Public public
by digby
Hey, the good guys win one:
A court ruled Friday that the 2007 arrest of a Boston lawyer for recording police officers with his cellphone violated the man’s First and Fourth Amendment rights. The ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston allows Simon Glik to continue his lawsuit against the city and the police officers who arrested him. He was charged with violating a state law that bars audio recordings without the consent of both parties. The court affirmed that Glik’s actions had been legal and denied the officers’ claim that they had “qualified immunity’’ because they were doing their jobs as public officials.
The idea that police officers cannot be filmed or taped in the course of their public duties is so bizarre to me that I can’t even follow the logic. But it’s happening in many jurisdictions, with many different legal theories being used to support it. In fact, this notion of removing citizens from public forums for questioning their political representatives works along the same lines.
There is a truly pernicious meme beginning to bubble up in American public life that says the government has the right to operate in secret in virtually any way it chooses. It’s not a free country if you are not allowed to document the activities of the police in the course of their duties. It just isn’t. And if you can’t question your representatives it’s not a real democracy either.
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