Were you aware that it's explicitly against the law in three states, and potentially in nine others, to record an officer in uniform? In his inaugural contribution to Daily Kos, John Henry - "The LowGenius" - offers a rather sobering wake-up call to those who think we live in the land of unlimited liberty.
Did you know that it’s explicitly against the law in three states – Massachusetts, Maryland, and Illinois – to record (video, audio, or photograph) an officer in uniform? At least nine other states (I honestly don’t know if Michigan is one of them) have laws making it possible to prosecute for recording police.
I find this very disturbing. I find it so disturbing, in fact, that I deliberately risked finding out the hard way whether it was legal or not in Michigan by just going out and taping the first cops I saw in uniform.
I have no idea what these officers were doing. I have no reason to believe they were doing anything wrong or were anything less than perfectly justified in being where they were doing what they were doing when I recorded them.
But I find it terrifying that in the United States of America – the "freest country on Earth," as we Americans so love to exclaim – you can go to prison for doing what I did in this video.
Frankly, you should too.
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