On Thu, Feb 01, 2001 at 02:34:17PM -0800, Greg Broiles wrote: | > | > One of the more troubling (to me) things is Chemerinsky's comment that | > people have no expectation of privacy in public. The idea that you | > may follow someone around with a video camera, take mm scale radar | > pictures through their clothes, etc, etc without their permission | > because they are in a public space is simply wrong. | | I think it's important to flesh out what you mean by "wrong" - if you | mean that he's misread US law on this topic, I agree with him, not you - | the privacy and publicity (and 4th Amendment) cases have for the most | part agreed that it's perfectly permissible to record (mechanically | or electronically) whatever's perceptible from or in a public place. I mean wrong as in unethical, not illegal. More comments to follow, if I can find some free time. ;) Adam | | This summary of the legal and practical history of video surveillance | may be of interest - | | <http://www.library.ca.gov/CRB/97/05/> | | There are a few limited exceptions - as of Jan 1 2000, California | criminalized surreptitious nonconsensual videotaping under or | through another person's clothing for sexual purposes, where the | victim had a reasonable expectation of privacy (CA Penal Code | 647(k)(2)), but that's pretty limited. There's a table of state | voyeurism statutes at | <http://www.law.about.com/newsissues/law/library/docs/n98voyeurlaws.htm> | but it's a few years old - of the 12 states listed there, I'd say | that only two (AK and TN) appear to even potentially criminalize | surveillance or recording in public places. | | I get the impression that other states may eventually criminalize | sexually oriented surveillance - but I anticipate the statutes will | be aimed at sexual or voyeuristic content, and won't touch garden | variety baby-brother surveillance for behavior control. | | > The free-speech-chilling nature of this technology should be clear. | | Yes, but that's a two-edged sword - the free press implications of | limiting recording, depicting, and describing public content are | also very serious - I think the people most likely to successfully | use a law against public recordings would be police officers going | after people like the ones who videotaped the beating of Rodney King. | There's a persistent rumor that in CA, cops act very aggressively | to prosecute people who surreptitiously tape encounters like traffic | stops - I've got no idea whether or not that's true. -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume