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Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Prison
New York Times ^ | January22, 2011 | Don Terry

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 ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Extended News; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; US: Illinois; US: Massachusetts; US: Oregon
KEYWORDS: bigbrother; communism; copbashingtrolls; corruption; felony; illinois; massachusetts; oregon; policestate; rapeofliberty; tiawandamoore; tyranny
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A glimpse of Soetoro in in his carefree days, the good times before he met
ol' thunder-thighs, the Midwest's answer to Sasquatch.
He seems clueless to what the future holds for him.

Wonder when Soetoro, or whatever he goes by these days gets to open his first gulag.


1 posted on 01/24/2011 6:55:49 AM PST by lbryce
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To: lbryce
These kinds of laws have one purpose, and one purpose only: to assure that you cannot collect evidence against government officials.
2 posted on 01/24/2011 6:57:31 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum ("If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun." -- Barry Soetoro, June 11, 2008)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

And these laws not only need to be reversed,
there need to be laws that punish the government official that attempts to thwart recording of their official behavior.


3 posted on 01/24/2011 6:59:12 AM PST by MrB (The difference between a (de)humanist and a Satanist is that the latter knows who he's working for.)
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To: lbryce

Selling art without a permit? WTF???


4 posted on 01/24/2011 7:00:38 AM PST by Dead Corpse (III%. The last line in the sand)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
"the audio recording of police officers while performing their duty “can affect how an officer does his job on the street.” "

Gee, who'da thunk it?

5 posted on 01/24/2011 7:01:14 AM PST by Paladin2
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To: lbryce

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?

Until something is done to stop the use of this tactic — tying Federal grants to State actions — by Congress in toto (which would be a good thing), our side might as well use it to advance liberty.


6 posted on 01/24/2011 7:01:17 AM PST by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know. . .)
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To: lbryce

These laws aren’t about us, they are about protecting big brother, just like the recent secret Senate hold to prevent a vote on a law to encourage whistle blowing.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/01/11/2762059/devine-senate-hold-on-whistle.html


7 posted on 01/24/2011 7:01:43 AM PST by apoliticalone
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To: Dead Corpse
"Selling art without a permit? WTF???"

Call it art peddling and it makes more sense.

8 posted on 01/24/2011 7:02:10 AM PST by Paladin2
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To: Dead Corpse
WTF:Where's the Fairness?
9 posted on 01/24/2011 7:02:11 AM PST by lbryce
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To: lbryce

These laws applied to LE and public officials are designed to suppress public knowledge about corrupt practices. The FOP response is classic:

Mark Donahue, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said his organization “absolutely supports” the eavesdropping act as is and was relieved that the challenge had failed. 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.”

Citizen recording will expose corrupt practices. Why should a LE officer or public official fear recording of their work? The answer is obvious. They do not want the public to see some corrupt primarily among weak members.


10 posted on 01/24/2011 7:03:01 AM PST by businessprofessor
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
"These kinds of laws have one purpose, and one purpose only: to assure that you cannot collect evidence against government officials. "

Apparently these guys have something to hide.

11 posted on 01/24/2011 7:03:31 AM PST by Paladin2
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
There is a school liason officer I know of who has a pocket recorder in their shirt pocket. She records every conversation she has with every student and parent. The school principal told me that the entire police force has the same and does the same to the public. The only twist is that in a public school, students give up their right to not be recorded by attending the school. But the rest of the officers are violating the law.

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.

12 posted on 01/24/2011 7:03:31 AM PST by blackdog
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To: Paladin2

Every government agent, when acting in this role, should not only allow recording of their actions, both audio and video, but also be individually identifiable,
and any agent who attempts to thwart the ability to identify or record

should lose his job, pension, benefits, and be subject to criminal prosecution.


13 posted on 01/24/2011 7:05:59 AM PST by MrB (The difference between a (de)humanist and a Satanist is that the latter knows who he's working for.)
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To: MrB
Eavesdropping laws were created to protect the citizens from the government's collection of evidence without due process (warrant). They were never designed to protect the govt. from exposure of illegal activities. The world is back@$$ward!!!
14 posted on 01/24/2011 7:07:54 AM PST by John.Galt2012 (I'll take Liberty and you can keep the "Change"!)
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To: lbryce

Jury nullification.


15 posted on 01/24/2011 7:08:24 AM PST by smokingfrog (BORN free - taxed to DEATH)
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To: apoliticalone
Like I said, Soetoro's checking out the, Bering Straits
as location for the country's very first gulag.


16 posted on 01/24/2011 7:09:20 AM PST by lbryce
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To: apoliticalone

“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilty. Now that’s the system” - Dr. Floyd Ferris


17 posted on 01/24/2011 7:12:41 AM PST by John.Galt2012 (I'll take Liberty and you can keep the "Change"!)
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To: businessprofessor
it's great how citizens are arrested for recording leo’s at that same time more surveillance including drones is launched against the citizenry
18 posted on 01/24/2011 7:15:49 AM PST by NativeSon
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To: lbryce
[Wonder when Soetoro, or whatever he goes by these days gets to open his first gulag.]

Ask this guy:



Meet ZNew ZBig, same as ZOld ZBig
--ZWho?

19 posted on 01/24/2011 7:15:49 AM PST by LomanBill (Animals! The DemocRats blew up the windmill with an Acorn!)
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To: Paladin2

Here is another good one in Maryland where a motorcyclist with a helmet cam had his computers confiscated and his facing prison time ... all because he recorded a plain clothes officer acting like an axx.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100420/1041329109.shtml

You can’t walk down any street without smiling for someone’s camera, be it business or “public safety” and they say you can’t record a public servant doing bad stuff.

Now the government even runs around in ZBV vehicles that are running around saturating us with massive x-rays (they say insignificant). And they make it sound all wonderful. They don’t use these on the border, they use them on us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-d0HX6ibkY

1984 is here and gone.


20 posted on 01/24/2011 7:16:39 AM PST by apoliticalone
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