{"id":184375,"date":"2012-05-18T18:39:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-18T23:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/05\/18\/well-what-do-you-know-the-doj-gets-one-right\/"},"modified":"2012-05-18T18:39:00","modified_gmt":"2012-05-18T23:39:00","slug":"well-what-do-you-know-the-doj-gets-one-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/05\/18\/well-what-do-you-know-the-doj-gets-one-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Well, What Do You Know, The DoJ Gets One Right"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Justice Department has <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/tech-policy\/2012\/05\/justice-dept-defends-publics-constitutional-right-to-record-cops\/\">vigorously defending the right of the general public to videotape police officers on duty<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>As police departments around the country are increasingly caught up  in tussles with members of the public who record their activities, the  U.S. Justice Department has come out with a strong statement supporting  the First Amendment right of individuals to record police officers in  the public discharge of their duties.<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/images_blogs\/threatlevel\/2012\/05\/united_states_letter_re_photography_5_14_2012_0.pdf\">surprising letter<\/a>  (.pdf) sent on Monday to attorneys for the Baltimore Police Department,  the Justice Department also strongly asserted that officers who seize  and destroy such recordings without a warrant or without due process are  in strict violation of the individual\u2019s Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment  rights.<\/p>\n<p>The letter was sent to the police department as it prepares for  meetings to discuss a settlement over a civil lawsuit brought by a  citizen who sued the department after his camera was seized by police.<\/p>\n<p>In the lawsuit, Christopher Sharp alleged that in May 2010, Baltimore  City police officers seized, searched and deleted the contents of his  mobile phone after he used it to record them as they were arresting a  friend of his.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I am very surprised.<\/p>\n<p>Pleased, but surprised.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d like to see some prosecutions of overzealous cops, but I would consider this highly unlikely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Justice Department has vigorously defending the right of the general public to videotape police officers on duty: As police departments around the country are increasingly caught up in tussles with members of the public who record their activities, the U.S. Justice Department has come out with a strong statement supporting the First Amendment right &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[971,972,1041],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-justice","category-law-enforcement-misconduct"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184375"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}