Top of the fold, Union leader, Garry Rayno reports that a First Circuit Court of Appeals judge in Boston has declared that arresting people for filming police officers in public violates their first amendment rights.
The ruling in the case of Simon Glik, a Boston attorney arrested for filming Boston police officers arresting a man on Boston Common, states: “Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting ‘the free discussion of governmental affairs.’” And the court ruled “a citizen’s right to film government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public place is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment.”
The State legislature has bills in process to address this locally.
Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Fenton Groen, R-Rochester, said he will propose an amendment that changes police officers to all public officials, requires the person doing the recording to notify police or public officials they are being recorded and clarifies that the recording is the private property of the person who made it.
Defining all public employees, in public places, as objects of suitable scrutiny is a good move, but I’m not clear how you are supposed to notify the officer that they are being recorded if they are in the course of their duties? It seems to me that you might be opening yourself up to potential charges of obstruction, particularity if the officer is not happy about being videotaped.
And how will the 1st circuit ruling play out in the mean time? The Boston PD has appealed the ruling so this could get a lot more interesting, though I can’t see how the Supreme court can prohibit the public recording of public officials when the incidental recording of people in public is a given, and both public and private enterprises regularly record people in public anywhere and everywhere they can.
