xRecording Police and Public Officials Quote

” ‘[T]here is practically universal agreement that a major purpose of’ the First Amendment ‘was to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs’ . . . .” Ariz. Free Enter. Club’s Freedom Fund PAC v. Bennett, 131 S. Ct. 2806, 2828 (2011) (quoting Buckley, 424 U.S. at 14). “the First Amendment goes beyond protection of the press and self-expression of individuals to prohibit government from limiting the stock of information from which members of the public may draw.” First Nat’l Bank of Bos. v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, 783 (1977). The freedom of speech and press “ ‘embraces at the least the liberty to discuss publicly and truthfully all matters of public concern without previous restraint or fear of subsequent punishment.’ ” Id. at 767 (quoting Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 101-02 (1940)). Whig commentator Thomas Gordon explained: “That Men ought to speak well of their Governours is true, while their Governours deserve to be well spoken of; but to do publick Mischief, without hearing of it, is only the Prerogative and Felicity of Tyranny: A free People will be shewing that they are so, by their Freedom of Speech. The Administration of Government, is nothing else but the Attendance of the Trustees of the People upon the Interest and Affairs of the People: And as it is the Part and Business of the People, for whose Sake alone all publick Matters are, or ought to be transacted, to see whether they be well or ill transacted; so it is the Interest, and ought to be the Ambition, of all honest Magistrates, to have their Deeds openly examined, and publickly scann’d.” --Silence Dogood No. 8, THE NEW-ENGLAND COURANT (Boston), July 9, 1722, reprinted in 1 THE PAPERS OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 28 (Leonard W. Labaree et al. eds., 1959) (quoting Cato’s Letter No. 15). The Virginia General Assembly objected to the infamous Sedition Act of 1798 in part “because it is levelled against that right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon.” Virginia Resolutions of 1798, reprinted in 17 THE PAPERS OF JAMES MADISON 189-90 (David B. Mattern et al. eds., 1991) (emphasis added). In his famous 1868 treatise on constitutional law, Thomas Cooley explained that a foremost purpose of the Constitution’s guarantee of speech and press liberty is to secure the[] right to a free discussion of public events and public measures, and to enable every citizen at any time to bring the government and any person in authority to the bar of public opinion by any just criticism upon their conduct in the exercise of the authority which the people have conferred upon them. To guard against repressive measures by the several departments of government, by means of which persons in power might secure themselves and their favorites from just scrutiny and condemnation, was the general purpose . . . . The evils to be guarded against were not the censorship of the press merely, but any action of the government by means of which it might prevent such free and general discussion of public matters as seems absolutely essential to prepare the people for an intelligent exercise of their rights as citizens. THOMAS M. COOLEY, A TREATISE ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATIONS 421-22 (1868) (emphasis added); “[A]s a general matter, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.” Ashcroft v. ACLU, 535 U.S. 564, 573 (2002) the Government may commit a constitutional wrong when by law it identifies certain preferred speakers. By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 130 S. Ct. 899, 905-06 (2010); Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514, 532 (2001) (“Privacy of communication is an important interest . . . .”). Indeed, the protection of personal conversational privacy serves First Amendment interests because “fear of public disclosure of private conversations might well have a chilling effect on private speech.” Id. at 533. Katz, 389 U.S. at 351 (“What a person knowingly exposes to the public . . . is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection.”); id. at 361 (Harlan, J., concurring) (“[C]onversations in the open would not be protected against being overheard, for the expectation of privacy under the circumstances would be unreasonable.”). Rather than attempting to tailor the statutory prohibition to the important goal of protecting personal privacy, Illinois has banned nearly all audio recording without consent of the parties— including audio recording that implicates no privacy interests at all. ... Nothing we have said here immunizes behavior that obstructs or interferes with effective law enforcement or the protection of public safety. ACLU v. Alvarez Even today, with the right to free speech expanding in all directions, it remains a partial, a qualified, right. To make it complete would render unconstitutional defamation law, copyright law, trade secret law, and trademark law; tort liability for wiretapping, other electronic eavesdropping, and publicly depicting a person in a “false light”; laws criminalizing the publication of military secrets and the dissemination of child pornography; conspiracy law (thus including much of antitrust law); prohibitions of criminal solicitation, threats and fighting words, securities fraud, and false advertising of quack medical remedies; the regulation of marches, parades, and other demonstrations whatever their objective; limitations on free speech in prisons; laws limiting the televising of judicial proceedings; what little is left of permitted regulation of campaign expenditures; public school disciplining of inflammatory or disruptive student speech; the attorney-client, spousal, and physician-patient privileges in cases in which an attorney or spouse or physician would like to speak but is forbidden by the privilege to do so; laws making medical records confidential; and prohibitions against the public disclosure of jurors’ names in cases in which jurors might be harassed. ... Privacy is a social value. And so, of course, is public safety. The constitutional right that the majority creates is likely to impair the ability of police both to extract information relevant to police duties and to communicate effectively with persons whom they speak with in the line of duty. An officer may freeze if he sees a journalist recording a conversation between the officer and a crime suspect, crime victim, or dissatisfied member of the public. He may be concerned when any stranger moves into earshot, or when he sees a recording device (even a cell phone, for modern cell phones are digital audio recorders) in the stranger’s hand. To distract police during tense encounters with citizens endangers public safety and undermines effective law enforcement. -- Posner, circuit judge, dissenting in ACLU v. Alvarez

by:	xRecording Police and Public Officials
Rating:
Categories:	Press, Speech, Police, Security, Privacy, Constitution
	Tweet

Tweet  Rate this quote! How many stars? 0 1 2 3 4 5	What do YOU think?
Your name:	Your town:     CLICK JUST ONCE!

Get a Quote-A-Day! Free!
Liberty Quotes sent to your mail box.
Email: