Police fight cell phone recordings that would interefere with a police state

OFF THE WIRE
Police fight cell phone recordings that would interefere with a police state.
Hat Tip to Biker Rogue For turning us on to the original article: Following are excerpts and our commentary from a five page article. Click here to read the entire article:

Daniel Rowinski, New England Center For Investigative Reporting / Jan 12, 2010
Simon Glik, a lawyer, was walking down Tremont Street in Boston when he saw three police officers struggling to extract a plastic bag from a teenager’s mouth. Thinking their force seemed excessive for a drug arrest, Glik pulled out his cellphone and began recording. Within minutes, Glik said, he was in handcuffs.
“One of the officers asked me whether my phone had audio recording capabilities,’’ Glik, 33, said recently of the incident, which took place in October 2007. Glik acknowledged that it did, and then, he said, “my phone was seized, and I was arrested.’’
The charge? Illegal electronic surveillance.
Jon Surmacz, 34, experienced a similar situation. Thinking that Boston police officers were unnecessarily rough while breaking up a holiday party in Brighton he was attending in December 2008, he took out his cellphone and began recording.
Police confronted Surmacz, a webmaster at Boston University. He was arrested and, like Glik, charged with illegal surveillance.
“The police apparently do not want witnesses to what they do in public,’’ said Sarah Wunsch, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, who helped to get the criminal charges against Surmacz dismissed.
A Hartford, Maryland Judge feels differently:
(emphasis ours)
It was reassuring to read Harford County Circuit Court Judge Emory A. Plitt Jr.’s dismissal of wiretapping charges against a knucklehead who was stopped on I-95 for allegedly driving his motorcycle recklessly while not only recording his antics, but also his traffic stop by a Maryland State Trooper.
Wiretapping charges were filed by Harford County State’s Attorney Joseph I. Cassilly ostensibly because he believed the motorcyclist violated Maryland law prohibiting the recording of a private conversation without the other party’s consent. Plitt disagreed. The judge said there is no expectation of privacy in a conversation between a police officer and a suspect being detained in a public place.
“Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public,” Plitt wrote in his opinion. “When we exercise that power in a public fora, we should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation.” Amen.
Ever since the police beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1991 was videotaped, and with the advent of media-sharing websites like Facebook and YouTube, the practice of openly recording police activity has become commonplace. But in Massachusetts and other states, the arrests of street videographers, whether they use cellphones or other video technology, offers a dramatic illustration of the collision between new technology and policing practices
There are a number of incidents currently under investigation in Connecticut. The Video below is one of them:
The interaction of police and cell phones is a currently fraught subject, in part because of another police action last weekend, in which a Quinnipiac University student was allegedly arrested while videotaping police arrest his friend outside Toad’s Place on York Street.
The Connecticut ACLU issued a statement Thursday condemning the police officers’ alleged prohibition of using cell phones to record events inside Elevate as a violation of students’ First Amendment rights to record and broadcast police conduct.
At least one student did manage to record video inside the club, capturing footage of a cops shouting “Who’s next?” and “Anybody else?” after detaining a student. Click the play arrow to watch
Quinnipiac student arrested after filming another student's arrest from The from The Quinnipiac Chronicle on Vimeo.

Police reported, that they eventually had to take the individual doing the recording down. Unfortunately we do not get to see that part of the Video.
“Police are not used to ceding power, (the Boston article continues) and these tools are forcing them to cede power,’’ said David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Unfortunately that statement leads to the perception that "police" perceive themselves as "having power". Obviously in situations where life or property is at risk certain police powers do and should exists. But then again, it is the police mantra, that they serve and protect. They do not serve or protect anybody by demanding secrecy. After all, are we not subject to being filmed when pulled over for a minor traffic stop.
That is done to validate and protect the officer. By the same token, individuals filming police actions can validate and protect the individual. Constitutionally we would question, "whose rights come first, the officers or the individual citizen?"
Ardia said the proliferation of cellphone and other technology has equipped people to record actions in public. “As a society, we should be asking ourselves whether we want to make that into a criminal activity,’’ he said.
Massachusetts has seen several cases in which civilians were charged criminally with violating the state’s electronic surveillance law for recording police, including a case that was reviewed by the Supreme Judicial Court.
Michael Hyde, a 31-year-old musician, began secretly recording police after he was stopped in Abington in late 1998 and the encounter turned testy. He then used the recording as the basis for a harassment complaint. The police, in turn, charged Hyde with illegal wiretapping. Focusing on the secret nature of the recording, the SJC upheld the conviction in 2001.
The New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University is an investigative reporting collaborative. This story was done under the guidance of BU professors Dick Lehr and Mitchell Zuckoff.
These incidents are occurring at a time when many cities want to begin or expand camera surveillance
to almost all "public" domains. This scares us and we would vehemently oppose it as it apparently caused one our founding forefathers "Benjamin Franklin" who said:
" who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
As one who has been profiled and stopped and searched, with gun drawn, any number of times, (most often) in areas beyond the reach of any camera, I can tell you that constitutional rights did not appear to the first and foremost cause of concern among those by whom I was stopped.
There are those who would say, if you are not doing anything wrong why should you worry about it? To them I would say, I am not a person of wealth, privilege or power my only protection from those who are imbued with wealth, privilege and/or power is their upholding of the constitutional rights of the individual.

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.Add to Technorati Favorites
- Samuel Adams