The Boston police are bringing charges against two number of activists defending the rights of photographers to take photos of police at work and to contact police spokespersons about the issue. The string of charges began over a lawyer’s videotaping a confrontation during an arrest last August. Carlos Miller, a blogger for the public’s right to take photos in public, is facing charges for witness intimidation over posting the number of a police spokesperson’s work number. Miller posted the number to protest the police bringing charges against Taylor Hardy, a Florida student, who had allegedly taped an interview with the spokesperson without permission and was charged under the state’s wiretapping law. (Universal Hub, November 13, 2013, by adamg)
The Newspaper Guild, November 13, 2013, condemned the charges as “an intolerable assault on their [the journalism student’s and the blogger’s] legal rights and freedom of speech.” The Guild said the charges reflect a nationwide trend and that the two charged by the police were fulfilling their civic duty. “Demanding transparency from the most powerful of civic agencies is the right of all people and the responsibility of journalists and other watchdogs,” wrote the Guild.
Andy Sellars, a staff attorney for the Citizen Media Law Project, November 13, 2013, wrote about the charges, “In both cases, something that would have been a normal, everyday encounter if done by a member of the institutional press – recording an arrest or contacting the Bureau of Public Information for information about an arrest – is transformed into something viewed (incorrectly) as foreign, and therefore, in the eyes of the police, dangerous, which leads the police to act unreasonably and unlawfully.”