We were just discussing the ruling of a 7th circuit federal judge, Richard Posner, about a controversial Illinois eavesdropping case, in which His Honor seemed to fear that allowing people to record interactions with police would...lead to people recording interactions with police. Or something.

"If you permit the audio recordings, they'll be a lot more eavesdropping.…There's going to be a lot of this snooping around by reporters and bloggers," U.S. 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner said. "Yes, it's a bad thing. There is such a thing as privacy."

To me, that sounds an awful lot like saying you can't increase the speed limit on a street to 65 MPH, because then more people will go 65 MPH. That's kind of the point.

In any case, reader Mark informs us that an Illinois State Court has gone the other way, in the Michael Allison case we wrote about a couple weeks ago, ruling that the law cannot apply to interactions with police and court officials as it violates the 1st Amendment. In the Posner article, plenty of commentors (myself included), drew a line between private interactions between citizens and interactions with public officials, arguing that while administering to a public duty, officials ought not be able to hide behind the veil of privacy. Circuit Court Judge David Frankland outlined a similar, if more eloquent, assertion in his opinion:

“'A statute intended to prevent unwarranted intrusions into a citizen's privacy cannot be used as a shield for public officials who cannot assert a comparable right of privacy in their public duties,' the judge wrote in his decision dismissing the five counts of eavesdropping charges against defendant Michael Allison."

I admit I struggle to see how anyone can disagree. When you're carrying out your public duty, your employer (the public) has a right to document what kind of job you're doing. While, as was Judge Frankland's opinion, we can make some exceptions for the sake of avoiding distractions (Allison actually tried to record in-court proceedings, a no-no), trying to make any of this a felony is downright silly.

The public is the public servant's employer, afterall. And that includes the Justice System as well. It's nice to hear from a judge who hasn't seemed to have forgotten that.

While I definitely don't agree with famed 7th Circuit appeals court judge Richard Posner on everything, he's generally recognized as a smart judge with a strong libertarian belief and a recognition and understanding of real economic issues. However, there are a few times when he seems to just reach a weird conclusion. Case in point: in a case involving Illinois' somewhat ridiculous "eavesdropping" law, which makes you a criminal just for recording the police with a mobile phone, Judge Posner has suggested that letting people film police is undesirable:

"If you permit the audio recordings, they'll be a lot more eavesdropping.…There's going to be a lot of this snooping around by reporters and bloggers," U.S. 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner said. "Yes, it's a bad thing. There is such a thing as privacy."...

Say what now? We're talking about recording public officials who are paid with taxpayer dollars doing a job in public, and Posner is worried about their privacy rights? Wouldn't it be a good thing for reporters and bloggers to be "snooping around" police if it turns up problems or corruption? And, really, since other courts have already declared similar rules unconstitutional, and it hasn't rendered those kinds of states into this crazy dystopia that judge Posner envisions, shouldn't that be evidence that these "concerns" are out of touch with reality?

Following on the news of a court in Massachusetts stating, clearly, that arresting someone for recording the police is a 1st Amendment violation, you'd hope that we'd start hearing fewer such stories. And yet, as Nick Burns alerts us (followed by a few more of you), over in Illinois, a guy named Michael Allison appears to be facing 75 years in prison for recording the police. Similar to other cases, the police charged him with illegal eavesdropping under an Illinois state law -- in this case, five felony counts, each of which could get 15 years in prison. Even worse, the Illinois Assistant Attorney General is arguing that there is no such thing as a right to film the police. Shouldn't there be a rule that if you're totally ignorant of basic Constitutional rights, you don't get to be Attorney General of anything? The Allison case is particularly nasty. It seems clear that it's a vindictive response to the fact that Allison challenged a fine he got for working on unregistered cars on his mother's property. As happens all too often in these types of cases, the prosecutors have been offering Allison plea bargain deals, and I'd imagine they'll keep doing that as public pressure gets stronger. It's the only way to save face against a ridiculous prosecution. Allison is refusing to accept any plea deal.

Also, if you watch the video above, it really shows the kind of chilling effects these arrests have. In the middle of the video, the news reporter comes across some law enforcement officials and asks them some questions, but the station's lawyers refuse to let the reporter play the audio on air... because it might violate the very same law on which the reporter is reporting. Later on, they do show some law enforcement officials -- including the Assistant AG mentioned above -- but only because they believe there's an exception to the law for journalists "at public hearings."

The ruling in Massachusetts doesn't directly apply here, as these are different circuits, but that doesn't mean the court can't or won't pay attention, and I'm sure Allison's lawyers will highlight the Glik ruling in court. Hopefully, the Illinois court finds the logic compelling.

Yesterday, we wrote about a woman who was facing 15 years in jail for using her cameraphone to videotape part of her effort to get Internal Affairs of the Chicago Police Department to investigate an officer, whom she claims sexually assaulted her. Apparently, this sort of situation is not unique in Illinois. Another story this week tells about an artist who set out to do a reasonable bit of civil disobedience: to protest a Chicago ordinance concerning where and when he could sell artwork on the street. He intended to get arrested for that misdemeanor by selling his art. As part of this, he had a First Amendment lawyer with him... and a video crew. Well, he did get arrested, but not for the misdemeanor of selling artwork in the wrong spot, but for the same felony of eavesdropping and is facing the same 15 years in prison as the woman we spoke about yesterday. Apparently, a big part of the problem is Illinois' Eavesdropping Act, which seems to create this ridiculous situation. Of course, the fact that prosecutors are actually moving forward with charges on such things is equally ridiculous. It's a good reminder of a reason to stay away from Chicago.

We've had a few stories about how police have been abusing wiretap laws to arrest people who video or audiotape the police, and here's a whopper of a case. Apparently a woman named Tiawanda Moore has been arrested and faces 15 years in prison in a case that goes to trial shortly. Her "crime"? Apparently, after being sexually assaulted by a Chicago police officer, she went to the Chicago Police Department's internal affairs group to report the officer. After being pressured not to file a report, she pulled out her mobile phone and started recording what was going on. The officers in the room saw this... and arrested her for eavesdropping. Oh yeah, while her trial starts shortly, the officer she reported is still "being investigated."

Mark alerts us to the news that Illinois has approved a new law that bans registered sex offenders from social networking sites. Now, I have no sympathy for anyone who uses a social networking site to approach kids for such nefarious purposes, but this seems like a rather broad brush for a variety of reasons. First, considering how many sites have added "social networking" features lately, this could block out a rather large portion of the internet. Hell, just recently Google announced new social features for its iGoogle homepage. Second, the vast majority of registered sex offenders weren't convicted of trying to entice a kid via a social network. Completely blocking all of those people from social networks seems rather pointless. Finally, the whole idea that social networks are some sort of breeding ground for predators is a moral panic made up by the press. Studies have shown that the common story of a predator getting online, pretending to be a kid, and befriending "targets" and "grooming" them is mostly a myth. That's not to say it hasn't happened, but it's quite rare, and the best way to deal with it is simply to educate kids on how to deal with strangers. Most are smart enough to deal with the issue on their own. But, of course, that doesn't make for good headlines for politicians who want to make sure everyone knows they're "protecting the children."

If you're the sheriff, aren't you supposed to understand at least the basics of the law? Apparently not in Cook County, Illinois. Sheriff Thomas Dart is now suing Craigslist because it's "the single largest source of prostitution in the nation." Of course, we've been through some of this before. Atlanta's mayor mistakenly blamed Craigslist for prostitution a while back, but didn't do anything about it. Some Attorneys General were threatening to do stuff, so Craigslist finally changed its policies last year. Of course, as expected, all that did was make prostitutes disperse to other sites. In other words: same amount of prostitution, just a lot more difficult to catch.

There have been some officials who recognize this. Some police officers have realized that Craigslist certainly isn't to blame, and is, in fact, a great tool for tracking and catching prostitutes. Hell, even Dart's own staff has regularly used Craigslist as a tool to crack down on prostitution. His own office says it's used Craigslist to bust at least 75 prostitutes in the last 18 months. Rather than suing Craigslist, he should be thanking Craigslist for making it so easy to catch these prostitutes. It seems unlikely that this lawsuit will go very far. Craigslist is almost certainly protected by Section 230 safe harbors as the service provider. You would think that a sheriff that used the tool successfully for so long could recognize this... but apparently Dart would rather it be more difficult to find and arrest prostitutes.

Illinois was one of the early ones in a long list of states that tried and failed to set up anti-video game laws. It was (I think) either the second or third such law to then be thrown out as unconstitutional. Since then, nine or ten more states have all tried and failed to implement similar laws. However, it looks like one legislator in Illinois hasn't been paying much attention. He's trying to add some more clauses to the law, more than three years after it was rejected as unconstitutional. Of course, if he was looking to amend it in a way that fixed the unconstitutional part, you might understand it. But, he's not. He's just adding more restrictions to a law that has been deemed unenforceable. Another great moment in politics.

An anonymous reader points us to the news that the state of Illinois has passed a law in response to the complaint of one individual that it was extremely difficult to cancel his online subscription to the game Final Fantasy XI. So, now it's been added to the state's consumer fraud law that any online game needs to offer an easy online way to cancel the service. That's all well and good, but I'm wondering why it's limited only to online games? If you're going to go that far, why not focus on any online subscription service?

Last month we pointed to some recent studies about how people walking while talking on mobile phones tend to do things that are riskier than those not talking on mobile phones and jokingly asked when politicians would start proposing bans on walking-while-talking, to go along with the popular bans on driving while talking. It didn't take long at all, actually. Parker Mason writes in to let us know that an Illinois lawmaker has proposed a ban on talking on a mobile phone while in a crosswalk. Combine that with jaywalking and you could really piss off a person who wasn't actually doing something dangerous. Actually, this isn't the first time such a thing has been proposed. Last year a similar law was proposed in New York, though I don't believe it went anywhere. It's nice that politicians want to protect people, but at some point you really have to ask why people can't take responsibilities for their own actions?