Are Police legally allowed to confiscate a Camera and Phone over &quot;suspicious activity&quot;? A photographer is recording from a public sidewalk when he is confronted by Police. He refused to give his information because he had committed no crime. The Police then tried to claim that he was loitering in order to arrest him. Under threat of arrest, he gave his name and information to the Police. Afterwards the Police confiscated his camera and phone under "suspicious activity". Did the Police act legally when they confiscated his property? Since the photographer was conducting a 1st amendment protected activity. Could he have been charged with loitering? Here is the video for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWOtUDf0elQ
The district court judge, as reported in this news story has held that there was probable cause to arrest Daniel Robbins in this case, and that his rights were not violated. If this ruling stands, officers acted legally, although they might still be required to return the phone with the images. Whether there is probable cause for an arrest (or a search) is always a very fact-based issue. I have not found the judge's actual decision, only a news summary of it, which can often be misleading. Specific facts about exactly what Robbins did or said may be important in determining whether there was in fact probable cause. It appears that Robbins intends to appeal this decision. If he does there may be an opinion from a Circuit Court of Appeals expanding on whether there was probable cause or any violation of rights, and why. Previous cases have established that normally there is no reasonable expectation of privacy for acts performed in public; that one my photograph or video record such public acts legally from anywhere that one may legally be; that there is a right photograph or record police officers engaged in official actions or the use of police powers; and that laws attempting to forbid such recording are unconstitutional when so applied. However, it seems from the news story that here the police officers were off-duty and not engaging in any official acts or use of police powers. That might change the ruling. I rather expect the district court's decision to be overturned, but there is no case exact;ly on point that i know of, and one can never be absolutely sure what a court will do in a particular case. I can see why police officers may have felt threatened, and why the Judge may have been inclined to sympathize with them, although I think the decision was incorrect. But a Judge of the Appeals Court might possibly feel the same way. Until the Appeals Court rules, one cannot be sure what the law in this matter will finally be. (It is possibly, but statistically a bit unlikely, there there will eventually be a ruling from the US Supreme Court on this case.) This article from Nolo Press discusses the issue of recording police, primarily in the context of police who are performing their official duties. It says: Almost every court to consider the issue has determined that the First Amendment gives you the right to record (pictures, video, and audio) police officers in public while they are performing their duties. But that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to record if you’re doing so surreptitiously (secretly), interfering with the officer, or otherwise breaking the law. The courts' primary rationale for allowing police officer recording is that the First Amendment includes the right to freely discuss our government, and the right of freedom of the press and public access to information. Given the prevalence of personal filming devices, more and more “news” is being gathered and disseminated by members of the public. The courts have found that freedom of the press applies to citizen journalists and documentarians just as it does to formal members of the press. (See, for example, Glik v. Cunniffe, 655 F.3d 78 (1st Cir. 2011).) The Nolo article goes on to discuss whether a Section 1983 Federal suit against police officers who arrest someone recording their actions will succeed, indicating that this will depend on the specific facts of the case. The Nolo article mentions that one is not allowed to interfere with an officer during process of recording. What exactly constitutes &quot;interference&quot; is not fully clear, and will depend on the facts of a specific case. The Nolo article mentions other circumstances when recording an officer may not be legal.
Your appraisal is unjustly harsh, though not incomprehensible. A surprising number of lawyers are legally illiterate, in the same sense, even Supreme Court justices have to be told what the law is in a certain sense, and they often have to discover the law rather than recite it. Bear in mind that the typical education requirement for being a police officer is graduation from high school, and not a law degree. The educational requirements for the FBI are stiffer. They learn certain basics in a training course that lasts a few months, which covers everything. There is no law prohibiting a police officer from &quot;harassing&quot; a person who wants to film them. The line in the sand is that they cannot prevent a person from filming them. It would be interesting to know how many officers are actually unaware that they cannot force a person to stop filming. Also, the statement that they &quot;can't&quot; stop a person from filming them is a bit of an over-statement – they actually are capable of doing that, but what are the consequences? Given qualified-immunity, their own concern reduces to two issues: personal liability (getting sued) and department procedures manual (getting fired). It is invalid to infer ignorance from a particular pattern of behavior.
NO It is decided state-by-state (for state-wide agencies like state troopers), and county by county, and city-by-city whether or not to buy and use cameras. Also, they are not usually always running. Policies as to when officers are required to turn them on vary as well as when the public and the involved officers get access to the recordings.
Anyone can be arrested, as long as the police (and in some cases, anyone) have probable cause to do so. This generally includes two points: You are in the process of committing a criminal act The police have probable cause, generally through evidence, that you are in the process of, about to, or have committed a criminal act. This usually requires obtaining a warrant for the arrest. However, it's important not to conflate searches with arrest. Arrests are when you are being taken into custody for the reasons mentioned above. Searches are when your personal belongings (i.e. property), are searched to collect evidence. It is not up to police to convict someone. This is the job of the judicial system. There's a bit of terminology here: convictions basically mean being found guilty of an offence. Police don't have the ability to convict someone of an offence. They do have the ability to arrest, and charge with an offence. To charge someone with a crime basically means to accuse them of having done something. Now let's get to the actual crime. Since you haven't mentioned a specific jurisdiction, I'm going to use Canadian cases and law, but in general, it should apply worldwide. If the police have reason to believe that you are engaging in unlawful hacking-related behaviour, then they have the authority to arrest you. They simply need to have a reasonable belief that you are engaged in the crime. Something such as connecting you with an IP address and connecting that you were online at the time is enough. If the police need to find out more information (which they generally do, to investigate further into the matter) - they can obtain a search warrant afterwards. With this, they can legally search into your computer, and investigate. Any evidence that they collect can be used in court. I've recently done some research into cyber crimes. One rather infamous case involved the attack on multiple large scale websites, including Dell, Yahoo, and Amazon, in 2000. This sparked a large scale investigations, between the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and the FBI. The attacks were claimed by some to cause nearly 1.7 billion dollars of damage. The hacker was charged with 58 different offences. You can imply from the linked article that he was arrested before his computer was searched.
In the US, does a person photographing private property (houses, farms etc.) while standing on public ground (road, park etc.) commit any offence? No. In general, while standing on public land, it is legal for your eyes to glance onto everything around you. You cannot be arrested and imprisoned for allowing your gaze to pass over your neighbours lawn. It is legal for you to take out a tripod, canvas and paintbrushes and paint the general scene, even if it includes, for example, a tree standing on private land. Instead of a paintbrush, you may use a camera to create a picture of the scene. There are a few exceptions Some military installations Some installations operated by the department of energy (e.g. some nuclear power stations) You cannot photograph people where they have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" - Note that this is not dependant on how the people feel about it. You can photograph a couple kissing at a bus stop, you probably can't legally point a telephoto lens at their bedroom window through a broken privacy-fence. will they commit any offence by publishing the photos They may need copyright permission from the owners of any identifiable works of art included and may need model releases from identifiable people included. There are specific exceptions allowing the publishing of photographs of sculptures and buildings that are visible from public spaces. See The Photographer's Right
There are two issues, one is the legal issue of whether what you are doing is a crime, and the other is the evidentiary issue of proving that that is what happened. If you take the phone home with the intention of keeping it ('finders keepers') then you have committed larceny (sometimes called 'theft', sometimes correctly). This specific type is called 'larceny by finding'. If you take the phone home with the intention of finding the owner then you have not committed larceny because you have not committed the mental element ('mens rea') of the offence: you don't intend to permanently deprive the owner of their rights. However, and this is the evidentiary issue, if hypothetically you were found in possession of the phone then the police might not believe your explanation and a court might well convict you of larceny. P.S. Firefox has marked 'evidentiary' as a spelling error and suggested 'penitentiary' instead. :s
This has yet to be specifically decided in the federal courts. The Post Office can set &quot;rules of conduct&quot; for its facilities. Prohibiting photographing is plainly a restriction on one's First Amendment rights, and it is established beyond question that a government cannot issue / enforce a blanket prohibition of public photographing. Someone would have to take a case to court to determine whether this limitation on First Amendment rights passes the relevant level of judicial scrutiny. The rationale (as set forth by the USPS) is that such photographing may be &quot;disruptive&quot;. One can perhaps analogize the right to film police with a new-found right to film post office, following from a right to public oversight over the government. DHS gives general guidance of its own (with a pile of redacted stuff), directing you to 41 CFR 102-74.420. Permission is thus required, until the courts find that to be an unconstitutional restriction (I would not expect there to be such a finding). But it is not unthinkable that the courts could at some point so rule. The YouTube aspect of the question is irrelevant: if you have the right, you have the right, and it doesn't derive from nor is it blocked by an intent to distribute on YouTube.
No, they cannot confiscate anything. They say they can just to minimise the percentage of people who will disobey the filming prohibition. A sensible percentage of those who would otherwise ignore the prohibition will not question the legality of possible confiscation and will just obey the rules.