{"id":537780,"date":"2010-04-21T10:59:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T14:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100420\/1041329109.shtml"},"modified":"2010-04-21T10:59:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T14:59:00","slug":"maryland-police-confiscate-bikers-computers-after-he-catches-questionable-activity-on-helmet-cam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/537780","title":{"rendered":"Maryland Police Confiscate Biker’s Computers After He Catches Questionable Activity On Helmet Cam"},"content":{"rendered":"

sceptic writes:<\/p>\n

\n“A motorcyclist was showboating and recording himself doing it using a helmet cam. While stopped at a stop light, an off duty police officer stepped out of his (unmarked) car with his gun drawn. The rider received a citation and posted the whole episode on YouTube<\/a>. 4 days later MD state police seized his computers and helmet cam and threatened to arrest him<\/a> because it is illegal to record someone without their consent.”<\/i>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can see a long version of the events (without any sound) which shows the 3 minutes leading up to the incident here:
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\nOr if you want to just see the part where the off duty cop pulls the gun (with sound), it’s here:
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\nThe laws against audibly recording someone without their permission are not designed for situations like this one. They’re designed for eavesdropping or things like recording phone calls. Using such a law to crack down on a guy showing an off-duty police officer totally<\/i> overreacting to a traffic stop by drawing his weapon seems like a clear abuse of this sort of law. <\/p>\n

However, now that we’re reaching an age when everything anyone sees will soon be able to be recorded — and for years, various research groups have been working on tools<\/a> to make that easier — these kinds of laws may need to be revisited. If many people are wearing devices that record everything they see and hear, suddenly such laws become a bit ridiculous — even outside of the clear abuse above when such laws are being used to punish a whistleblower.<\/p>\n

Permalink<\/a> | Comments<\/a> | Email This Story<\/a>
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sceptic writes: “A motorcyclist was showboating and recording himself doing it using a helmet cam. While stopped at a stop light, an off duty police officer stepped out of his (unmarked) car with his gun drawn. The rider received a citation and posted the whole episode on YouTube. 4 days later MD state police seized […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-537780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}