Frequently Asked Questions - recording police
[This FAQ was excerpted from a March 2010 Wired Magazine article by Brendan I. Koerner (AKA: Mr Know-It-All)]
I recently had a testy exchange with a traffic cop, who claimed I blew through a stop sign in a school zone. When I began recording our contretemps, he threatened to arrest me. Don’t I have the legal right to document such interactions?
Though the laws of this great land generally favor Smokeys over Bandits, this is one instance in which (alleged) scofflaws like you are probably in the clear. But the final verdict will depend on where, exactly, you do your motoring.
See, the rules that govern audio and video recording vary from state to state. Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia require only one-party consent, which means you’re free to stick your iPhone in any conversation partner’s face — even if they wear a badge. But a dozen states mandate that everyone who’s chatting must agree to be recorded. (A full list of state taping laws is available on the Web site of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.)
But don’t give up hope if you live in one of the holdouts, Bandit. Keep in mind that the cop may well be taping you with a camera mounted on his cruiser’s dashboard. “That at least implies permission for the person stopped to do the same,” says Robert C. Power, a professor at the Widener University School of Law. So feel free to ask the cop if he’s capturing your exchange for posterity; if he is, you can credibly claim a right to do likewise.
Of course, Smokey may not care for your highfalutin’ legalese and could easily decide to slap on the cuffs and let the courts sort it out. So before you push the issue too far, ask yourself this: Just how badly do you want to be the Rosa Parks of iPhone recording?
