Florida, police claim citizens filming them or buildings is suspicious and they could be arrested.

"As more professionals and amateurs use equipment to record police activity, they're facing the ire of officers who just don't want to be recorded," says David Ardia, director of Harvard University's Citizen Media Law Project. "We need a clear answer from courts that this is legal, or else police officers' instincts will always be to snatch the camera."

It might seem like an open-and-shut argument — cops are public figures, after all, and they're operating in plain view on the street. But it isn't, at least in the dozen states, including Florida, that require both parties in any conversation to consent to audio recording.

Since video cameras also record voices, police argue, citizen journalists are breaking the law when they record cops without permission. Publishing cops' photos also jeapordizes their safety, says Detective Juan Sanchez, a spokesman for Miami Beach police.

In Massachusetts, courts have upheld several similar convictions, including one against Jeffrey Manzelli, a Cambridge sound engineer who recorded police at a public antiwar rally.

"It really is a perversion of this statute to try to apply it to filming or recording what public officials are doing in public," says Randall Marshall, legal director of ACLU Florida.

Sanchez, the Miami Beach Police Department spokesman, says the trio acted suspiciously. "[They] were claiming they were filming in part for a documentary, [but] they had no credentials," Sanchez writes in an email statement. "Post 9/11, and in keeping with homeland security, the filming of any possible location which could be considered a target... arouses suspicion."

Aren't almost all buildings on Google street view, how can anyone possibly go along with this line of reasoning? Since when do you need to provide identification or press credentials to photogragh or videotape in public?

Link:
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2011-01-27/news/cops-vs-cameras-filming-cops-illegal/