On Friday February 19, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Kearney handed down a ruling that citizens are not permitted to film police unless they declare that the recording is a challenge or protest to officers’ actions. The case, which was brought by the ACLU, stems from from two separate incidents.
In the first incident, a legal observer at a protest against hydraulic fracking was prevented from filming by Philadelphia Police, who smashed her bodily against a wall and restrained her. Pennsylvania State Police and the FBI routinely work together against activists on that particular issue. Municipal zoning meetings and movie showings about fracking have been placed under surveillance, and all participants and movie goers were identified by the FBI and State Police.
The public could lose their First Amendment right to film police activity as they wish
In the second incident a passerby recorded police breaking up a party near Temple University in Philadelphia with his cellphone. He was handcuffed and placed in a police van while officers deleted his photos and recordings. He was then charged with “standing in the area of a police invest[igation] videotaping w phone.”
The court did not rule on the Fourth Amendment issues raised by the confiscation and destruction of the video and images. The ACLU did not appeal on these same Fourth Amendment issues. If the judge’s decision was left to stand, the public could lose their First Amendment right to film police activity as they wish; nor could the press be sure to acquire this information.
The FBI has an entire secret air force of its own
The right to film police has been upheld by higher courts in the past and this current decision will be appealed by the ACLU to the Third Circuit.
The Philadelphia Police have a long history of brutality at protests and their leadership is often consulted in the suppression of dissent elsewhere. That same national leadership circle forms the core of Obama’s presidential commission on police abuse which immediately pushed forth the idea of more body cameras as a solution.
Those body cameras are linked via cellular networks to cloud computing databases, like the one that Amazon runs for Taser International. The body cameras are also capable of being seamlessly integrated into the FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) facial recognition database.
Cameras deployed on cops can thus serve as eyes on the ground. The secret police state complements this with secret ‘eyes in the sky.’ The FBI has an entire secret air force of its own; it was deployed, fore example, over Baltimore to help suppress dissent around police abuse and brutality. This air force can monitor 100 square kilometers at a time with cameras and “Stingray” cellular spoofing technology.
Announcing that you are protesting is the new loophole that permits a citizen to film, but there is no protection for the actual press who were brutalized when filming anti-police protests in Ferguson. It thus becomes a legal gray area as to whether one can witness the actions of the police and present them to the public without the threat of state harassment and brutality. If you are filming a protest, and claiming to be a protester, events in Ferguson have shown that you can be arrested and have your footage taken after a beating, thus rendering the judge’s so-called protection moot.
Military grade solutions are for the problems posed by warfare, not civil society
The judge’s decision to legalize the confiscation of video comes the same week as model legislation was passed in Virginia that would keep police officers names a secret from public records requests by the press and citizens at large.
The pace of these changes is happening against a backdrop of increasing public outcry against police abuse nationally. While the national dialogue on the militarization of police and policing focuses on, for instance, local police departments acquiring military surplus mine-resistant vehicles that are no longer needed overseas, little attention has been paid to how the police actually view the public.
The core of this new policing regime is military grade secrecy and military grade surveillance. Military grade solutions are for the problems posed by warfare, not civil society. The fundamental assumption of policing, and thus of America’s burgeoning secret police state, appears to be that the government is in a state of war with civil society, and thus the public at large.
Image: North Charleston
