Illinois General Assembly passes bill to ban citizens from recording police

http://www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-general-assembly-revives-recording-ban/

by benktbyte • 12 years ago

158 52 12 years ago

illinoispolicy.org

grecy• 12 years ago

Is it in the theme of Democracy to prevent citizens filming Police?

balabaster5• 12 years ago

No just in the theme of the Police Union

dmk23• 12 years ago

Disgraceful!

Karunamon• 12 years ago

Seriously, what the fuck it is with these assholes trying to pass laws that were struck down elsewhere? It happened with video game violence laws, it happened with marriage equality, and it's happening with this now.

It really should be a fineable/jailable/fireable offense to propose and pass legislation that is illegal on its face.

rememberlenny• 12 years ago

I dont have any evidence for this, but I bet money. I assume its expensive to draft laws. The billable time for lawyers to review legislation is not trivial.

If the money was spent to draft a law and not passed, the entity behind it would want to give it another try.

electic• 12 years ago

Is it just me or is this site showing a blank white page?

arh68• 12 years ago

    $ curl -vX GET http://www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-general-assembly-revives-recording-ban/
    * Hostname was NOT found in DNS cache
    *   Trying 54.236.99.104...
    * Connected to www.illinoispolicy.org (54.236.99.104) port 80 (#0)
    > GET /illinois-general-assembly-revives-recording-ban/ HTTP/1.1
    > User-Agent: curl/7.37.1
    > Host: www.illinoispolicy.org
    > Accept: */*
    >
    < HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable: Back-end server is at capacity
    < Content-Length: 0
    < Connection: keep-alive

bbcbasic• 12 years ago

From Google Cache: http://pastebin.com/HuGJgzbK

mullingitover2• 12 years ago

Hold on, wait for me! I have to get my pitchfork.

Okay.

Reading now...

Sigh, I'm putting my pitchfork back, false alarm.

The old law got struck down [1] because the Constitution. The new one stipulates that it's only illegal in situations where there's a reasonable expectation of privacy [2]. Damn it, I can't get offended about this.

[1] http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-11-26/news/chi-supre... [2] http://politics.suntimes.com/article/springfield/state-eaves...

sehugg• 12 years ago

http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/08/new-illinois-eavesdropping...

... the eavesdropping bill retains another odious aspect of the old law: It punishes unauthorized recordings of public officials—specifically, police officers, prosecutors, and judges—more severely than unauthorized recordings of ordinary citizens. The former would be a Class 3 felony, punishable by two to four years in prison, while the latter would be a Class 4 felony, punishable by one to three years in prison. If anything, that is the opposite of the distinction the law should draw, since public officials, given the power they wield, should be subject to greater scrutiny than private citizens.

mullingitover2• 12 years ago

Hmm, good point. I can at least get out some rotten fruit for this.

leeoniya• 12 years ago

"reasonable expectation of privacy" from whose perspective?

if my spouse/gf/friends film my arrest in my own garage (without my objection, maybe even with my insistence), are they now subject to arrest?

mistercow• 12 years ago

There's a decent amount of precedent around what "reasonable expectation of privacy" means.

balabaster5• 12 years ago

If you make a scene, rousing the interest of the neighbors and other such passers by, does it then become public?

jostmey3• 12 years ago

Ha! That won't stop the great city of Chicago from arresting you and throwing you in the slammer.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm294TYqh6o

... And there are plenty more stories where that came from.

tptacek2• 12 years ago

The former story, about Tiawanda Moore, concerns someone who was acquitted ~4 years ago, and is now (justifiably!) suing the city.

The latter concerns someone who was not arrested.

balabaster5• 12 years ago

You could surely get around this by announcing loudly to the cop prior to every interaction that this is a public situation and there is no privacy to be found here... as proven by the existence of this camera crew and microphone.

legohead• 12 years ago

in this day and age, I don't expect privacy, ever.. with the NSA recording everything and forcing companies to comply, how do I even know if my cell phone isn't actively listening in on me?

jsprogrammer• 12 years ago

I would love to make this argument. The federal government has already made it so that there is no expectation of privacy anywhere. RF, wired, optical networks are monitored and recorded, CCTVs and IPTVs by private, public, and government organizations/individuals are ubiquitous and many many people carry around devices that can record audio/video from multiple sources within a second of activation. Some of those devices are already passively recording and listening to everything (eg. Google Now enabled devices).

Bluestrike2• 12 years ago

You're right, but that caveat alone still serves to muddy the waters. Just forcing people to have to think about whether they can record police interactions serves to discourage recordings for fear of the consequences. If Illinois police forces can't have a blanket eavesdropping ban to bash people over the head with, well, this is certainly the next best thing.

vacri• 12 years ago

You have an appropriate handle for such a comment...

jostmey3• 12 years ago

I live in Chicago but commute to Dallas every few weeks where my wife now lives. The difference is striking. In Illinois, taxes are high yet the government has failed to provide me with tangible services. I have been robbed and the police never did anything. I am left wondering where all the money goes. Meanwhile, my wife enjoys many government run programs in Texas and pays next to nothing in taxes.

What I am trying to say is avoid Illinois if at all possible.

jostmey3• 12 years ago

And apparently in Chicago you can be thrown in jail for years without trial.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/crime/20320674-418/time-stands-...

mikeyouse• 12 years ago

And in Texas, they execute the innocent and the mentally ill.. basing your view of an entire state on a few extreme outlier situations doesn't make much sense.

whoopdedo• 12 years ago

The difference is the people of Illinois never had the foresight to discover oil.

ameister14• 12 years ago

Explain Pennsylvania then.

tptacek2• 12 years ago

I was robbed on the border between Oak Park and Chicago and the Chicago police had 2 of the 3 people who did it in under 10 minutes. It was pretty impressive.

trhway• 12 years ago

what was the race of the robbers brought in by the police?

dmourati4• 12 years ago

Having grown up in Illinois and visited Texas I'd say exactly the opposite: avoid Texas if at all possible.

Chicago is a world class city. Sorry you had a rough time.

toomuchtodo3• 12 years ago

Chicago is a world class city. Sorry you had a rough time.

I moved from Chicago to (hard to have a sailboat in Texas) Florida because of how terrible the financial situation is in Illinois. Sure, great food, nice tourist city, fabulous architecture.

Cons: Property taxes that continue to increase to fund unfunded pensions. An income tax that continues to increase to close a unbalanced budget.

World class city? New York and San Francisco are world class cities.

cokernel_hacker• 12 years ago

Illinois owed UIUC somewhere around a half-billion dollars while I was a student (circa 2011). I remember my professors having to go on furlough because of this.

It's amazing how good of a school UIUC is in spite of the awful mismanagement of the state.

Out of curiosity, how familiar are you with CPS? I remember the dropout rate being ~ 50%. Apparently it is now closer to 70%.

I don't think Illinois stands up to the likes of London or New York.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 12 years ago

Texas's tax structure is particularly regressive: http://itep.org/itep_reports/2013/09/texas-is-a-low-tax-stat...

40th highest overall, but 6th highest for the lowest 20%.

natch• 12 years ago

Just on the money and low taxes thing, it is my understanding that Texas benefits from a lot of oil tax revenue, so that may be the explanation.

Bahamut• 12 years ago

For those who don't know, Illinois politics has a reputation for many corrupt dealings - this doesn't strike me as too surprising, when they have/had multiple governors serving sentences for committing federal crimes.

Here's the last in the line of the corrupt governors who got caught: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Blagojevich

stonewhite• 12 years ago

Right now they are leaking sensitive info while possibly fighting an outage.

Here is what the link resolves for me: http://ipweb-lb-1885590254.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com/illin...

tempodox• 12 years ago

News like this makes me sick to the stomach.

Illinois General Assembly passes bill to ban citizens from recording police

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