Is it a crime to videotape police?

[Mack27]

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/blog/2010/09/motorcyclist_wins_taping_case.html

This guy was cleared, but police intimidate people videotaping them all the time, and almost everybody will simply stop videotaping when a police officer tells them too. If you don't, you get arrested. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2008566,00.html

Last year, Sharron Tasha Ford was arrested in Florida for videotaping an encounter between the police and her son on a public sidewalk. She was never prosecuted, but in June, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida sued the city of Boynton Beach on her behalf, claiming false arrest and violation of her First Amendment rights.

The legal argument prosecutors rely on in police video cases is thin. They say the audio aspect of the videos violates wiretap laws because, in some states, both parties to a conversation must consent to having a private conversation recorded. The hole in their argument is the word "private." A police officer arresting or questioning someone on a highway or street is not having a private conversation. He is engaging in a public act.

Even if these cases do not hold up in court, the police can do a lot of damage just by threatening to arrest and prosecute people. "We see a fair amount of intimidation — police saying, 'You can't do that. It's illegal,'" says Christopher Calabrese, a lawyer with the ACLU's Washington office. It discourages people from filming, he says, even when they have the right to film.

Ford was not deterred. According to her account, even when the police threatened her with arrest, she refused to turn off her video camera, telling her son not to worry because "it's all on video" and "let them be who they continue to be."

The police then grabbed her, she said, took her camera and drove her off to the police station for booking.

The judge in the Maryland case ruled that a police officer on a traffic stop has no reasonable expectation of privacy so the Maryland wiretap law didn't apply.

I wonder how the conversation would go if I tried this at a traffic stop.

"Your driver's license and registration."
"Just so you know, I'm recording all of this, officer."
"I'm not giving you consent to record."
"No one's forcing you to talk to me."
"That's not how it works."
"So when I call the police station and they tell me this conversation is being recorded I can tell them I don't consent to being recorded and they'll stop recording me?"

 

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