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 ...
What if the guy were selling suicide bomber belts - as performance art?
That is one of the dumbest strawmen I’ve seen in a while. It is so inapplicable I’m surprised your post doesn’t auto-delete itself.
Knew coworker that had a similar situation... She worked for a company with a high turnover rate that let us say was once run by as El-Rushbo would say was run by a hand-grenade with a bad haircut. They had it in for her. She turned on the device when they admitted to trying to get her or whatever was wrong, sad part is she was really good. She played it for them and they needed new underwear. They never messed with her again.
In some environments it is the ultimate CYA. Problem is Statezilla now wants to take it away. Go figure...
May be true but the fact is, you can't audio record anybody in Illinois, without consent.
"Freedom for all" becoming "Freedom to have every aspect of your life governed by some bureaucrats petty regulation."
This is insane.
Most cities have some type of "clear the sidewalks of beggars" legislation to use as needed.
Besides, as pointed out above, criminalizing normal activities gives the gov't something to do.
Welcome to the USSA, comrade.
That’s the problem I have, many jurisdictions have laws and ordinances that anyone working for the govt, especially police, can’t be sued because they are agents of the govt. But you can’t record them because it’s a violation of their privacy. The govt wants it both ways.
Sign over the ant colony entrance:
“ALL THAT IS NOT FORBIDDEN IS MANDATORY!”
Heap big trouble!
Selling on the street.
Interesting. So you have no radio or TV news there? Because I know out here the TV news often records audio of events, like protests, etc, and I seriously doubt they get a signed release from everyone in the crowd...
Where is the ACLU when you need them? Oh I know, they are out there promoting their special agenda that generally only NE / NYC elists support.
I would be quite happy to support them, if they were only non partisan and non-ideological and focused on protecting the public from the wrongs of big brother. Instead they are biased and pick and choose cases that support just their viewpoint.
BTW I becoming convinced that we Americans are set up to argue about never ending politics, and which Party is better, while the treasury is plundered and we lose all our rights.
No cruiser-cams?
I don't know about the phone books but the feds list all them on the internet.
http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/about/contact/offices/displayfieldroster.aspx
The law should be changed. I am not opposed to the law as it applies to private individuals. I am opposed to the law as it applies to the conduct of government business. Recording the conduct of government business is an extension of open records laws. Government should be transparent. The ability to record government business supports transparency. I would support an exception only in cases in which the recording disrupts emergency services.
Yeah. When I went to the last taxpayers march on Washington this past fall, I got a video ticket coming home through Maryland.
Many citizens let these video speed enforcement setups stay because “it is for public safety” (never mind those who promote them are doing so primarily for revenue purposes)
Once you let that camel’s nose into the tent, the rest of the camel is not far behind.
Just look at every single intersection you go through nowadays. There are those little cameras on nearly every single one of them. Overpasses, buildings, etc. Those things are EVERYWHERE, even in places where they are most definitely NOT used for traffic enforcement purposes.
How much of a stretch of the imagination is it to ponder the following:
There is a database of plate numbers entered by federal/state/local governments that are being tracked for whatever reason. (Could be fugitives, people wanted for questioning, terrorists, whatever) As cars go through the intersection, the cameras extract each plate number and send it to a central location, where the very first thing that is done is to match against the database of watched licenses and look for a match. If a match is found, some process is kicked off such as dispatching law enforcement personnel to intercept the vehicle.
Of course, if there is no match, then the plate number is discarded. But what if the people who maintain and use the system say “we will keep 24 hours worth of plate numbers that pass through each location” or some such thing for what they deem a valid purpose? What is to stop them, given the ubiquity and affordability of storage and fast databases, to simply store this stuff for longer periods of time?
All I have described above is not only technologically do-able, but is being done at some level and has been for some time.
As we speak, this is very likely already being done for what are termed “valid reasons”. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to readily recognize that “valid reasons” is a very fluid term, open to definition and re-definition.
selling art without a permit ... As a charge that is insanity or it is communism dug in.
The law needs thrown out.
Another reason to boycott Illinois.
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