It's About Liberty: A Conservative Forum
Topics => General Board => Topic started by: IronDioPriest on February 25, 2011, 09:06:19 AM
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More and more, police are demonstrating that they are intolerant of citizen video/audio recording of their activities. It seems to me that being able to hold any public official accountable by any means available when that public official is in the course of their duties should be constitutionally protected. As long as the cops are not having their ability to carry out their duty impeded in any way, they don't seem to me to have any ethical or legal justification for interfering with the recording of their activities.
New Hampshire man charged with "illegal wiretapping" for recording traffic stop (http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Weare+police+charge+man+for+recording+traffic+stop&articleId=192f30ad-3c32-4033-9743-8b048ae97170)
For the second time in less than a year, Weare police have charged someone with felony wiretapping for recording police activity.
William Alleman, 51, of 140 Helen Dearborn Road, was charged Tuesday with interception of oral communication prohibited, which is the state's felony wiretapping law...
Police Chief Gregory Begin released few details of the case when reached for comment Thursday. The charges stem from a July 10 traffic stop, Begin said.
"He was making an audio recording of the officer during a motor vehicle stop without getting consent of the officer," Begin said.
Alleman said the charge is based on a cell phone call he made as an officer approached his vehicle.
Police considered it wiretapping because the call was being recorded by a voice mail service without the officer's consent.
<snip>
..."This is another example of the Weare police arresting people for recording public officials doing the public's duties in public," Hipple said....
More at link...
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We live under state tyranny. It is, thus far, the "soft" tyranny that Mark Levin and others refer to (echoing Tocqueville), but it is a tyranny nevertheless. The relationship of citizen and state has been inverted. We are not any longer the sovereign citizens who give the state the authority it employs, we are subjects confined to an ever-shrinking sandbox of permitted activities.
I started a thread about this subject a while back on the old board that generated some interesting comments. The wide consensus is that there is one, and only one, reason for the citizenry to be prohibited from documenting what occurs right out in the open, and that is to allow the police to routinely abuse their authority and to do so with virtual impunity. There's also an element of authoritarian hubris that feels a need to "make examples" of any mere serf with the temerity to question their activities, let alone document them.
This is just one of many strings in the inverted citizen-state relationship, but we are approaching a nexus whose precise circumstances are anybody's guess. What is for sure is that certain people, e.g. police officers, are going to have to choose which side of the impending divide they ultimately come down on.
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...The relationship of citizen and state has been inverted. We are not any longer the sovereign citizens who give the state the authority it employs, we are subjects confined to an ever-shrinking sandbox of permitted activities....
That is precisely the reason I don't put all my eggs in the 10th Amendment basket. Sure, states are supposed to have sovereignty and enumerated powers that cannot be usurped by the federal government. But every state in the country has institutionally violated citizen sovereignty to one degree or another, and undoing the federal usurpations of state sovereignty doesn't address that in the least.
As a Minnesotan, I am acutely aware of this. I only fear the Minnesota state government less because I can drive to the state capital and speak my piece if need be. But state government's ability to threaten my sovereignty is every bit as real as is the federal government's, if not more so due to the close proximity of its power. Police officers are on the front line of enforcement for any infringement of citizen sovereignty. Holding them accountable should be among our first-rights, from a simple common-law perspective.
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An apt area for civil disobedience if there ever was one.
Everyone should record everything.
If they don't like it, tough!
There's more of us than them.
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An apt area for civil disobedience if there ever was one.
Everyone should record everything.
If they don't like it, tough!
There's more of us than them.
I've long thought that one of the only real barriers to widespread civil disobedience has been the fact that most people have too much to lose. They have to worry about keeping their job, homes, etc. The economic drop-off is making that barrier less meaningful for a lot of people.
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An apt area for civil disobedience if there ever was one.
Everyone should record everything.
If they don't like it, tough!
There's more of us than them.
I've long thought that one of the only real barriers to widespread civil disobedience has been the fact that most people have too much to lose. They have to worry about keeping their job, homes, etc. The economic drop-off is making that barrier less meaningful for a lot of people.
They'll lose everything and lose it forever, if they don't stop cowering!
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Wonder if telling the officer in advance would make a difference. "Officer, pursuant to State Law I am informing you that our conversation is being recorded by an electronic device."
I am sure the officer would decline, then the driver could say "what are you concerned about? Are you going to say something inappropriate?"
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Wonder if telling the officer in advance would make a difference. "Officer, pursuant to State Law I am informing you that our conversation is being recorded by an electronic device."
I am sure the officer would decline, then the driver could say "what are you concerned about? Are you going to say something inappropriate?"
It'd be interesting to know. One possibility that would go down the toilet is the possibility of a warning ticket.
::doh::
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Warning ticket? What's a warning ticket?
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Warning ticket? What's a warning ticket?
Slip of the pen/tongue. I meant just a warning.
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While not an attorney or even well versed in the law, my experience has been that the issue at the base of claims like illegal wiretapping is the "expectation of privacy".
I would love to see how a prosecutor would show an expectation of privacy on behalf of a person who is a public employee, in a publicly owned vehicle, on a public throughfare, wearing publically supplied clothing and engaging in a public act.
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While not an attorney or even well versed in the law, my experience has been that the issue at the base of claims like illegal wiretapping is the "expectation of privacy".
I would love to see how a prosecutor would show an expectation of privacy on behalf of a person who is a public employee, in a publicly owned vehicle, on a public throughfare, wearing publically supplied clothing and engaging in a public act.
And when in large number of instances are taping as well from the cameras in their vehicles.
A re-ordering of who works for whom is in order.
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While not an attorney or even well versed in the law, my experience has been that the issue at the base of claims like illegal wiretapping is the "expectation of privacy".
I would love to see how a prosecutor would show an expectation of privacy on behalf of a person who is a public employee, in a publicly owned vehicle, on a public throughfare, wearing publically supplied clothing and engaging in a public act.
And when in large number of instances are taping as well from the cameras in their vehicles.
A re-ordering of who works for whom is in order.
Agreed.
On a lighter note, ever notice the new motto on the Transformers police car?
http://www.cmt.com/videos/misc/160129/transformers-police-car.jhtml?id=1563837 (http://www.cmt.com/videos/misc/160129/transformers-police-car.jhtml?id=1563837)
to punish and enslave
I hope it's not coming to that!