A federal appeals court ruled this week that people have the right to surreptitiously record police officers at work in “public spaces” such as parks, agreeing with two local activists that the First Amendment takes precedence over a Massachusetts state law banning private recording in that circumstance.
At the same time, however, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston rejected an argument to strike down the entire state law that bans secret recording, saying it raises vexatious issues related to the privacy of people with greater expectations of privacy than police officers out in public, basically everybody else.
The ruling comes in a decision on two cases brought under the state recording law, sometimes called Section 99, which prohibits recording someone without their permission.