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Michael Allison recorded video of Illinois police visiting his mother’s home to investigate his unregistered vehicles. Allison recorded the police without their consent while they fined him and impounded his vehicles. Now he faces 75 years in prison for these videos as well as those recorded at a court proceeding related to the case.

And Allison is being prosecuted under archaic laws governing eavesdropping on police. Each of the five counts of eavesdropping would bring him 15 years, as it is a class-one felony in Illinois, which puts Allison’s actions in league with rape.

Of course, police are free to videotape citizens at will.

This has all happened amidst a trend of citizens armed with smart phones recording video and audio of police arrests and encounters. Rochester, New York citizen Emily Good was arrested for videotaping a police arrest outside her home, even though she was on her property (because the officer Mario Masic felt threatened). And, of course, OpenWatch released CopRecorder and OpenWatch Recorder to monitor police encounters.

And on August 26th, in the case Glik v. Cunniffe, U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals issued a resounding and unanimous opinion in support of the First Amendment right to record police actions in public.

Simon Glick had been arrested on October 1, 2007 for videotaping police officers arresting a suspect on Boston Common. He was videotaping the police action because of perceived police brutality, and, like Allison, suffered under the boot heel of an old wiretap law—a law that was never written to govern such citizen action at all.

At least these people are not armed with guns; but as they say, information is power.

To that end, Illinois, like many other states, has sought to apply old eavesdropping and wiretapping laws to new electronic devices like the smart phone.

As Allison told NBC News 2 affiliate’s Patrick Fazio in Illinois, “To call what I did a crime is ridiculous.” Fazio, to his credit, seems to have taken up Allison’s cause and heaped some scorn on the Illinois Attorney General, saying, “The State of Illinois considers it so serious, that the Assistant State Attorney General appeared at today’s court hearing.”

Fazio notes that journalists are exempt from laws prohibiting videotaping of on-duty law enforcement officials while at public hearings, but can still be arrested if they don’t obtain permission from police officers before filming.

Illinois House Republican Chapen Rose actually attempted to introduce legislation that would have overturned the application of eavesdropping and wiretapping laws to smart phones, claiming it can be of benefit to prosecutors as well as defendants.

In a follow-up interview with Fazio, Allison stated, “If their statute says that it was illegal, then their statute is unconstitutional,” and violates seven amendments of the U.S. Constitution: First Amendment — Free Speech; Fourth — Unreasonable Search; Fifth — Due Process; Sixth — Speedy Trial; Eighth — Unusual Punishment; Ninth — Guaranteed Rights; and Fourteenth — Equal Protection.”

Allison has refused a plea deal, hoping that his case will help overturn the application of the law in Illinois and in other states.

Michael Allison is being represented by the ACLU.

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Allison, who I first wrote about here, was facing up to 75 years in prison for recording public officials with a digital recorder. Those charges have been dismissed.

“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.

“Such action impedes the free flow of information concerning public officials and violates the First Amendment right to gather such information,” he wrote….

In Thursday’s ruling, Circuit Court Judge David Frankland said that Allison had a First Amendment right to record the police officers and court employees.

The judge also ruled that while it was reasonable to prohibit the defendant from recording in the courtroom, making what Allison did a felony offense was overreaching and irrational.

“The statute [as it is currently written] includes conduct that is unrelated to the statute’s purpose and is not rationally related to the evil the legislation sought to prohibit,” the judge wrote in his opinion. “For example, a defendant recording his case in a courtroom has nothing to do with an intrusion into a citizen’s privacy but with distraction.”

Although some civil rights activists call the decision a small victory, the Illinois eavesdropping law is still in effect.

Great news. And kudos to Allison for refusing to take a plea in the case. I’m not exactly sure where things go from here. I’ll report more on this next week.

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Originally posted by RionaEire:
Glad the charges were dropped, he did nothing wrong, police are people too so its one person videotaping other people and that ain't wrong in the slightest if those other people are out on the street, or coming into your house, especially if those people are in your space.

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