The Police, the iPhone and Your Right to Record
World Press Freedom Day came and went earlier this month. While it's important to take a day to recognize our right to speak and share information, threats to our First Amendment freedoms happen all the time, everywhere.
It's a threat that will become very real on the streets of Chicago this weekend, as a new breed of journalists and onlookers attempt to cover the protests surrounding the NATO summit.
World Press Freedom Day came and went earlier this month. While it's important to take a day to recognize our right to speak and share information, threats to our First Amendment freedoms happen all the time, everywhere.
It's a threat that will become very real on the streets of Chicago this weekend, as a new breed of journalists and onlookers attempt to cover the protests surrounding the NATO summit.
Just ask Carlos Miller. The photojournalist has been arrested three times. His "crime?" Photographing the police. Most recently, in January, Miller was filming the eviction of Occupy Wall Street activists from a park in downtown Miami.
In twist that's become too familiar to many, the journalist became the story as police focused their crackdown on the scrum of reporters there to cover the eviction. Miller came face to face with Officer Nancy Perez, who confiscated his camera and placed him under arrest.
And Miller is not alone. Since Occupy Wall Street began last September, more than 75 journalists have been arrested. My colleague Josh Stearns has chronicled these arrests since the movement's earliest days. Stearns expects to see an uptick in arrests as thousands of protesters and reporters converge on Chicago.
Radical Transparency and the Police
Journalists record many of these arrests themselves as they're shoved to the ground, shackled and hauled off to jail. Onlookers have documented many of these arrests as well.
video uploaded by geekeasy on Jan 8, 2012:
The ubiquity of camera-ready smartphones has spawned legions of "live-streamers" who can be found at every large-scale protest streaming a close-up account of almost every arrest. It's a new form of journalism that's open to anyone with a mobile phone and the resolve to get between police and protesters.
In the chaos of these events, many live-streamers have been snared in mass arrests. Others are deliberately targeted by officers who aren't accustomed to the radical transparency of the smartphone era.
Tim Pool has seen the live-streaming phenomenon grow exponentially since he first started streaming Occupy Wall Street protests using a live-linked Galaxy S2 phone. "Most of the people are live-streaming because they think the mainstream media isn't telling the story that needs to be told," he says.
The audience for Pool's smartphone stream peaked above 30,000 simultaneous viewers during last year's Occupy evictions, making Pool's raw and unedited reporting a model hundreds of other live-streamers have followed.
Pool plans to organize a global collective of live-streamers to create an alternative news network that gets the story live on the streets before the traditional news vans arrive. "There are not enough streamers for breaking 24-hour global news coverage," he says, "but we're getting pretty close."
The First Amendment a 'Nuisance'
The ubiquity of smartphones has contributed to America's decline as a champion of free speech and freedom of the press. The U.S. dropped to 22nd place on Freedom House's annual ranking of press freedoms. We're now tied with Estonia and Jamaica. Our flagging status is due to the "detentions, rough police tactics, and other difficulties encountered [by those] covering protests associated with the Occupy movement," according to Freedom House.
Many arrests result from snap judgments officers make when encountering a swarm of smartphone-carrying citizen reporters.
People, and even police officers, often don't understand our rights with regard to public photography. At the local level the newsgathering rights of every individual, whether credentialed as a journalist or not, become even murkier.
But that's changing:
- In January, the Justice Department filed a statement urging the U.S. District Court of Maryland to uphold an individual's "First Amendment right to record police officers in the public discharge of their duties" and to find that "officers violate citizens' Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights when they seize and destroy such recordings without warrant or due process."
- In late March, Simon Glik won a civil suit against the City of Boston, after the First Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled against his arrest for attempting to record police brutality. The court found that Glik had a "constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public."
- In early May, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ordered a preliminary injunction against the Illinois Eavesdropping Act, which made the recording of police officers without their consent a felony, punishable by four to 15 years in prison.
- Earlier this week the Justice Department again intervened in the Maryland case, with a unequivocal statement supporting the right to record police officers, urging the Baltimore Police Department to instruct its officers to protect this First Amendment freedom.
Police departments like having a degree of flexibility in interpreting the law as it gives their officers loose rein to arrest anyone they deem a nuisance, even when they know their case will collapse before the courts.
"When I have been confronted by officers the implicit threat is that if I continued to videotape, they would take away my liberty," says advocacy journalist Bill Huston. Police have harassed Huston as he's attempted to record public events related to the fracking controversy in Pennsylvania and New York.
"Even though this is constitutionally protected behavior, the police will intimidate you and demand that you follow their orders," he said. "Even though we may get a legal remedy in the courts we are still prevented from videotaping on the scene. Our rights are still violated. This is not how the system is supposed to work."
Smartphone Freedom
Though cases involving our right to record have not yet reached the Supreme Court, it may only be a matter of time. Thus far most of the lower courts have found a rock-solid First Amendment argument for taking photos and video of law enforcement officers in public.
The nation's leading free speech and civil rights groups agree. Earlier this month, we wrote U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to address ongoing abuse of our First Amendment freedoms and protect everyone's right to record.
While the media landscape has changed, our First Amendment rights haven't. Freedom of the press is more important, not less, when anyone with a mobile phone and an Internet connection can act as a journalist.
We are at a crossroads
This country and this world are at a monumental crossroads. US voters have an opportunity to beat back the forces of fascism and confront the billionaires who are rigging the economy, our media system, and our democracy, making it increasingly impossible for ordinary people to get by. We’re not just talking about the election. We’re talking about what must be done once these fascist elements are vanquished from power. We need a bolder set of solutions than what either major party has so far been willing to offer and a working-class movement ready to fight like hell for it. Trump didn't emerge from nowhere. The conditions that fueled MAGA authoritarianism were created by decades of radical neoliberal economic policies and a corrupt political system dominated by corporate interests. They slashed taxes on the super-rich, promising that the benefits would trickle down. They said giveaways to the corporate titans would make life more affordable for the rest of us. It was all bullshit. And when a bitter, betrayed populace searches for someone to blame, right-wing demagogues have little trouble finding scapegoats. People know when they're being lied to, but you won't hear any of this from the corporate media. Only independent journalism—powered and funded by people who believe in building a better world—can deliver truly trustworthy daily news. Our Fall Campaign is underway, and we need your help. To power our newsroom through the rest of the year, we need to raise $125,000 by midnight on October 31. So if you share our vision, please contribute whatever you can to sustain our work. |
World Press Freedom Day came and went earlier this month. While it's important to take a day to recognize our right to speak and share information, threats to our First Amendment freedoms happen all the time, everywhere.
It's a threat that will become very real on the streets of Chicago this weekend, as a new breed of journalists and onlookers attempt to cover the protests surrounding the NATO summit.
Just ask Carlos Miller. The photojournalist has been arrested three times. His "crime?" Photographing the police. Most recently, in January, Miller was filming the eviction of Occupy Wall Street activists from a park in downtown Miami.
In twist that's become too familiar to many, the journalist became the story as police focused their crackdown on the scrum of reporters there to cover the eviction. Miller came face to face with Officer Nancy Perez, who confiscated his camera and placed him under arrest.
And Miller is not alone. Since Occupy Wall Street began last September, more than 75 journalists have been arrested. My colleague Josh Stearns has chronicled these arrests since the movement's earliest days. Stearns expects to see an uptick in arrests as thousands of protesters and reporters converge on Chicago.
Radical Transparency and the Police
Journalists record many of these arrests themselves as they're shoved to the ground, shackled and hauled off to jail. Onlookers have documented many of these arrests as well.
video uploaded by geekeasy on Jan 8, 2012:
The ubiquity of camera-ready smartphones has spawned legions of "live-streamers" who can be found at every large-scale protest streaming a close-up account of almost every arrest. It's a new form of journalism that's open to anyone with a mobile phone and the resolve to get between police and protesters.
In the chaos of these events, many live-streamers have been snared in mass arrests. Others are deliberately targeted by officers who aren't accustomed to the radical transparency of the smartphone era.
Tim Pool has seen the live-streaming phenomenon grow exponentially since he first started streaming Occupy Wall Street protests using a live-linked Galaxy S2 phone. "Most of the people are live-streaming because they think the mainstream media isn't telling the story that needs to be told," he says.
The audience for Pool's smartphone stream peaked above 30,000 simultaneous viewers during last year's Occupy evictions, making Pool's raw and unedited reporting a model hundreds of other live-streamers have followed.
Pool plans to organize a global collective of live-streamers to create an alternative news network that gets the story live on the streets before the traditional news vans arrive. "There are not enough streamers for breaking 24-hour global news coverage," he says, "but we're getting pretty close."
The First Amendment a 'Nuisance'
The ubiquity of smartphones has contributed to America's decline as a champion of free speech and freedom of the press. The U.S. dropped to 22nd place on Freedom House's annual ranking of press freedoms. We're now tied with Estonia and Jamaica. Our flagging status is due to the "detentions, rough police tactics, and other difficulties encountered [by those] covering protests associated with the Occupy movement," according to Freedom House.
Many arrests result from snap judgments officers make when encountering a swarm of smartphone-carrying citizen reporters.
People, and even police officers, often don't understand our rights with regard to public photography. At the local level the newsgathering rights of every individual, whether credentialed as a journalist or not, become even murkier.
But that's changing:
- In January, the Justice Department filed a statement urging the U.S. District Court of Maryland to uphold an individual's "First Amendment right to record police officers in the public discharge of their duties" and to find that "officers violate citizens' Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights when they seize and destroy such recordings without warrant or due process."
- In late March, Simon Glik won a civil suit against the City of Boston, after the First Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled against his arrest for attempting to record police brutality. The court found that Glik had a "constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public."
- In early May, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ordered a preliminary injunction against the Illinois Eavesdropping Act, which made the recording of police officers without their consent a felony, punishable by four to 15 years in prison.
- Earlier this week the Justice Department again intervened in the Maryland case, with a unequivocal statement supporting the right to record police officers, urging the Baltimore Police Department to instruct its officers to protect this First Amendment freedom.
Police departments like having a degree of flexibility in interpreting the law as it gives their officers loose rein to arrest anyone they deem a nuisance, even when they know their case will collapse before the courts.
"When I have been confronted by officers the implicit threat is that if I continued to videotape, they would take away my liberty," says advocacy journalist Bill Huston. Police have harassed Huston as he's attempted to record public events related to the fracking controversy in Pennsylvania and New York.
"Even though this is constitutionally protected behavior, the police will intimidate you and demand that you follow their orders," he said. "Even though we may get a legal remedy in the courts we are still prevented from videotaping on the scene. Our rights are still violated. This is not how the system is supposed to work."
Smartphone Freedom
Though cases involving our right to record have not yet reached the Supreme Court, it may only be a matter of time. Thus far most of the lower courts have found a rock-solid First Amendment argument for taking photos and video of law enforcement officers in public.
The nation's leading free speech and civil rights groups agree. Earlier this month, we wrote U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to address ongoing abuse of our First Amendment freedoms and protect everyone's right to record.
While the media landscape has changed, our First Amendment rights haven't. Freedom of the press is more important, not less, when anyone with a mobile phone and an Internet connection can act as a journalist.
World Press Freedom Day came and went earlier this month. While it's important to take a day to recognize our right to speak and share information, threats to our First Amendment freedoms happen all the time, everywhere.
It's a threat that will become very real on the streets of Chicago this weekend, as a new breed of journalists and onlookers attempt to cover the protests surrounding the NATO summit.
Just ask Carlos Miller. The photojournalist has been arrested three times. His "crime?" Photographing the police. Most recently, in January, Miller was filming the eviction of Occupy Wall Street activists from a park in downtown Miami.
In twist that's become too familiar to many, the journalist became the story as police focused their crackdown on the scrum of reporters there to cover the eviction. Miller came face to face with Officer Nancy Perez, who confiscated his camera and placed him under arrest.
And Miller is not alone. Since Occupy Wall Street began last September, more than 75 journalists have been arrested. My colleague Josh Stearns has chronicled these arrests since the movement's earliest days. Stearns expects to see an uptick in arrests as thousands of protesters and reporters converge on Chicago.
Radical Transparency and the Police
Journalists record many of these arrests themselves as they're shoved to the ground, shackled and hauled off to jail. Onlookers have documented many of these arrests as well.
video uploaded by geekeasy on Jan 8, 2012:
The ubiquity of camera-ready smartphones has spawned legions of "live-streamers" who can be found at every large-scale protest streaming a close-up account of almost every arrest. It's a new form of journalism that's open to anyone with a mobile phone and the resolve to get between police and protesters.
In the chaos of these events, many live-streamers have been snared in mass arrests. Others are deliberately targeted by officers who aren't accustomed to the radical transparency of the smartphone era.
Tim Pool has seen the live-streaming phenomenon grow exponentially since he first started streaming Occupy Wall Street protests using a live-linked Galaxy S2 phone. "Most of the people are live-streaming because they think the mainstream media isn't telling the story that needs to be told," he says.
The audience for Pool's smartphone stream peaked above 30,000 simultaneous viewers during last year's Occupy evictions, making Pool's raw and unedited reporting a model hundreds of other live-streamers have followed.
Pool plans to organize a global collective of live-streamers to create an alternative news network that gets the story live on the streets before the traditional news vans arrive. "There are not enough streamers for breaking 24-hour global news coverage," he says, "but we're getting pretty close."
The First Amendment a 'Nuisance'
The ubiquity of smartphones has contributed to America's decline as a champion of free speech and freedom of the press. The U.S. dropped to 22nd place on Freedom House's annual ranking of press freedoms. We're now tied with Estonia and Jamaica. Our flagging status is due to the "detentions, rough police tactics, and other difficulties encountered [by those] covering protests associated with the Occupy movement," according to Freedom House.
Many arrests result from snap judgments officers make when encountering a swarm of smartphone-carrying citizen reporters.
People, and even police officers, often don't understand our rights with regard to public photography. At the local level the newsgathering rights of every individual, whether credentialed as a journalist or not, become even murkier.
But that's changing:
- In January, the Justice Department filed a statement urging the U.S. District Court of Maryland to uphold an individual's "First Amendment right to record police officers in the public discharge of their duties" and to find that "officers violate citizens' Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights when they seize and destroy such recordings without warrant or due process."
- In late March, Simon Glik won a civil suit against the City of Boston, after the First Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled against his arrest for attempting to record police brutality. The court found that Glik had a "constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public."
- In early May, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ordered a preliminary injunction against the Illinois Eavesdropping Act, which made the recording of police officers without their consent a felony, punishable by four to 15 years in prison.
- Earlier this week the Justice Department again intervened in the Maryland case, with a unequivocal statement supporting the right to record police officers, urging the Baltimore Police Department to instruct its officers to protect this First Amendment freedom.
Police departments like having a degree of flexibility in interpreting the law as it gives their officers loose rein to arrest anyone they deem a nuisance, even when they know their case will collapse before the courts.
"When I have been confronted by officers the implicit threat is that if I continued to videotape, they would take away my liberty," says advocacy journalist Bill Huston. Police have harassed Huston as he's attempted to record public events related to the fracking controversy in Pennsylvania and New York.
"Even though this is constitutionally protected behavior, the police will intimidate you and demand that you follow their orders," he said. "Even though we may get a legal remedy in the courts we are still prevented from videotaping on the scene. Our rights are still violated. This is not how the system is supposed to work."
Smartphone Freedom
Though cases involving our right to record have not yet reached the Supreme Court, it may only be a matter of time. Thus far most of the lower courts have found a rock-solid First Amendment argument for taking photos and video of law enforcement officers in public.
The nation's leading free speech and civil rights groups agree. Earlier this month, we wrote U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to address ongoing abuse of our First Amendment freedoms and protect everyone's right to record.
While the media landscape has changed, our First Amendment rights haven't. Freedom of the press is more important, not less, when anyone with a mobile phone and an Internet connection can act as a journalist.