This ridiculous. This Maryland law is too long in the tooth to be worth honoring.
It seems that a motorcyclist was speeding along a roadway with a video recording device in his helmet turned on. A state police officer pulled him over and drew his gun although there doesn't appear.s from the video to be any threat except a formerly speeding cyclist fully stopped.
It was captured on the cyclist's helmet cam, and that's the crime -- Video recording someone without their permission.
There's a clear case of the law being so far behind technical innovation and popular consumer products as to be totally worthless.
Here are the Youtube links:
full 3:39 video and
0:24 cop only portion.
I can't imagine the SCOTUS would find a law banning the unauthorized video taping of cops on duty Constitutional.
Someone with some money and an excellent legal team needs to take this all the way and get the law thrown out.
Posted by: Bob F | May 23, 2010 at 01:27 PM
Good point Bob F. It really should be dismissed outright. But if it did go all the way to the SCOTUS then at least there would be some nationwide application.
Posted by: Geo | May 23, 2010 at 05:00 PM