Related Stories
Police fight cellphone recordings
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Boston Globe
Posted: January 25th, 2010
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010...
Simon Glik, a lawyer, was walking down Tremont Street in Boston when he saw three police officers struggling to extract a plastic bag from a teenagers mouth. Thinking their force seemed excessive for a drug arrest, Glik pulled out his cellphone and began recording. Within minutes, Glik said, he was in handcuffs. The charge? Illegal electronic surveillance. Civil libertarians call [such arrests] a troubling misuse of the states wiretapping law to stifle the kind of street-level oversight that cellphone and video technology make possible. The police apparently do not want witnesses to what they do in public, said Sarah Wunsch, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. With the advent of media-sharing websites like Facebook and YouTube, the practice of openly recording police activity has become commonplace. But in Massachusetts and other states, the arrests of street videographers, whether they use cellphones or other video technology, offers a dramatic illustration of the collision between new technology and policing practices. Police are not used to ceding power, and these tools are forcing them to cede power.
Note: For lots more on increasing government and corporate threats to civil liberties, click here.
Related Stories
Latest News
Key News Articles from Years Past
