First Amendment Blues

Cops vs. cameras: filming cops illegal - Page 1 - News - Miami - Miami New Times:

"...That confrontation, filmed in 2009, was the first of dozens that Hammonds and three friends caught on tape. They've paid dearly, spending thousands on legal fees and tickets, and sleeping multiple nights in county lockup. They've even seen their faces plastered on a warning flyer sent to departments around Miami-Dade County.

They're part of a simmering national fight between citizen journalists and police departments that believe subjects have no right to film them. The battle over whether cops can arrest you just for videotaping them is quickly becoming the most hotly contested corner of American civil liberties law.

'As more professionals and amateurs use equipment to record police activity, they're facing the ire of officers who just don't want to be recorded,' says David Ardia, director of Harvard University's Citizen Media Law Project. 'We need a clear answer from courts that this is legal, or else police officers' instincts will always be to snatch the camera.'

It might seem like an open-and-shut argument — cops are public figures, after all, and they're operating in plain view on the street. But it isn't, at least in the dozen states, including Florida, that require both parties in any conversation to consent to audio recording..."