
Sure the guy is a tosser, but to defend liberty we must defend the actions of some tossers – not just the people we like.
I saw this video some time ago, and agree that Pollard is winding the police up. He is attempting to film the police furtively, from behind a bush. That is either because he doesn’t want to be noticed (unlikely) or he wants to arouse suspicion and draw the coppers into a confrontation. What is more worrying is the fact that the officer concerned seems to think he can make up the law on the spot or is so ignorant of it that he thinks filming the police is illegal.
I feel that we should leave the police to make their own mistakes instead of antagonising them into it, the latter smacks awfully of entrapment.
It’s already illegal in France.
Here is Jersey the Police have a catch-all: failure to obey a police officer is an offence.
Can’t see any potential for abuse with that.
What sunfish said. I’m not aware of (not saying they don’t perhaps exist) any law saying “you cannot videotape police” in any state.
But in some states you can’t tape anyone without their knowledge – not just police.
(If there are any specific can’t-video-police statutes, I’d love to see the actual wording and justifications used in the codes, because that even more daft than two-party “wiretapping” laws.)
Every officer I’ve met is in favour of police having cameras on thier helmet/vest recording everything they see and hear for protection from aligations of abuse.
Yes I agree too. But I want the same privilege.
When you worked as long in the Criminal Justice System, as long as I did, you would have come accross many citzens who were charged with “Assaulting a police officer” etc who had done nothing of the sort. But without witnesses, have been convicted on the strength of a dodgy Officers word.
No reflection on Sunfish. He has long been promoted to “single most sane Police Officer I ever met” (albeit virtually). He is head and shoulders above a whole batch of “real” ones I have met in my time.
The cameraman is being arsey, but yes, the coppers really should not bluff. Funny that they let stroppy, yet allow knucklescraping yobs and skanky mares to swear at them and give lip.
Cut the paperwork, remove the distortion of central targets and a bit of good leadership and I would think many of these problems will melt away.
I’ve pinned up my stocking over the fireplace, too.
Don’t have time to check the link, but I understand France has recently made it illegal for any but ‘registered’ journalists to do this sort of thing.
In th eUS one would imagine that the Miranda rights worked both ways – id est, should anyone in contact with law enforcement say “I want a (arrgh)” anyone nearby could be considered to be a recording witness, just as a police stenographer would be.
What really gets up my left nostril is the “Law Enforcement Professional”‘s dividing the populact into US and THEM. Too many times I’ve hade coffee (or a few pints) with cops of my acquaintance refer to non-cops as “civilians”.
This usage (I invariably inform them) is both inaccurate and invidious. The police are not (at least not in Texas) military (for whom the distinction to “civilian” is uniquely appropriate), and by so designating themselves as other than civilian they are erecting a barrier of privelege.
RAB:
Look at how your government hires cops over there.
Here, it takes anywhere from two months to two years to get hired, including a polygraph or voice-stress-analysis interview to detect deception in the rest of the application process, psychological testing, and one hell of a background investigation (For instance, the detective interviewed a several college professors of mine, even though I went to school in a different state. And my neighbors at several previous addresses. And relatives of mine.)
UK Police “Services” will often stop with proof of UK citizenship or employment eligibility and a ten-minute PNC inquiry.
Over here, very few agencies will accept applications from people under 21, even in the even-fewer states that will certify an under-21 applicant. (CO POST flatly will not allow someone that young to even apply for certification.) Most departments have an unwritten rule of being uninterested in applicants much younger than 24-25, due to maturity issues. Over there, I believe that constables can be given warrant cards at 18, and Blunkett’s Bobbies can be hired at 16. (Do they need an Appropriate Adult when the Internal Affairs investigator comes to talk to them?)
And so you get the maturity issues that come from hiring people who are frankly too damn young for this job.
Granted, literally 99.9% of us are armed daily, compared to maybe 10-15% over there, but unarmed cops can badly abuse discretion as well, which I think is what you just said.
If you read Stuart Davidson’s blog, he had a discussion of this not long ago. He was a cop in the UK, and just took a job with a department in Canada. Canadian agencies have hiring practices very much like ours in the US, and it was interesting to see the culture clash between American readers who mostly responded with “seems normal to me” and UK readers who had to pick their jaws up off of the floor.
Charles:
If you can point to the exact statute, I’d love to see it.
ktel60:
AGNTSA!
From Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary entry for “civilian:”
What I see there is an attempt to intimidate someone who is behaving in a lawful (if arsey) fashion with the implicit threat of violence if he doesn’t capitulate.
There is a name for that – it’s called assault.
I don’t see the value in pointing out that Pollard is a bit of a prick. He is, but that should never be a consideration for the police. I am sorry to say that, in my experience, the police will approach anyone who is doing anything even slightly unusual and ask them for their name and address to do a background check, as if they assume that anyone not at home in bed by 9pm has an outstanding arrest warrant. It’s the look of disappointment on their face each time it come back blank that worries me.
“From Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary entry for “civilian:”
1: a specialist in Roman or modern civil law 2 a: one not on active duty in the armed services or not on a police or firefighting force b: outsider ”
Which offers nothing as to whether Merriam-Webster is taking their cue from the increasing usage by the police, which would effectively make your argument circular. The inherent problem with arguing from the authority of dictionaries; if enough Humpty-Dumpties use the term however they see fit, that is what is in the dictionary.
Perhaps a citation dating the non-police usage to the same proximate time as the non-military usage would be more convincing.
Of course, the way most police use it, Definition 2b is the most pertinent.
“I heard about a couple living in the USA
They traded in their baby for a Chevrolet”
Elvis Costello
I know of no “Don’t tape the police” statutes in the US. I am not an expert on the laws of all 50 states, however. If anyone knows of the existence of such a statute, please post a citation to that statute. I would like to see it.
A brief internet search comes up only with news reports of a Mass. case and one from Washington state in which a person was charged under a wiretapping statute with non-consensual recording of a person’s voice.
So please, cite me a statute, not a confused news report.
JBoone,
I just read about this one recently. I suspect that, while not usually this egregious, they are more common than we hear about.
Here is the initial report.
And here is the DA’s response when he dropped the charge.
I imagine you can call DA Freed for the exact statute. The problem in the initial video that led to this post is the same as the one in this story I am linking except the PA police actually went so far as to arrest the guy and threaten him with seven years.
You can take two interpretations of this incident. One, the police made a reasonable interpretation of the law and the DA chose to interpret it differently. Or two, the police made an unreasonable interpretation of the law and either deliberately or negligently used that erroneous interpretation to threaten a law abiding citizen.
I’m not sure which of those two is more disconcerting. Personally, I think the possibility that the law could be reasonably interpreted by law enforcement professionals to read it the way they did, would be a far worse situation.
Which offers nothing as to whether Merriam-Webster is taking their cue from the increasing usage by the police, which would effectively make your argument circular.
My understanding is that the whole point of the police when thay were founded was that they were a civilian force. That was their raison d’être, and what distinguished them from all previous law enforcement bodies.
Why is the video no longer available?
mike
I can’t get the video any longer with Internet Explorer, but I can with Firefox. Any help?
Help or not, what’s that about? Anybody?
It is most likely a local issue with your machines because I can see it just fine with three different browsers. Try clearing your caches (hit F5 if using a PC).
Thanks Perry, I cleared my cache (firefox) and it’s working now.
If you listen carefully toward the end, you can hear the little girl say “that scared me, i thought they was going to arrest ya!” – it is sad that these ‘adults’ go to their threats and posturing with complete indifference to there being a scared little girl watching on the doorstep.
Some states may have passed laws making the recording of police illegal, but they will have trouble enforcing them. In my borough the police in the course of issuing a traffic citation were surreptitiously recorded by a passenger. They discovered the camera and arrested the operator on the basis of a Pennsylvania law prohibiting recording same. The ACLU agreed to take the case and threatened, effectively, to bankrupt the borough. The charges were dropped. Any jurisdiction that goes through to conviction will make some defendant and attorney very wealthy.
The police are not (at least not in Texas) military (for whom the distinction to “civilian” is uniquely appropriate), and by so designating themselves as other than civilian they are erecting a barrier of privelege.
This is something that has irked me for a long time. Sorry, LEO-types, you are civvies too: DOD DIRECTIVE 5525.5
In Australia police have the right to tell you to leave a suburb if they don’t like the look of you. If you don’t obey them you are arrested and charged, as happened to me.
I think this is not only illegal in France and some American states, but in all European jurisdictions which follow the German law, so basically all over Central Europe.
The continental European legal systems have a human right called the ‘right of personality’ and it is illegal to record images of anybody without a clear consent or an authorization by the law. This is something barely similar to the protection of privacy in common law countries, and members of the police force have this right, too.
In Hungary, you cannot film anybody on a public space without a proper cause. There are some important exceptions: democratically elected people (who exercise power in public), people, who appear in the media from their free will, or people, who use the public space for a public goal (who are demonstration for a political end) may be filmed and even put on broadcast.
There is a clear distinction between people, who are ‘public personalities’, i.e. are elected for a position or publicly campaigning for it, or working for the public, civil servants or policemen and policewomen. In the case of ‘public personalities’ the freedom to talk about and publish public event is more important. In other cases, the right for privacy is more important. A policeman is not choosing this vocation to make political decisions which is open for public debate but to execute the legal norm. There work can be debated in the court. Of course, there are gray areas, such as members of the police force in a political demonstration. In case of ambiguity it takes a judge to decide about the legality of the filming and publication of the images.
So, if the people on the posted film would be members of the Hungarian police force, they could sue to have the film removed if they wished plus for damages. And I think this is a good way to protect our freedoms.
I have to disagree in part, Antal. I cannot see why the police when on duty should have any right to privacy whatsoever (other than reasonable operation security in some very limited circumstances).
There are many types of duty. There are policemen and policewomen who help to give traffic instructions when the traffic lights are out. I do not see why should I have more right to take away their photo images than the guy’s who is unloading a truck on the street.
I see the point that the Libertarian Alliance wants to make a point about the abundance of CCTV. But in our jurisdiction judges and even an ombudsman can always control the use of CCTVs: the material can only be used for legal means, must be deleted in a short time, the person who authoroized its use by the law is known as well as the person who operates it. All misuses can be sanctioned (in my country, they do sanction it). This is not the case when you just start to film anybody on the street.
Our law uses terms like ‘public event’, ‘public figure’ which can be freely filmed and broadcast. Last year there were violent riots, and many protesters and policemen were prosecuted by films taken by the media, protesters and CCTV.
Actually, privacy is not a very good conceit. European people have a right to conceal their face, their poetry or whatever (these are personality rights which I am not sure you have in the British legal system). If you film the police but make sure that the face cannot be recognized you can do it.
Another difference: in many European countries there is a very strict difference between civil servants and policemen, solders on duty and politicians on duty. In my country the former are forbidden by law to exercise party politics, represent a party, or to run for any elected public or party seats. They are forbidden from politics, and the right to film and broadcast people who shape public affairs is a political right.
Anyhow, this is how filming the police is regulated in Central Europe. Sorry for the lengthy posting. (Daniel is my given name).
lol adaniel is brainwashed!!!
The major problem in the UK and every country come to think about it, is government bodies including enforcement agents, operating in secrecy and unaccountability.
In the UK, the section of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 that deals with this is in section 76, where it states that it will now be a crime to “elicit, publish or communicate” information about members of armed forces etc.
From the legislation:
“(1) A person commits an offence who—
(a) elicits or attempts to elicit information about an individual who is or has been—
(i) a member of Her Majesty’s forces,
(ii) a member of any of the intelligence services, or
(iii) a constable,”
And could result in being banged up for 10 yrs! and fine (cos lets face it, the government corporations have to make money too)
So, thanks to the twin towers and 7/7, they can pretty much do anything they like.
How much power do you need?
Matt in his post mentioned that most police are good people, and that is true. However, they are being forced to act in a way that has nothing to do with protect & serve, and they know it.
Not being able to hold them accountable IF they act out of line, is the begining of the end for any concept of freedom and liberty.