Illegal Wiretapping on Boston’s Streets January 16, 2010
Boing Boing reported about an epidemic of wiretapping on the streets of Boston.
Simon Glik, a lawyer, was walking down Tremont Street in Boston when he saw three police officers struggling to extract a plastic bag from a teenager’s mouth. Thinking their force seemed excessive for a drug arrest, Glik pulled out his cellphone and began recording.
Within minutes, Glik said, he was in handcuffs.
The police arrested Glik for violating G. L. c. 272, s. 99, the Massachusetts wiretap act. It’s not the first arrest of its kind.
The act generally prohibits secret interception of oral communication by means of an electronic device. In plain english, you can’t record a conversation without the other party knowing that you’re recording. You don’t need their explicit permission, but they can also choose to stop talking to you once you tell them you’re recording. The act has a lot of exceptions, but there is no exception for recording police officers.
There is a silver lining here, in order to violate the law, the recording has to be secret. There is nothing secret about filming a police officer with a camcorder. And based on this case, the officer had a pretty good idea that the cellphone was recording both video and sound. The police officer saw Attorney Glik recording, clearing understood that he was capturing the incident on his phone, and asked if the phone could record sound. It’s a tough argument to make that this record was in any way secret. So, in the end, it boils down to police trying to stop people from filming alleged police misconduct through bullying.
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