I found the Gizmodo reading, “Are Cameras the New Guns?”, incredibly frustrating and disturbing. It astounds me that the recording of police officers is being criminalized to this extent, and that police officers consider bystanders with cameras such a threat to themselves and their work. The comparison of cameras to guns, and referring to photographers as “shooters” seems extreme, and honestly somewhat offensive, as cameras do not promote violence in these situations, but rather are attempting to provide a fair assessment of a situation in order to prevent violence. The justification for the wiretapping/eavesdropping laws when applied to bystander recording seem feeble at best, and I found it particularly ridiculous that, when explaining all parties must consent for a recording to be legal, TV news crews were excluded on the basis that their recording is “obvious to all”. This brought to mind those obnoxious news segments regarding the obesity epidemic where the station loops a video of overweight people walking down the street, from the chest down. That to me feels much more like an invasion of privacy and unfair use of video, as these people did not openly consent to their image being used as an example in this way, nor does removing someone’s head from the frame censor their identity completely. In the case of police video recording, the ultimate goal of preventing police brutality, seems a much more useful documentary process. It seems to me that police surveillance can work either way for officers. It can help or hurt them, either by aiding in investigations, or possibly even to prove there was no police brutality involved in a situation. However, if police are so afraid of it hurting them, perhaps they have something to hide that we should be investigating.
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