Posted on 01/24/2011 6:55:47 AM PST by lbryce
Christopher Drew is a 60-year-old artist and teacher who wears a gray ponytail and lives on the North Side. Tiawanda Moore, 20, a former stripper, lives on the South Side and dreams of going back to school and starting a new life.
About the only thing these strangers have in common is the prospect that by spring, they could each be sent to prison for up to 15 years.
“That’s one step below attempted murder,” Mr. Drew said of their potential sentences.
The crime they are accused of is eavesdropping.
The authorities say that Mr. Drew and Ms. Moore audio-recorded their separate nonviolent encounters with Chicago police officers without the officers’ permission, a Class 1 felony in Illinois, which, along with Massachusetts and Oregon, has one of the country’s toughest, if rarely prosecuted, eavesdropping laws.
“Before they arrested me for it,” Ms. Moore said, “I didn’t even know there was a law about eavesdropping. I wasn’t trying to sue anybody. I just wanted somebody to know what had happened to me.”
Ms. Moore, whose trial is scheduled for Feb. 7 in Cook County Criminal Court, is accused of using her Blackberry to record two Internal Affairs investigators who spoke to her inside Police Headquarters while she filed a sexual harassment complaint last August against another police officer. Mr. Drew was charged with using a digital recorder to capture his Dec. 2, 2009, arrest for selling art without a permit on North State Street in the Loop. Mr. Drew said his trial date was April 4.
Both cases illustrate the increasingly busy and confusing intersection of technology and the law, public space and private.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Hm. I always thought Soetoro’s father was a turkey baster.
I can’t think of a single situation where recording, audio and/or video, of a public official doing his or her job, police included, could be considered a threat to them. Period. Maybe someone here can come up with one. Granted, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, but I just can’t see anything that can be hurt by recording any contact with public employees.
Sadly, this is yet another example of the stacked deck the citizen faces in dealing with government. It was situations like this that led to the Declaration of Independence. I have to wonder if we’re not awfully close to needing another one? Precious few of these egregious abuses of power are ever corrected. The path to correcting one of them is long and expensive, involving a felony arrest and conviction and then a complicated trail of appeals.
“Almost every government office now posts that cell phones are prohibited and must be turned off. The odd thing is that the rule does not apply to the workers, just the public who pays their salaries.”
Isn’t that the truth? I had a discussion about that with a security guard at my courthouse when I went to renew my CCW. I forgot and had my cell with me and had to walk 3 blocks back to put the cell in my car before I could enter. It is an outrage how the public is being treated as second class citizens and often as criminals while those we pay “i.e. public servants” are treated as royalty and walk away with our gold. That’s the way it used to be in the Soviet Union where the bureaucrats were the elite.
- Robert A. Heinlein
Not only that, just try to find a physical address for any federal building in your phonebooks. Every office location has been omitted from entry. There will be a phone number listing for a recording, but not for the location.
If the camera has a light on it, it could be considered a photon gun.
How about putting a rider into the next law-enforcement block-grant legislation coming out of Congress making any state with a law forbidding the recording of public officials engaged in their public duties (executive sessions of deliberative bodies and judges in chambers excluded) ineligible for any money?
No exclusions. What do the judges have to hide?
Which book is that quote from? Thanks!
That one got some exposure here at FR closer to the happening. It was, in fact, outrageous.
“Manufacture and possession of art with intent to sell”, how’s that?
The TSA were highly unamused at relative positions of my fingers when recently being backscatter X-Ray’d. “We need a supervisor over here”
I never read that publication, but did read quite a few of his novels in the late 50's/early 60's while in elementary school.
The reason for that exclusion in my proposal is that often discussions in camera involve sensitive information about litigant or defendants. I’m not proposing that exception to protect judges, but those they deal with.
And because they are felonies, the government can piggy-back a personal firearms prohibition too. Given the extent of hostility the Illinois government has toward citizen-possessed firearms, I suspect that disarmament is another intentional purpose.
“Mr. Donahue added that allowing the audio recording of police officers while performing their duty ‘can affect how an officer does his job on the street.’”
That’s a bad thing how?
No it doesn't. This is like requiring a license for a couple kids to set up a lemonade stand.
Yep, you nailed it. This law should be stricken from the record books.
There is no reason for this law other than to protect the posterior of people who may be breaking the law, and by so doing ending their career and possibly going to prison.
Well, for one thing it reduces and limits the liberty of the cops.
Even street musicians are supposed to get a permit. Dontchaknow?
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