Is it lawful to publicly show a video of a minor burglarizing one&#39;s house? My friend's house was broken into today, and he captured video of the burglar on his Nest Cam. It alerted him of movement inside his house via his phone, and when he checked the video stream, he saw the perpetrator in the act. He called 911, who sent police very quickly. They caught the burglar in the act and arrested him at gunpoint. My dad, who is a professor of Criminology, wants to show the video to his students for educational purposes. Is there any legal reason why he couldn't do that? The officers who arrived told my friend that the burglar is 16 years old, if that matters. He can be seen in the video noticing the camera, but clearly he wasn't explicitly informed that he was being recorded. This is in Austin, TX, USA.
I presume that Dad will check with the college attorneys, so this is for information purposes only. Smith v. Daily Mail 443 U.S. 97 concerns a newspaper which published the name of a minor arrested for allegedly murdering someone (having legally obtained that information). SCOTUS held that The State cannot, consistent with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, punish the truthful publication of an alleged juvenile delinquent's name lawfully obtained by a newspaper. The asserted state interest in protecting the anonymity of the juvenile offender to further his rehabilitation cannot justify the statute's imposition of criminal sanctions for publication of a juvenile's name lawfully obtained There was a state law prohibiting a newspaper from publishing a minor's name involved in a criminal proceeding – it specifically singled out newspapers, hence the holding includes the mention of newspapers, but the footnotes in the case indicate that they "don't need to go there" (the equal protection question was unanswered), because "First Amendment rights prevail over the State's interest in protecting juveniles". The First Amendment right would be the same, applied to video, and classroom use.
If this was anywhere in the United States, it was perfectly legal to post the photo. The First Amendment allows people to freely share information, including pictures. People commonly believe that they have the authority to control who takes a picture of them and under what circumstances, but that is generally false. Anyone with a camera is generally free to photograph anyone or anything they want out in public. You've also used the copyright tag on your question. The person who took the picture owns the copyright. Since that's the owner, there's presumably no problem with her posting it. Instead, it would be illegal for you to post that photo without obtaining a license from the homeowner.
If a police officer reviewed the footage and then went out and issued a citation in person to the offender, this could probably be used. Many states limit tickets issued by mail based upon camera evidence alone. But, while some state laws have specific requirements, but in general, authenticated video recordings are admissible evidence in court proceedings, and a citizen complaint can be a basis for initiating a traffic offense prosecution. To prove some offenses, like speeding, dashcam evidence of a third-party may not be very good evidence, but for running a red light or a stop sign, it could be powerful evidence.
You have a right to access per Art 15 GDPR. You can make a request to the data controller (the person managing those cameras) free of charge. In your request, you should mention the approximate time periods during which you might appear, and you should make it possible to identify you in the footage. How the data controller may respond The data controller has one month to respond. The response should include the following items: the purpose of these cameras the retention period for the footage a reminder that you may have a right to request erasure of your data a reminder that you have a right to lodge a complaint with the ICO a copy of the footage, if any exists If the data controller denies your request, they should describe their reasons for doing so. Here, they could at most argue that your request was excessively broad (cf. Art 12(5) GDPR). In principle, they could also argue that your right to access is restricted by an exemption in Schedule 1 Part 2 of the Data Protection Act 2018, however none of those will fit. The data controller cannot deny your request with the argument that the CCTV surveillance is a “purely personal or household activity” (Art 2(2)(c) GDPR) since the cameras seem to cover a public space. The ICO also writes: If your CCTV captures images beyond your property boundary, such as your neighbours’ property or public streets and footpaths, then your use of the system is subject to the data protection laws. If the data controller has no footage (because the cameras are dummies, are switched off, don't make persistent recordings, or footage was deleted prior to your request) then of course you can't get a copy of your data. The other elements of the response should still be provided, in particular an explanation of the purpose of processing and the retention periods. Remedies If you are not satisfied with the data controller's response to your request, you have the following remedies: you can lodge a complaint with the ICO you can sue the data controller directly Legality of residential CCTV surveillance also covering public spaces It is possible that the CCTV cameras as currently set up are actually unlawful. A basic GDPR principle (Art 5(1)(b)) is that data shall be collected only for “specified, explicit and legitimate purposes”. If there is no pressing purpose for using the camera, it violates the GDPR. In particular, cameras that are directed away from the controller's property and primarily cover a public space are unlikely to serve a legitimate purpose. Additionally, the GDPR requires all such collection to be transparent. As soon as public spaces are involved, there must be a privacy notice per Art 13 GDPR. The ICO asks controllers to Let people know you are using CCTV by putting up signs saying that recording is taking place, and why. A great resource in this context is the Fairhurst v Woodard case from 2021. A neighbour had mounted multiple cameras, all of which were covering public spaces to some degree. The neigbour claimed that some of these cameras were dummies. The court considered the lawfulness of each camera separately. While a Ring doorbell camera that primarily covered the owner's property but would also incidentally record passer-bys was considered legitimate, a camera that was primarily directed at a public space or other homes was not. Further reading ICO guidance on domestic CCTV systems Fairhurst v Woodard: PDF of the judgement, summary facts on the placement of the 4 cameras given in paragraphs 100–106 conclusions about the legitimacy in paragraphs 131–138
What is allowed and what happens are different things; this is why we have police, courts and prisons. If everyone followed all of the laws all of the time we would need none of these. The videos are copyright and without the permission of the copyright holder (the NFL) you cannot reproduce or distribute them. A defense to copyright violation is if the usage is fair use or fair dealing. What you see on line is: Done with permission of the NFL Fair use as it is being used to comment on or analyze the performance; like a critic's book review. Unlawful and not pursued (yet) because the NFL considers it not worthwhile.
Is this interpretation correct? YES Encounters such as this should normally fall within the non-statutory stop &amp; account which covers police-initiated conversations with members of the public to ask general questions about their activities when there are no reasonable grounds to suspect an offence. The terminology varies from Force to Force, but can be summarised as: What are you doing? Why are you in the area? Where are you going? What are you carrying? There is no legal requirement or obligation to answer any of these questions, and the police cannot lawfully detain anyone to ask them - unlike the statutory powers under Stop &amp; Search and Arrest covered by the OP.
In the U.S. this is a notoriously perilous area of the law, particularly because the laws regarding recording vary so much between the states. A good source for this question is the RCFP. To give you an example: In Pennsylvania it is a felony to record "oral communication" in any circumstance in which the speaker would be justified in expecting it to not be recorded. Legally, as soon as you turn on an audio recorder in PA, you had better make sure nobody unaware that you're recording wanders within range of your microphone!
It is not obvious that is it illegal in Washington state. Everett WA has local ordinances against "lewd conduct" (there are versions of this at the state level and in most municipalities). Having sex and masturbation are included in the class of "lewd acts", and are also included in "sexual conduct". An activity is "obscene" if three things are true. First, the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find, when considered as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest and when considered as a whole, and in the context in which it is used, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. I think having sex or masturbating could pass these two tests. The third condition is that the act explicitly depicts or describes patently offensive representations or descriptions of... [sex, masturbation, or excretion] The prohibition is more narrow: A person is guilty of lewd conduct if he or she intentionally performs any lewd act in a public place or under circumstances where such act is likely to be observed by any member of the public. If lewd conduct were completely illegal, you could not excrete or have sex withing the city limits. Now we have to turn to the definition of "public place": an area generally visible to public view, and includes streets, sidewalks, bridges, alleys, plazas, parks, driveways, parking lots, automobiles (whether moving or not), buildings open to the general public, including those which serve food or drink or provide entertainment and the doorways and entrances to buildings or dwellings and the grounds enclosing them, and businesses contained in structures which can serve customers who remain in their vehicles, by means of a drive-up window Focusing not on the probable intent but on the words, it is primarily defined as "an area generally visible to public view". Your house qua building is probably generally visible to public view, as is a public toilet or hotel. The inside of your bedroom is probably not generally visible to public view, nor is the inside of a toilet stall. While the building is probably a public place, a closed stall within the building does not meet the definition (nor does a hotel room). It might however qualify under the clause "or under circumstances where such act is likely to be observed by any member of the public". The statute does not give a definition of "observe", but under ordinary language interpretation, observation may be seeing or hearing. Silent sex, masturbation or defecation might not qualify as being public. Obviously, excretion in a stall of a public bathroom cannot be a lewd act, presumably because the average person does not generally consider ordinary excretion as appealing to the prurient interest: but there could be contexts where it does. Another avenue for prosecution is the Indecent Exposure state law which is when one intentionally makes any open and obscene exposure of his or her person or the person of another knowing that such conduct is likely to cause reasonable affront or alarm. It is totally non-obvious that sex or masturbation in a toilet stall is "open". There is a slippery slope regarding quiet sex or masturbation w.r.t. knowing that the conduct is likely to cause reasonable affront or alarm. Because the contexts where sex and masturbation are not clearly spelled out by statutory law, the matter would depend on how courts had interpreted previous cases. There have been arrests in Washington of people having bathroom sex, but I don't know if anyone has ever or recently-enough been convicted for having quiet sex out of view in a toilet stall, or similar place. There is a potentially applicable case, Seattle v. Johnson, 58 Wn. App. 64, which seems to involve public sex, and the conviction was overturned because the complaint was defective, in not including the element "that the defendant must know 'that such conduct is likely to cause reasonable affront or alarm'". It is not clear from the appeal what the act actually was – it probably was for public nudity. There is also an decision by the state appeal court division 3 (not publicly available) in Spokane v. Ismail which, in connection with a charge of public urination declares that "A toilet stall is not a public place. The center of Riverfront Park during the lunch hour is a public place", in connection with an ordinance just like the Everett one against public lewd acts.