What possible problem is there with photographing public employees performing a public duty in a public place? Certainly if ATF agents were photographing ordinary citizens in such a setting, we'd hear that there was "no legitimate expectation of privacy," right?I hope the unfavorable publicity puts a stop to literally the last thing I would have expected from a Republican Administration.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
The Government Has No Right To Call the Public "Private"
It's bad enough when the press asserts it possesses some privilege over and above ordinary citizens. But it's embarrassingly misguided for the Administration implicitly to agree, by harassing a citizen who observed, took videos of, and blogged about ATF agent activities he witnessed. The ATF says it's significant that "the person did not identify himself, did not have any affiliation with any newspaper or news agency." So what? Where is that in the Constitution? And how could such a distinction be drawn? As Instapundit says:
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4 comments:
It's good Red is getting the attention, at least in the blogosphere. Mr. Codrea deserves a lot of credit for that, he's been on this for months.
Don't be too hasty to complain about the Administration on this point. The passage you cite simply reports what Supervisor Young stated, not that the Administration believed "press affiliation" would have been of sufficient decisional value in its own analysis.
More importantly, the Federal Government generally benefits from protections against public disclosure of the internal activities (for example, internal discussions and related memoranda) associated with most of its decision-making processes. Should the press or anyone else be allowed to record or videotape (and immediately air or post) internal meetings at the White House or to photocopy internal memoranda distributed within the White House (in the absence of appropriate Congressional or judicial proceedings, of course)? Just because certain government activities are conducted in public view does not necessarily waive those protections, at least not in their entirety. The activities at issue in your post may have gone too far in disclosing what arguably could be protectible information about internal decision-making activities. These recordings were not of possible criminal behavior by the agents or even of actions that were outside the scope of their duties.
Moreover, what if the recordings and postings were on the activities of security agents inspecting luggage and passengers at an airport? Or of secret service agents monitoring attendees at a public debate of Presidential candidates or at a public speech by the President? I would hope that it would be considered "suspicious" if someone (including the press) started recording and immediately posting unusually detailed information about how the agents performed their duties rather than about their family or friends departing or arriving at the airport or rather than about the candidates or the President at such debates or speeches.
And certainly I wouldn't want airport security agents to take counter-measures against such activities by asking each passenger "to step into a room" to be inspected out of public (and camera) view! I don't mind taking my shoes off before I pass through the metal detector, but anything might go otherwise. Except for the lines!
-Cogito
Cogito does put forth the main reasons why there is a high expectation of shielding on some matters, and he is right. Entire agencies can develop a group culture of unreasonable expectations of privacy, however. Prison guards come to mind here. They have legitimate safety concerns that criminal groups do not have information which could be used to extract vengeance or extortion. Yet we also know that much of prison's internal crime, such as rape and drugs, goes on with guards' knowledge and even assistance.
There is also the danger that partial knowledge of agency action will allow the public to leap to wrong conclusions. The accusations at Gitmo would be a good example. While some complaints have been manufactured out of whole cloth, others appear to be based on actual events, though exaggerated for political purposes. A full public accounting would clear some of that up, but a full public accounting would also provide terrorists with information useful to them.
All this to say that it is messy, with tradeoffs.
Cogito and AVI:
I am mindful of the government's legitimate concerns. My sole objection is to their distinction between the press and the public--a pernicious doctrine that twists the negative prohibition of the First Amendment into a strange positive conveyance of rights to an unelected and narrow sub-set of the people.
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