Illinois Eavesdropping Law Supported By Influential Circuit Judge

On Tuesday, a judge indicated that the American Civil Liberties Union's challenge of the harsh Illinois eavesdropping law banning the audio recording of police officers faces an uphill climb if it is to succeed -- despite the recent high-profile acquittal of an alleged offender.

In court Tuesday, U.S. 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner said that if the eavesdropping law was weakened, gang members and "snooping" bloggers and reporters would "rejoice" at the news, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

"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," Posner said, as reported by the Sun-Times. "Yes, it’s a bad thing. There is such a thing as privacy."

But Illinois ACLU vows to press on and is seeking a federal injunction that would prevent Cook County States' Attorney Anita Alvarez from prosecuting others -- including ACLU employees -- with violating the law. They say the law, which bans audio recordings of police officers while at the same time allowing for silent video recordings and photographs, violates the First Amendment. If convicted of the law, violators are slapped with a Class 1 felony on their record and a prison sentence of up to 15 years.

"In order to make the rights of free expression and petition effective, individuals and organizations must be able to freely gather and record information about the conduct of government and its agents -- especially the police," Harvey Grossman, legal director of the ACLU of Illinois explained in a statement. "Organizations and individuals should not be threatened with prosecution and jail time simply for monitoring the activities of police in public, having conversations in a public place at normal volume of conversation."

But Harold Krent, the Illinois Institute of Technology's Kent College of Law Dean, told NBC Chicago that both the judge and Alvarez's office's concerns with weakening the law and allowing for audio recording of police officers carry some merit. Krent said the matter should ultimately be left up to the state's General Assembly.

"There's a real danger here that you can't lose sight of," Krent told NBC. "When you send something on YouTube, or you broadcast in some other way that's related to a criminal investigation, that could interfere with that investigation and compromise the goal, the arrest, the prosecution."

In August, Tiawanda Moore, a woman who secretly recorded a conversation with a police investigator who was attempting to dissuade her from filing a sexual harassment complaint against a Chicago police officer, was acquitted by a jury of charges that she violated the eavesdropping law. The jury found that Moore's case met the requirement of an exception to the law allowing for recording if a crime is suspected. One juror described the trial as a "waste of time."

Another individual, Michael Allison, has also been accused of violating Illinois' eavesdropping law after recording suspected police harassment. If Allison is convicted of the five counts of wiretapping he has been charged with, he faces up to 75 years in prison. Allison has no previous arrests on his record. A ruling in his case is expected sometime within the coming weeks.

Two previous challenges of the law, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, have been thrown out. A formal written ruling on the issue is expected to be filed yet this year.

Meanwhile, late last month in Massachusetts, another state with a strict eavesdropping law on the books, a judge at Boston's First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that videotaping police making an arrest is a First Amendment right.

"The First Amendment issue here is, as the parties frame it, fairly narrow," Judge Kermit Lipez wrote in his decision. "Is there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative."

Photo by bfishadow via Flickr.

Comments

[dbrett480]

05:20 PM on 09/18/2011

Like it or not this law makes sense. It would be very wrong to exempt certain people (police officers) from the protection of this law. How can a group that claims to be concerned about privacy and civil liberties complain about a law banning eavesdropping?

[ManwithaParachute]

04:49 AM on 09/16/2011

Cops work for the public and the public has the right and responsibility to verify their employees are doing what there are supposed to.

Now, the old CONSERVATIVE mantra of, "If you are doing nothing wrong then, you have nothing to hide or be afraid of" seems to be applicable to the POH-lice.

Our legal system is corrupted and secrecy is needed for it to continue but, the cops need their hands untied by all these procedural hold ups like warrants for their eaves-dropping on the public.

Here comes the POH-lice state....stop listening to them. They need their privacy in order to take your's away.

[Frank David Nall]

02:10 AM on 09/16/2011

Why? Why should the police be omitted from the laws of common citizens? Are they above the law these public servants of ours? The police should want more conversations and actions recorded for the great job they are doing. If they are not doing a great job then of course they shouldn't be recorded. This is police state thinking at it's worst.

[Lamukta]

02:46 PM on 09/15/2011

this is annoying. if the police weren't trying to hide things, they this shouldn't even be an issue as only recordings and tapings would show the "good" that they are doing.

If police are doing what they are supposed to do; why is this an issue?

[westreal]

02:15 PM on 09/15/2011

This judge should be disbarred.

[goddesscon2001]

11:17 AM on 09/15/2011

You have traffic cameras every where (do you get a choice to not be recorded ?)...you have GPS trackers in virtually everything now..They can use video in a court case to win it..do not think an individual should have less rights to protect themselves then the police do...What would they do if I have a security system all over my own house..and they come in and do something wrong or shouldn't have..This judge thinks I would be in the wrong..Nope...If you can record me without my consent..then you get the same treatment..None of this do as I say not as I do crap...

[Bude]

10:56 AM on 09/15/2011

This is a no brainer. Police have unlimited power and authority in every he said/she said controversy. As long as the word of the police is a given, citizens deserve to have some means to protect themselves.

Let's face it, some incompetent Barney Fife, in a hole in the wall village, can ruin your life.

Citizens should have the right to record a public official without their consent.

[Jo Kurrent]

11:03 AM on 09/15/2011

Absolutely right. The ONLY viable purpose police have in suppressing citizens' constitutional right to record and tape them is if they plan on doing something illegal or unethical and they don't want any proof of it.

[Republicans are Idiots]

11:37 AM on 09/15/2011

I think it has not been stated here yet, but the only stipulation should be is when they are either on the job, or functioning as if they were on the job. Such as when an off-duty officer steps in and performs a duty. Otherwise they should be afforded privacy.

[General Public]

10:19 AM on 09/15/2011

You know what they always told us about surveillance of American citizens? You have nothing to fear as long as you're obeying the law, right? Well what are the police so afraid of? If they have nothing to hide and are law-abiding citizens working in law enforcement, I don't see what the big deal is. Look, I got a traffic ticket awhile back and it was totally bogus, and the police officer wrote in the deposition that I confessed my guilt, when actually I didn't and he was lying. But what was I gonna do, challenge the cop in court, say I was telling the truth and he was a liar? Courts always think cops are telling the truth and people that the cops accuse of stuff are liars. It sure would've helped if I could have recorded my conversation with the cop, then I'd have evidence to present in the courtroom to show he was a liar. But I didn't have any evidence, my word against his, so I just pleaded guilty, since if I testified that he lied, the court would've found ME guilty of perjury instead since he's the cop and I'm not. Anyway, I can understand the police not wanting anyone recording all the misdeeds they do on the job, or all the lies they routinely tell in sworn depositions. They know the law well enough to know they're breaking it routinely, and they don't want to get caught, so they don't want recordings.

[anne1stoftwo]

09:46 AM on 09/15/2011

If the police are doing nothing wrong, then they have nothing to worry about if they are recorded. Crooked cops get away with stuff because there are no recordings. Now if all cop cars video taped all incidence and could NOT erase any part of the tape then that would work to keep crooked coppers straight.

[ninja108]

07:04 AM on 09/15/2011

I beg the differ from this eavesdropping law. The way corruption is going on around police departments from state to state, I can't blame any citizen using audio recording when a police
officer or officers may violated a citizen's civil rights. There are too many cases around the
country showing this incompentancy & brutality that some police officers show. If were trying to protect crooked cops instead of having them being kick off the force because of the cronism they show all the time then something is wrong with our justice dept.

[pinkeyelemonade]

02:54 AM on 09/15/2011

I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

[knightoftheroundtable]

02:13 AM on 09/15/2011

Hey judgie, that is pure BS and u know it....

[LiveMind]

12:36 AM on 09/15/2011

The ACLU needs to push this all the way to the supreme court. How many years did it take to get John Burge put in jail? How many problems have been uncovered by cell phone bystander shots? The police need support, but they also need to do their jobs while staying entirely within the bounds of the law.

[Nikolaj Weidner]

12:34 AM on 09/15/2011

Hi Big Brother. I hope you have not been waiting. Oh, you've been here the whole time?

[crookedcountyillinois]

12:34 AM on 09/15/2011

I hate to be overly dramatic, but, perhaps this judge would be "more at home" in Nazi Germany, a police state if there ever was one.

[rolzroyce]

02:19 AM on 09/15/2011

Posner was actually considered liberal and has written strong opinions supporting abortion. Unfortunately like most old rich men, his views have leaned right wing as his career continues.

[crookedcountyillinois]

07:29 PM on 09/19/2011

There's nothing conservative or liberal about the Illinois "eavesdropping" law. It's a matter of well-intended, or angry and mean.

Or, to put it another way, good vs. evil.