Posted: 7/26/2011 12:53:20 PM EDT
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Legal in Queen Christine's kingdom or no? I've heard a lot about this discussion on the trailers for the evening news but rarely get a chance to watch it or follow up. |
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Quoted:
I think there is something about recording audio without permission of the other person being an issue. I understood the rules to be (unless it changed recently) video is okay, audio wasn't. This is true of Oregon though the last two newsworthy stories I know of did not lead to any prosecution. |
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Washington law forbids audio recoding of private conversations unless all involved parties consent to the recording. While this could apply to conversations that take place between Police Officers and suspects or other Officers, it generally is not interpreted that way. in fact, pretty much all conversations that take place in a public place are not considered "private".
Speaking from experience, people record cops all the time around here. The cops also record themselves and the videos are public record, so it's not really an issue at all. It becomes an issue when idiots decide that they need to walk into the middle of an active scene and create extra a bunch of chaos for the sake of their YouTube video. That happens a lot. If you want to video tape stuff, just stay on the other side of the street and use your zoom. Also, please don't be one of those jackasses that thinks they are qualified to shout drunken legal advice to the person being arrested while video taping the whole thing. I can personally recall several times when I've been just trying to hold on while being hit and kicked by some suspect who doesn't want to go to jail. Meanwhile a drunken idiot with a camera is filming it all and yelling, "That's police brutality. I got it all on film. You can sue him." |
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Quoted: Quoted: I think there is something about recording audio without permission of the other person being an issue. I understood the rules to be (unless it changed recently) video is okay, audio wasn't. but the video camera has a mic Yup, so as I understand it, you need to turn OFF the microphone if taping someone who hasn't given you permission. |
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Quoted: Washington law forbids audio recoding of private conversations unless all involved parties consent to the recording. While this could apply to conversations that take place between Police Officers and suspects or other Officers, it generally is not interpreted that way. in fact, pretty much all conversations that take place in a public place are not considered "private". Speaking from experience, people record cops all the time around here. The cops also record themselves and the videos are public record, so it's not really an issue at all. It becomes an issue when idiots decide that they need to walk into the middle of an active scene and create extra a bunch of chaos for the sake of their YouTube video. That happens a lot. If you want to video tape stuff, just stay on the other side of the street and use your zoom. Also, please don't be one of those jackasses that thinks they are qualified to shout drunken legal advice to the person being arrested while video taping the whole thing. I can personally recall several times when I've been just trying to hold on while being hit and kicked by some suspect who doesn't want to go to jail. Meanwhile a drunken idiot with a camera is filming it all and yelling, "That's police brutality. I got it all on film. You can sue him." This + "no expectation of privacy in public" |
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Quoted: If you're in their house, or backyard - yes. If on a sidewalk, park, mall - not so much.Quoted: Quoted: I think there is something about recording audio without permission of the other person being an issue. I understood the rules to be (unless it changed recently) video is okay, audio wasn't. but the video camera has a mic Yup, so as I understand it, you need to turn OFF the microphone if taping someone who hasn't given you permission. |
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Quoted:
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Quoted:
I think there is something about recording audio without permission of the other person being an issue. I understood the rules to be (unless it changed recently) video is okay, audio wasn't. but the video camera has a mic Yup, so as I understand it, you need to turn OFF the microphone if taping someone who hasn't given you permission. You DO NOT need to turn off the mic if you're recording a police encounter. I've made audio recordings of the police on several occasions, and other open carry people have made audio and video recordings of the police as well. There was a court case regarding some video recording of the police at some anti-war event at Port of Tacoma, and the police lost. If I have time later I'll go look it up. |
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There is some 9th Circus case law pertaining to this that was made over here on the peninsula.
http://www.rcfp.org/news/2004/1105johnso.html Filming police officer not invasion of privacy * The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the state of Washington's Privacy Act does not prohibit filming a police officer, allowing a civil rights lawsuit against the officer to advance. Nov. 5, 2004 –– A police chief in his patrol car talking to dispatchers did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy and may be sued by a man arrested for filming him, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco (9th Cir.) has ruled. The full court declined to rehear the case last week. On Jan. 28, 2000, Anthony Johnson filmed Byron Nelson, then-police chief of Sequim, Wash., as he talked with dispatchers from his patrol car. Nelson, who has since retired, was looking for a missing juvenile at a public skateboard park where Johnson was filming friends. After twice telling Johnson that it was illegal to record conversations without consent, Nelson and another officer physically struggled with Johnson, seized the camera and arrested him. Johnson spent three days in jail. Johnson was charged with violating the Washington Privacy Act, which bars intercepting or recording a private conversation without the consent of all participants. The trial court dismissed the charges after finding that Nelson had no expectation of privacy because he parked his patrol car with the windows rolled down in a public place. Johnson sued Nelson, the city, and others in U.S. District Court in Tacoma for violating his First Amendment rights and Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure. The district court dismissed the suit, but the Court of Appeals reversed after Johnson appealed. "It is undisputed that Johnson recorded Chief Nelson while he was on duty performing an official function in a public place," Judge Kim M. Wardlaw wrote for the 2-1 majority. "Johnson did not violate the Privacy Act when he recorded this official, public activity." Wardlaw also held that Nelson had no reasonable expectation of privacy because he knowingly exposed his conversation to the public. "If Chief Nelson had wished to keep the radio communications from the public, he should have rolled up the driver's window, and refrained from rolling down a second window, where Johnson was standing next to the car with his video camera pointed inside," Wardlaw wrote. "[T]here is no reasonable expectation of privacy in communications over police dispatch radio in any event because those communications are knowingly exposed to the public by virtue of their transmission," she added, noting that widely available scanners made the transmission available to the general public. Judge Ronald M. Gould dissented, arguing that the question of whether the state Privacy Act applied should be sent to the Washington State Supreme Court. The full court of appeals declined to rehear the case Oct. 25, allowing Johnson's civil rights lawsuit to go forward. (Johnson v. Hawe; Media Counsel: R. Stuart Phillips, Phillips Law Group, Poulsbo, Wash.) –– GP © 2004 The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Link to actual decision http://ftp.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F3/388/388.F3d.676.03-35057.html |