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Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Prison

The Giant Noodle

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What a load of CRAP!!!! If anything the police should be REQUIRED to be recorded!!!! This pisses me off HARD!

Christopher Drew is a 60-year-old artist and teacher who wears a gray ponytail and lives on the North Side. Tiawanda Moore, 20, a former stripper, lives on the South Side and dreams of going back to school and starting a new life.

About the only thing these strangers have in common is the prospect that by spring, they could each be sent to prison for up to 15 years.
“That’s one step below attempted murder,” Mr. Drew said of their potential sentences.
The crime they are accused of is eavesdropping.

The authorities say that Mr. Drew and Ms. Moore audio-recorded their separate nonviolent encounters with Chicago police officers without the officers’ permission, a Class 1 felony in Illinois, which, along with Massachusetts and Oregon, has one of the country’s toughest, if rarely prosecuted, eavesdropping laws.

“Before they arrested me for it,” Ms. Moore said, “I didn’t even know there was a law about eavesdropping. I wasn’t trying to sue anybody. I just wanted somebody to know what had happened to me.”

Ms. Moore, whose trial is scheduled for Feb. 7 in Cook County Criminal Court, is accused of using her Blackberry to record two Internal Affairs investigators who spoke to her inside Police Headquarters while she filed a sexual harassment complaint last August against another police officer. Mr. Drew was charged with using a digital recorder to capture his Dec. 2, 2009, arrest for selling art without a permit on North State Street in the Loop. Mr. Drew said his trial date was April 4.

CONTINUED: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/us/23cnceavesdropping.html?_r=2
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

Another example on how there are a different set of laws for us lowly citizens as opposed to our so called leaders.
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

Oh for gods sake.

So we can't record them talking to us?

But they can record us whenever they want without our permission or knowledge?

Bollocks to that I say!
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

Let's see here.....

1) Our government can record us anytime they wish, in any manner that they wish, and at just about any place they wish. It's legal.

2) We cannot record the government in any way, without taking a risk of being prosecuted for it.

Does anybody else also see a problem with this?
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

Heeelllooooo Big Brother... Everyone get out your copies of 1984 and F-451 to see where this world is heading....
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

This is so wrong on so many levels. The police can record us, they record our 911 calls, and they have video cameras in their cars that record us... All without our consent. Yet we can't record them? To be fair, the same is true with the UN. When I went to Haiti we were told that you cannot record or even take a picture of anything related to UN soldiers. Why? Probably because they didn't want the world to see how lazy they are. I am not lying when I say the only thing we ever saw them doing was standing outside the UN headquarters doing absolutely nothing among a city of impoverished people that suffer from a high violent crime rate. Laws like this should be struck down. The privacy of an officer should be as protected as that of citizens. If we can't tape police or record them, then by the same laws and privacy standards they shouldn't be allowed to do the same. Which brings me to my next point, outlaw all traffic light cameras... :mrgreen:
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

This is so wrong on so many levels. The police can record us, they record our 911 calls, and they have video cameras in their cars that record us... All without our consent. Yet we can't record them? To be fair, the same is true with the UN. When I went to Haiti we were told that you cannot record or even take a picture of anything related to UN soldiers. Why? Probably because they didn't want the world to see how lazy they are. I am not lying when I say the only thing we ever saw them doing was standing outside the UN headquarters doing absolutely nothing among a city of impoverished people that suffer from a high violent crime rate. Laws like this should be struck down. The privacy of an officer should be as protected as that of citizens. If we can't tape police or record them, then by the same laws and privacy standards they shouldn't be allowed to do the same. Which brings me to my next point, outlaw all traffic light cameras... :mrgreen:

I'm all for this, too. Recording 911 calls and dash cams are for our protection.
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

I'm all for this, too. Recording 911 calls and dash cams are for our protection.

Couldn't being allowed to record cops just like they record us be considered part of our protection as well?
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

Couldn't being allowed to record cops just like they record us be considered part of our protection as well?

I don't disagree with that, but there's no accountability with private recordings. They can be altered, edited, used out of context to present a false picture of the facts.
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

I don't disagree with that, but there's no accountability with private recordings. They can be altered, edited, used out of context to present a false picture of the facts.

yeah, government would never do this...
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

yeah, government would never do this...

There's a chain of custody with the dash cams. The officers can't access the video, themselves. From what I understand, whenever a tech tinkers with them, it's documented. I may have been given false info, though.
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

In Texas only one person recorded needs to know they are being recorded.
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

This doesn't surprise me about Illinois. I need a 100 dollar permit to sell something interstate from my business from my state of Indiana whereas in most states there is no charge or permit required. I refuse to pay the rip off fee annually so i refuse to sell to anyone in that state.

No worries. Both of these individuals can mortgage their property to pay a money grubbing lawyer his extravagent fees and get a lighter sentence. That my friends after all is the American way. One of the reasons I respect very few in that profession. Those with the where-with-all to pay a good expensive lawyer get off with lighter sentences. Our forefathers are probably rolling over in their graves.
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

This doesn't surprise me about Illinois. I need a 100 dollar permit to sell something interstate from my business from my state of Indiana whereas in most states there is no charge or permit required. I refuse to pay the rip off fee annually so i refuse to sell to anyone in that state.

Isn't this unconstitutional?
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

Isn't this unconstitutional?

we don't pay attention to that amendment anymore, just 13, 14, and 16.
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

I'm all for this, too. Recording 911 calls and dash cams are for our protection.

I don't see how such laws can be constitutional, given the recording is happening in public places.
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

we don't pay attention to that amendment anymore, just 13, 14, and 16.

Oh, that's right... I forgot.... unless, of course, said amendment can be used to further some liberal, leftist, socialist agenda item
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

Isn't this unconstitutional?

Apparently not. If it was it takes lots of money to take it to court and even then if it goes all the way to the supreme court the supreme doesn't have to look at it.
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

I’ve always said that malfeasance by government officials is treason that deserves the harshest forms of punishment conceivable. Laws that prevent people from recording government officials are actively interfering with justice and government accountability. At the very least, the mother****ers who passed these laws need to be removed from office.
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

Recordings of encounters with law enforcement ought to be encouraged, not criminalized.
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

this is why smart people don't say **** till they got a lawyer.
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

I don't disagree with that, but there's no accountability with private recordings. They can be altered, edited, used out of context to present a false picture of the facts.

There are ways that can be used to determine if something was doctored.
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

I don't disagree with that, but there's no accountability with private recordings. They can be altered, edited, used out of context to present a false picture of the facts.
Can't believe I'm hearing this from you. :shock:
 
Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

What a load of CRAP!!!! If anything the police should be REQUIRED to be recorded!!!! This pisses me off HARD!



CONTINUED: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/us/23cnceavesdropping.html?_r=2

There needs to be a "punishment fits the crime" yardstick applied here. Yes, it is illegal in the State of Illinois to record a conversation when only one party knows. It's not a new law, been that way forever.

Twelve states have the same kind of laws about eavesdropping that Illinois has -- both parties must consent. All states have criminal penalties when their eavesdropping laws are broken. "Can We Tape?"

If this incident involved the police surrepitiously recording a citizen without a warrant, we would be having a different discussion.
 
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Re: Eavesdropping Laws Mean That Turning On an Audio Recorder Could Send You to Priso

There are ways that can be used to determine if something was doctored.

You're right, but I think that without the proper chain of custody on something like that, it's just a goat **** looking for a place to happen.

Even if a private recording is thrown out of court trial and the accused officer, or official is cleared of all the charges, there's still the court of public opinion, where that peson's name is mud for the rest of his life.

Again, I don't disagree with what Digsbe said. I'm only posting the down side to such activity.
 
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