[cschneid]

While I agree that it should be allowed to tape any interactions you have with an officer, it's a bit of a gray area if you follow one around taping everything they do.

First: they are off duty sometimes (they get breaks too)

Second: They are dealing with other people, and that interaction deserves a level of privacy as well. If I follow a officer up to a car stop, and start recording, that seems intrusive.

So, the question is where the limit of permissible is. Do off duty police officers have normal citizen rights to prevent themselves from being taped? Do on break officers have that? How about on duty officers talking with another person? Can I record that audio? Video?

In my mind it should be more permissible than taking video of normal people, but a blanket "lets tape everything" doesn't work either. Where exactly the correct middle ground lies isn't clear to me.

[jerf]

Remember that police officers are still normal citizens, too, with the attendant rights and protections thereto. If you followed me personally around with a camera 24/7, that would be harassment. If you just followed me around 24/7 without a camera, that would be harassment. By "harassment" I don't mean necessarily that exact legal term but I'm sure there's some legal recourse if such a thing happened.

We don't necessarily need lots of "special" rights to film police, we just need them not to have special rights not to be filmed.