Obama administration says Constitution protects cell phone recordings
Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica:
The Obama administration has told a federal judge that Baltimore police officers violated the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments by seizing a man’s cell phone and deleting its contents. The deletions were allegedly in retaliation for the man’s use of the phone to record the officers’ arrest of his friend. According to the Maryland ACLU, this is the first time the Obama Justice Department has weighed in on whether the Constitution protects citizens’ right to record the actions of police with their cell phones.
This is a huge deal. Not just in Baltimore but all over the country police have been seizing cameras and phones of people recording misconduct or even just regular arrests. Here’s one such example from Miami. Extremely encouraging to see the Obama administration1 weighing in on the side of common sense and sanity.
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And other judges too, as linked in the Ars piece. ↩