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girlwhowaspluggedout writes:
"When Pedro Rivera, an on-call photographer for Hartford, CT's WFSB-TV, used his drone to photograph the scene of a fatal car crash, he probably did not expect to be detained by the local police and be forced to ground his drone and leave the area. What he certainly did not expect was being suspended by his employer without pay for a week after the head of the department's major crimes division contacted WFSB-TV, requesting that disciplinary action be taken against him.
Rivera has now filed a federal lawsuit against Hartford's police department for violating his First and Fourth Amendment rights. The lawsuit seeks more than just damages it asks the court to declare that Rivera did not break any laws by operating the drone.
Shortly after the incident, Hartford police told the media that it was concerned with 'the safety of the officers and the privacy of the victim.' But, as Rivera told the Professional Society of Drone Journalists, 'If privacy is a concern ... it was not with me. It was with all the local news stations that were on the sidewalks with 'long lenses' and had shots so tight, that you could see inside the crash vehicle.' The photo he has provided and the GPS coordinates that are embedded in its EXIF data show what his drone was capable of photographing 150 feet from the accident site.
As Rivera succinctly describes it, 'What happened to me falls in the category of the war on cameras by the police. Whenever the police are videotaped, they try to detain people and confiscate the camera.' It's time to add one more marker to the War on Cameras Map'."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ancientt on Thursday February 20 2014, @02:07AM
Well said. I agree with pretty much everything you said. I wish I'd said exactly that first.
I am going to take the opposite side of the argument, just for the exercise in analytical thinking. (I often do this because of what I read [rightattitudes.com] about the Wright brothers.)
This is a war on cameras because the technology of using something airborne to take pictures is not new at all. Planes and balloons have been used for many years without police feeling they needed to be involved. If a balloon had been floating overhead and taking pictures as it went by or if a plane had been flying over with high powered cameras, nothing would have happened. This is about cops who see an opportunity to impose their preference regardless of the law simply because the person they are interested in is easily available and readily intimidated.
The right of people to take pictures, particularly the right of the free press to take pictures when it doesn't break the law has been thoroughly debated and there are more than enough laws to handle the situations that are arising as "drone" use. The fact that it is now easier and less expensive to engage in journalism doesn't change the nature of the actions, nor does it cause a need for new legislation. If you send up a weather balloon or fly a hot air balloon, there are more than enough laws to determine who is at fault in the case of an accident. This is not fundamentally different.
Judges can and should look to existing law to handle cases like this. The sooner the judicial branches of government realize this is not a fundamental change and put precedents in place to make it clear, the better. It cannot happen soon enough, in many ways it is already too late if people are content to accept a cop intimidating a journalist doing what he has every legal right right to do.
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