IL Court: Eavesdropping Law Violates First Amendment When Used Against People Recording The Police
from the hold-on,-is-this-thing-on? dept
We were just discussing the ruling of a 7th circuit federal judge, Richard Posner, about a controversial Illinois eavesdropping case, in which His Honor seemed to fear that allowing people to record interactions with police would...lead to people recording interactions with police. Or something."If you permit the audio recordings, they'll be a lot more eavesdropping.…There's going to be a lot of this snooping around by reporters and bloggers," U.S. 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner said. "Yes, it's a bad thing. There is such a thing as privacy."To me, that sounds an awful lot like saying you can't increase the speed limit on a street to 65 MPH, because then more people will go 65 MPH. That's kind of the point.
In any case, reader Mark informs us that an Illinois State Court has gone the other way, in the Michael Allison case we wrote about a couple weeks ago, ruling that the law cannot apply to interactions with police and court officials as it violates the 1st Amendment. In the Posner article, plenty of commentors (myself included), drew a line between private interactions between citizens and interactions with public officials, arguing that while administering to a public duty, officials ought not be able to hide behind the veil of privacy. Circuit Court Judge David Frankland outlined a similar, if more eloquent, assertion in his opinion:
“'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,' the judge wrote in his decision dismissing the five counts of eavesdropping charges against defendant Michael Allison."I admit I struggle to see how anyone can disagree. When you're carrying out your public duty, your employer (the public) has a right to document what kind of job you're doing. While, as was Judge Frankland's opinion, we can make some exceptions for the sake of avoiding distractions (Allison actually tried to record in-court proceedings, a no-no), trying to make any of this a felony is downright silly.
The public is the public servant's employer, afterall. And that includes the Justice System as well. It's nice to hear from a judge who hasn't seemed to have forgotten that.
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Filed Under: eavesdropping, first amendment, free speech, illinois, michael allison, police, wiretapping
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Those are so rare nowadays I had to express surprise.
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The ruling and oral argument
I listened to the oral arguments in e360insight v. Spamhaus and his questions/comments did comport with the ruling. I had one friend who practices in the 1st circuit and does quite a bit of appeal work find that sometimes the winning party gets the harder questioning. So, you can't tell.
In reading the comments about Posner, I was thinking that Posner might have been a bit of tongue in cheek about the argument of if they are allowed to do it, then they might do it.
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Re:
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The famous line..
Now what about the poor guys who have been arrested and jailed? If the courts finally rule it was an improper application of the law, happens to the victims? Can they sue for wrongful arrest? Not likely.
One way or another the police will manage to stop people from recording them in the name of something. The cops fear another Rodney King incident, but they are more concerned about keeping people from finding out about it than about not beating people.
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Here is the answer:
http://boingboing.net/2011/09/19/what-will-happen-to-the-police-officers-in-these-two-cases .html
Because if you are not allowed to, then it is your word that means nothing in courts that have a strong bias towards the government institutions.
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Again, there's been no "ruling," just oral arguments. A reporter's notes of what a judge said off-the-cuff signals next to nothing, or less.
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http://www.tulsaworld.com/site/support/javascript.aspx
Sorry about the javascript requirement, paywall morons.
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Public/private
My second point is this.
A police officer is considered a Professional Observer.
You have no recourse in a 1 on 1 challenge. You loose.
What can you do? record the incident, "for clarification"
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not all cops...
Go to youtube and search for "cops interrupting video shoot" by DurtyFilmz
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Granny warned me at a young age. She said: "Son you have to remember, you can't trust Lawyers, Police or Politicians because they all lie for a living. Stay as far away from them as you can and never believe a word any of them say."
Remember that and you will avoid a lot of aggravation.
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They have a saying...
They are afraid of another Rodney King incident, but their idea of how to avoid it is to ban taping the cops.
Cops are really afraid of video since witnesses can be suborned and discredited, but a video is hard to argue with in court.
And of course what if you video an incident where a crazy person charged a cop and the cop properly defends himself and shoots him - I bet the cops would be happy to have that to help their case.
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Bias In Reporting Eavesdropping Cases
Melongo's Motion to dismiss: http://www.scribd.com/doc/81096353/Amended-Motion-To-Dismiss-Illinois-Eavesdropping-Case
State response's to Melongo's motion: http://www.scribd.com/doc/81750317/State-Response-Amended-Motion
Melongo's arguments on her motion to dismiss will be heard on March 13th, 2012. The presiding judge is Goebel.
That's what mean being impartial. Tell the ENTIRE story. Not just a snippet of it.
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http://tinyurl.com/cx45d4b
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