Public photography is an issue that frequently appears on this site because it’s a real example of technology-enabled speech that all too often authorities try to prevent. These attempts are often egregious and never balanced out by whatever policy reasons are ostensibly behind them. But they are particularly odorous when these prohibitions are enforced on people using photography to record the power of the police.
What’s especially insidious is the logic so often used for it, that recording people acting in public — or, more specifically, agents of the state acting in public under the color of the authority granted by the state — might somehow violate a privacy interest. Continue reading »
