{"id":1526,"date":"2011-09-09T14:33:08","date_gmt":"2011-09-09T18:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/filming-of-public-officials.html"},"modified":"2011-09-09T14:33:08","modified_gmt":"2011-09-09T18:33:08","slug":"filming-of-public-officials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/filming-of-public-officials.html","title":{"rendered":"Filming of public officials"},"content":{"rendered":"Two weeks ago today a U.S. appeals court ruled that\n\ncitizens can video police.<\/a>\n\n<\/a>\nThe actual decision is broader than that.\nIt’s not just about police, it’s about\n“The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a\npublic place”.\n

\nQuoting from\n\nUnited States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit, No. 10-1764,\nAugust 26, 2011<\/a>.\n

\nPage 8:\n

\nThe First Amendment issue here is, as the parties frame\n
\nCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,\nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of\nspeech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,\nand to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.\n<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\nit, fairly narrow: is there a constitutionally protected right to\nvideotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First\nAmendment principles, along with case law from this and other\ncircuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative.\n

\nIt is firmly established that the First Amendment’s\naegis extends further than the text’s proscription on laws\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

\n\n<\/a>\n“abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” and encompasses\na range of conduct related to the gathering and dissemination of\ninformation. As the Supreme Court has observed, “the First\nAmendment goes beyond protection of the press and the\nself-expression of individuals to prohibit government from limiting\nthe stock of information from which members of the public may\ndraw.” First Nat’l Bank v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, 783 (1978); see\nalso Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 564 (1969) (“It is . . .\nwell established that the Constitution protects the right to\nreceive information and ideas.”). An important corollary to this\ninterest in protecting the stock of public information is that\n“[t]here is an undoubted right to gather news ‘from any source by\nmeans within the law.'” Houchins v. KQED, Inc., 438 U.S. 1, 11\n(1978) (quoting Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 681-82 (1972)).\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nPage 9:\n

\nThe filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a\npublic place, including police officers performing their responsibilities,\nfits comfortably within these principles. Gathering information\nabout government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated\nto others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting\nand promoting “the free discussion of governmental affairs.” Mills\nv. Alabama, 384 U.S. 214, 218 (1966).\n<\/blockquote>\nPage 10:\n
\nIn line with these principles, we have previously recognized that\n\n<\/a>\nthe videotaping of public officials is an exercise of First Amendment\nliberties. In Iacobucci v. Boulter, 193 F.3d 14 (1st Cir. 1999), a\nlocal journalist brought a \u00a7 1983 claim arising from his arrest in\nthe course of filming officials in the hallway outside a public\nmeeting of a historic district commission. The commissioners had\nobjected to the plaintiff’s filming. Id. at 18. When the plaintiff\nrefused to desist, a police officer on the scene arrested him for\ndisorderly conduct. Id. The charges were later dismissed\n<\/blockquote>\nPage 11:\n
\nOur recognition that the First Amendment protects the filming of\ngovernment officials in public spaces accords with the decisions\nof numerous circuit and district courts. See, e.g., Smith v. City\nof Cumming, 212 F.3d 1332, 1333 (11th Cir. 2000) (“The First Amendment\nprotects the right to gather information about what public officials\ndo on public property, and specifically, a right to record matters\nof public interest.”);\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n-gretchen\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two weeks ago today a U.S. appeals court ruled that citizens can video police. The actual decision is broader than that. It’s not just about police, it’s about “The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place”. Quoting from United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit, No. 10-1764, August […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,48,40,2,3],"tags":[669,3404,668,1273,3574,8710,1270,3230,3827,3764,3826,234],"class_list":["post-1526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-code-enforcement","category-community","category-government","category-transparency","tag-appeal","tag-constitution","tag-court","tag-first-amendment","tag-james-madison","tag-law","tag-police","tag-precedent","tag-public-officials","tag-recording","tag-simon-glik","tag-video"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-oC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}