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How much should you charge for a photograph?NYCLU Wants NYPD To Stop Recording Protesters
The New York Civil Liberties Union has defended countless photographers over the years who have been wrongly arrested for taking picture in public.
But now they are demanding that the New York City Police Department keep its cameras off Occupy Wall Street protesters.
The NYCLU sent a letter to NYPD Commander Raymond Kelly last month stating that while police have the right to record in public, 24-hour surveillance on the protesters is abusing this right.
In addition, we have some serious concerns about certain aspects of the policing of the protest. As an initial matter, we are deeply concerned about the nearly blanket videotaping of Occupy Wall Street events. At Zuccotti Park, there are at least two special cameras trained on the park and apparently recording activity at all times. In addition, many members of TARU are at the park and other locations and are conspicuously and routinely videotaping protest activity.
Unfortunately, we can't have it both ways. They can record us as much as we can record them as long as there is not an expecation of privacy issue.
And as much as the Occupy Wall Street protesters would like to make Zuccotti Park their private home, it is still very much a public space.
Comments
I support the NYACLU, not because they're correct; they're outright wrong. If we can record the cops then they can record us. That said, keep in mind that this is a WAR FOR THE PRESERVATION OF DEMOCRACY and tying up the adversary's time, budget and manpower must be part of the strategy.
we're talking about the RIGHT TO PHOTOGRAPH IN PUBLIC. Stay on topic.
we're talking about the RIGHT TO PHOTOGRAPH IN PUBLIC. Stay on topic.
I agree with the ACLU. As principals, we may rightly impose any restrictions we want on our agents in the state.
The cops at the OWC protest have been specifically targeting photographers. From this, we can infer that they sincerely believe public photography is a crime.
A cop enjoys qualified immunity from lawsuits, but nothing in the law shields a cop from arrest, trial or conviction for committing crimes in uniform.
If public photography is indeed a crime as the cops seem to believe, then it's also a crime for them to do it.
If the NYCLU provokes a court into ruling that it's okay to video record in public, it will make it easier to challenge photography arrests. At least, that's why I hope they're doing it. What I fear is that it is more of what we see from far too many Occupy protestors: They have rights, but if you disagree with them, you have none.
Anybody arrested for anything in the park should request a copy of all police video coverage of the park as evidence.
It's amazing how often such footage goes "missing," isn't it?
Perhaps you are missing the point Carlos, WE the people tell the our government what they can and can not do. We the people can watch them, and if we the people decide that they can not watch us then that is our right. They work for us. They do not have the right to watch us, they have whatever authority we allow them to have. The government does not have rights, they have authority, authority granted to them by the people.
So you are wrong when you make the claim they have a right to do it. They are granted the authority to do it. The people on the other hand have a RIGHT to record people in public places. Rights are not privilege's we are born with them. Authority on the other hand can be taken away.
Right. If an individual police office ON HIS OWN FREE TIME wants to record the OWSers, that's fine. Like Carlos said it's a public space and he can record if he wants. But Rich is absolutely correct in that the authority to perform ANY ACTION taken by a state actor is granted by the people and that authority can be restricted in any way the people want to.
I'm sorry but I have to say the ACLU is fundamentally in the wrong here. This is a public space without an expectation of privacy. Agree or disagree with the protestors this FACT is unchanged. While we can certainly see that some of the behavior of the cops is illegal, this is not.
We can't have it both ways as Carlos stated. In public you can and will be recorded and we can and will do it others, if you don't like it, stay home.
I'm not a lawyer, so I can't add anything regarding the question of whether this level of videotaping by the police is "unlawful" as the NYCLU claims. But I do think they have a point with regards to carrying a legal activity to an extreme with the intent to intimidate.
As a hypothetical example, suppose a police department instituted a policy of ostentatiously photographing every person and recording the licence plate numbers of every vehicle arriving at an abortion clinic. Surely that's technically legal - but is there any question there would be a wrongful intent there?
Cops would not have the right to come on the clinics property, legally they would have the right to do that outside of the property. This would be a case to push the politicians in that town HARD not for a new law, but to force the police to change the policy. Police dept.s do have policy officers have to follow, it may not be law but they can get fired for not following it. I think this is a previous posters point, and thinking about it maybe pressure could be put on NY politicians not for a law, but for a policy where police have to justify any long term surveillance of citizens. I still say going to court claiming it's not legal is a mistake.
"If public photography is indeed a crime as the cops seem to believe, then it's also a crime for them to do it."
This is a mistake, the government has been VERY good at granting exemptions for itself, like Illinois where it's legal for cops to film YOU, but you can't film them. Piggly Wiggly loves to take laws designed to protect citizens and use them to abuse those very same citizens. An example of this would be the Massachusetts wiretapping laws. They were meant to protect people from being spied on by other people, corporations, and cops without proper warrants, but cops have used those laws to arrest people for filming them. If in NYC it is decided that cops can't film OWS, rest assured there will be mass arrests of OWS and journalists for filming the police under that very same law/ruling.
Carlos is right, it HAS to swing both ways.
Just an FYI for you non-New Yawkers reading this. The NYPD maintains a database of everyone they've had "interaction" with. which includes anyone involved in a "Stop & Frisk" event (which is currently being challenged by a number of lawsuits). They have the face-recognition software, CCTV cameras and all the latest techno-wiz stuff that would make any CIA agent jealous. They will use all the video they've collected to create dossiers on all the protestors and anyone who has joined the protest, even for a few minutes. They also have the highest budget of any city police department in the WORLD. Recently they claimed to be above City Council control and have repeatedly defied court orders to delete information from their databases. Are you worried about black-shirted Fascists knocking your door down in the middle of the night? The first of the Fascists will be white-shirted NYPD.
First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
"Recently they claimed to be above City Council control and have repeatedly defied court orders to delete information from their databases."
I looks to me like they are operating as a rogue agency.
Who controls their budget? Why isn't it cut to force them to comply with the city council and court orders?
Doesn't the mayor appoint the police chief? Why hasn't the chief been told that if his dept does not follow the council and court orders he will be removed from office?
Because Mayor Bloomberg is an "I think I'm above the law" Fascist Billionaire.
I disagree with many of the sentiments of the OWS protestors, but I wonder if there might be some sort of reasonable expectation of privacy in a tent? I've never heard of such a thing, and I doubt this would be the case as the tents are on public property, but I can't help but wonder anyway.
Within the tent with the flap closed perhaps a limited amount, at least visually, but audio, probably not. And ingress or egress from the tent cannot be private no matter how you slice it..
Human rights are not determined by the amount of property one owns, and the ones enumerated in our constitution do not require a American to own property. If the 1% continue to make homeless more and more people. There rights will not be null and void because they have placed a tent on property partly owned by them. Your home is your home and your castle even if it is a tent. All of your god given rights apply all the time.
Sorry Rich but that argument doesn't stand up to even the simplest legal test or rational argument.
And lets be real here. These people don't represent 99% of the population, they represent perhaps 30% MAYBE.
Also, it isn't about ownership of property, you have a certain level of privacy in a hotel/motel but you don't own the room or have any propert interest in the room. But that privacy is shed when you open the door or the blinds. You don't have any privacy while going to or from your room.
Here you have tents, that by definition are opaque but only obscure visible light not sound. So if you are in one you have some privacy from being observed provided all the flaps are down and the door closed, but you can't very well claim really any audio privacy. This would be true whether they are in a public park or in a paid spot at a campground.
You fundamentally miss the point, these people are effectively IN PUBLIC so yes, their god given rights are limited. This has ALWAYS been true. They have no right to demand their pictures not be taken or video not be taken of them. They are IN PUBLIC, I cannot stress this point enough.
Going a step further, if I am standing on the sidewalk in front of YOUR house and you are walking around inside with the blinds open and I snap a photo I didn't break any laws, your right to privacy was shed with the blinds open. It might be bad form or immoral, but not illegal. For the same reason someone prancing about in their own homes nude with the blinds open can be charge with public indecency.. It happens and there have been convictions in court..
Some rights are more limited than others in public, you are going to have to come to peace with this, it isn't going to change anytime soon. The simplest is that your rights to not be photographed/video'd are completely sacrificed in public, GONE. If you are speaking above a whisper in public and you get recorded it almost certainly isn't illegal. While I absolutely agree with these peoples right to protest, the damage they have done to the economy of the businesses around them troubles me.
Rance asked if a person had privacy IN a tent. INSIDE a tent.
The supreme court seems to agree with me, they would not be considered simple or irrational.
Rights protect people not property
At no time did I claim someone standing in front of a window had a expectation of privacy. You pulled that out of your already formed opinion in your head not from anything I have claimed here.
if you wish to stretch you argument and make it about open blinds then you would be correct. That applies to anyone's home. A tent is a home, so is a cardboard box
rights protect people NOT property.
They do represent 99 percent even if the House Slaves dont think so. Your children and there children are enslaved by the Debt created by the 1% dont be a house Slave.
We have already established that a person can have an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in a tent on private property. LaDuke v. Nelson, 762 F.2d 1318, 1326 n. 11, 1332 n. 19 (9th Cir.1985). Accord LaDuke v. Castillo, 455 F.Supp. 209 (E.D.Wash.1978). This reasonable expectation is not destroyed when a person's tent is pitched instead on a public campground where one is legally permitted to camp. The Fourth Amendment "protects people, not places." Katz, 389 U.S. at 351, 88 S.Ct. at 511; id. at 351-52, 88 S.Ct. at 511 (What a citizen "seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."); United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 7, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 2481, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977). In Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978), the Court interpreted Katz to hold that "capacity to claim the protection of the Fourth Amendment depends not upon a property right in the invaded place but upon whether the person who claims the protection of the Amendment has a legitimate expectation of privacy in the invaded place." Id. at 143, 99 S.Ct. at 430; id. at 144 n. 12, 99 S.Ct. at 430 n. 12. ("Expectations of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment ... need not be based on a common-law interest in real or personal property, or on the invasion of such an interest.").
Have to side against the NYCLU. Can't have it both ways. We are constantly stating on this site, and other similar blogs, photogrpahy is NOT a crime when in public. There is no expectation to privacy.
With that being said, the cops are going have the same rights we demand and have.
I would like to say the video the cops are doing is to locate REAL crimes occuring among the protest. NOT the protest.
However, I live in a real world and have my own thoughts.
Just a note to the statement of building files on people. 28CFR states there must be a criminal nexus to do so. If there is not, then it is a FEDERAL crime. One only needs to look at Colorado to see what happened there when they didn't follow the rules.
http://aclu-co.org/news/colorado-springs-police-surveillance-information...
Wonder if we have the same thing going on here? Makes you wonder.
I think you can have it both ways. The police have extra legal rights that the public don't, so it would seem perfectly reasonable to require that they give up others in return.
Perhaps the best example is the wearing of identifying numbers - the police are required to wear them in most places when on duty, but the general public are not. I think that's a fairly reasonable state of affairs.
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