The issue in this case was whether the First Amendment to the US Constitution prevents Illinois from enforcing a state eavesdropping statute against individuals that openly record police officers performing their official duties in public. At issue in this case is Illinois statute 720 Ill. Comp. Stat. 5/14-2(a)(1) which makes it a felony to audio record “all or any part of any conversation” unless all parties to the conversation give their consent. The Court held that the “Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts far more speech than necessary to protect legitimate privacy interests; as applied to the facts alleged here, it likely violates the First Amendment’s free-speech and free-press guarantees”.

The State of Illinois asserted that “openly recording what police officers say while performing their duties in traditional public fora – streets, sidewalks, plazas, and parks – is wholly unprotected by the First Amendment” and the court noted this was an “extraordinary argument”. The court explains that “the eavesdropping statute operates at the front end of the speech process by restricting the use of the common, indeed ubiquitous, instrument of communication. Restricting the use of an audio or audiovisual recording device suppresses speech just as effecting as restricting the dissemination of the resulting recording.”

The court indicates that the First Amendment issues are very strong in this case. The Illinois statute “prohibits nonconsensual audio recording of public officials performing their official duties in public” and “[T]here is practically universal agreement that a major purpose of’ the First Amendment ‘was to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs’…” citing Ariz. Free Enter. Club’s Freedom Fund PAC v. Bennett, 131 S. Ct. 2806, 2828 (2011).

What does this mean?

The court entered a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the eavesdropping statute as applied to the audio recordings policy officers performing their official duties in public.

Stay tuned to see how this issues plays out.

Thanks to Arstechnica for alerting us about this opinion. Image used under the creative comments license from Electronic Frontier Foundation.

COURT HOLDING

Here, the court held “that a subscriber enjoys a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of emails “that are stored with, or sent or received through, a commercial ISP.”…The government may not compel a commercial ISP to turn over the contents of a subscriber’s emails without first obtaining a warrant based on probably cause. Therefore, because they did not obtain a warrant, the government agents violated the Fourth Amendment when they obtained the contents of Warshak’s emails. Moreover, to the extent that the [Stored Communications Act] purports to permit to the government to obtain such emails warrantlessly, the SCA is unconstitutional.”

GUIDANCE FOR PEOPLE CONSIDERING CLOUD COMPUTING

This opinion will also be helpful for attorneys and law firms considering using cloud storage and computing. The 6th Circuit emphasized that an ISP’s “control over the [emails] and ability to access them under certain limited circumstances will not be enough to overcome an expectation of privacy.”

The court also noted that the terms of a subscriber agreement may be enough to “snuff out” a reasonable expectation of privacy in a user and used an example of any ISP expressing an intention to “audit, inspect, and monitor” its subscriber’s emails. It shows that courts are starting to recognize the practical realities of how data is stored and accessed.

Thanks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation for posting about this.

Imaged used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license from o5com.

The crosswalk laws are generally set forth in Ohio Revised Code Sections 4511.46 . For crosswalks were signals are not in place or operating, the “driver of a vehicle…shall yield the right of way, slowing down or stopping if need be to so yield…to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is upon the half of the roadway upon which the vehicle is traveling, or when the pedestrian is approaching so closely from the opposite half of the roadway as to be in danger.” Ohio Revised Code Section 4511.46. There are additional sections of the Ohio Revised Code that deal with pedestrian crosswalk issues.

It will be interesting to see how this sting works in Columbus and if it is extended to other areas of Ohio. Hopefully this will be used as method of educating motorists and not as a source of revenue.

A copy of the new law published in the City Record is available here and is codified as Section 433.09 of the Codified Ordinances of the City of Cleveland.