AlterNet details disturbing news from around the USA, of legislatures enacting laws banning public photography and videomaking in public spaces. The piece focuses on smart phones users taping police brutality:

15 Years in Prison For Taping the Cops? How Eavesdropping Laws Are Taking Away Our Best Defense Against Police Brutality More and more people use their smartphones to record police misconduct. But laws against wiretapping are being used to intimidate and stop them.

In at least three states, it is illegal to record any on-duty police officer, even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists. The legal justification is usually based on the warped interpretation of existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited.

Illinois, Massachusetts and Maryland are among the 12 states where all parties must consent for a recording to be legal. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested and charged with a felony. Most all-party consent states (except Illinois and Massachusetts) include a “privacy provision” that says a violation occurs only when the offended party has a reasonable expectation that the conversation is private. This is meant to protect TV news crews and people who record public meetings — where it is obvious to all that recording is underway — from accidentally committing a felony.

Massachusetts and Illinois are the only states that do not recognize an expectation-to-privacy provision to their all-party consent laws.

AlterNet quotes Radley Balko’s piece “The War on Cameras: It has never been easier—or more dangerous—to record the police.” from earlier this year. In it,

James Pasco of the Fraternal Order of Police argues that videotaping police officers in public should be illegal because it can intimidate officers from doing their jobs. Mark Donahue, president of FOP, concurs, telling the New York Times that his organization “absolutely supports” the eavesdropping act and was relieved that the ACLU’s challenge filed last year failed, adding that allowing the audio recording of police officers while performing their duty “can affect how an officer does his job on the street.”