ACLU Addresses The Rights Of Photography

It's become abundantly clear, lately, that police officers in America do not like added scrutiny provided by amateur and professional photographers and cell phone users. Unfortunately, this finding also coincides with a massive revelation that police officers often think that they are above the law, and can inflict violence whenever their little hearts desire, even to the point of murder. Many of them do not even understand the United States Constitution, much less respect it.

The good news is that those of us who take pictures of police officers and grab cell phone video of our tax dollars being spent are, according to the law, within our constitutional rights. No police officer has a right to shut down a news team or a private citizen taking pictures. The only loophole, in certain states, has to do with wiretapping laws: recorded audio cannot be deliberately captured and shared in all locales. But then, an officer carrying out his duties in public is not a private conversation, so the wiretapping laws do not apply in those instances.

The American Civil Liberties Union has found itself defending cases involving private citizens with cell phone and corporations such as television stations because of this issue with police officers and photography. As recently as the second week of August, police in Ferguson, Missouri did not want their tear gas activities photographed and recorded by journalists, so they handcuffed and arrested a couple from the Huffington Post and the Washington Post. As it happens, the only laws broken were broken by police.

Why is accountability so difficult for law enforcement to accept?

Prism, Privacy, And Edward Snowden

Your tax dollars at work, once again. Edward Snowden, who told us all about Prism, which can trace internet and cell phone signals in real time. While Snowden had a high level security clearance and all of the responsibility that goes with it, were his actions of divulging the information truly criminal, and if so, is he really guilty of treason? He did not go to any of our enemies with information about the fourth amendment rights of Americans getting violated, he came to the American people with it. Now that he has done that, he is the subject of an investigation, and his last known whereabouts were a hotel room in Hong Kong. He has since been offered asylum in Iceland.

Something that is rather disturbing is described in the video below, in an interview with Christiana Amanpour and Glenn Greenwood. Greenwood suggests that it is now no longer safe to be an investigative journalist, because if a journalist spends too much time with his source, he could also be considered culpable in some way, should the story covered concern a crime, and be charged as an accomplice! Also, an editor for the Washington Post, covering the story about Snowden, reportedly overheard security officials in a discussion at an airport stating that Snowden should "be disappeared", rather than extradited back to the United States to stand trial! So much for justice and due process. Perhaps it is easier, when possible, to just deny a person his day in court and skip due process!
 

As for Prism, it has always been sound advice to remember that there really are no secrets. The programs in use by NSA to store and interpret meta data stores such a large volume every day that the effort becomes counterproductive through having too much information to sort. The real invasion of privacy comes in the form of tracked computer information and cell phone data.....while one's calls are not necessarily heard, they are tracked. The trail of telephone numbers is logged, and of course, one's location, or approximate location, is also traceable. But then, there have been cameras on traffic lights for quite some time, now. Most stores have surveillance systems, decent schools have cameras, and Walmart sells cheap security cameras for homes. There really isn't much privacy to be had at this point in our history as humans. Anything that cannot be determined by studying the above mentioned methods of spying can often be divulged for free by the local Avon Lady.

 

Edward Snowden. A petition to pardon him for any crimes with which he may be charged is here.

 

Fits Written For A Facebook Friend

Someone on Facebook, who would very much like to see Lisa Irwin found, began writing a song, just for Debbie Bradley, Lisa's uncooperative mother. It seemed that either Debbie, or her enablers, cried the blues to Facebook about it until it was removed. So I tweaked it a bit for her, and decided to put it on my blog. Hopefully, one day soon, Debbie Bradley will sit down with law enforcement and give them a factual account of everything that happened in her house on October 3, 2011.

I wrote this in fits, after the manner of Lewis Carroll; only I stopped at four fits, rather than eight!