Massachusetts wiretapping laws, it's time for a change

Video cameras. They are everywhere. Most cell phones now come with one, and most people have cell phones. Even if you don't have a cell phone, or a camera equipped cell phone digital video cameras are small and cheap, and most point and shoot still cameras have an option to record video, with sound. With all these cameras around, is it not natural that people will well... use them? Not surprisingly, since the Rodney King incident on March 2, 1991 more and more people have used video cameras to record police. Cops don't like this and have retaliated by arresting the people filming them under a variety of charges, failure to comply with lawful order(cop illegally demands camera turned over), obstruction of investigation, basically contempt of cop charges with little or no legal grounding. Most states are one party consent, meaning that in public places there is no expectation of privacy for public officials. Hence the bullshit contempt of cop charges because police can't actually charge people for filming them. In most states. Massachusetts is a 2 party consent state. Police have interpreted this to mean anyone filming them with audio requires the officer(s) being filmed consent, which of course is never given. Arrests have been made under this statute, in Greenfield MA Pete Eyre and Ademo Freeman, and Simon Glik. The Glick case is particularly noteworthy in that Glik upon beating the case turned around and sued the police. He won in the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, part of the decision reading: "The First Amendment issue here is, as the parties frame it, fairly narrow: is there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative."
So what does this mean for Massachusetts citizens wishing to film cops? I'm not a lawyer so I could be wrong here, but from what I have read here and there if the cop SEES you filming him it is NOT considered wiretapping. From what I understand to be sure they can't charge you with wiretapping you have to inform the police you are recording them if they don't already see you. It seems like a big victory, but is it? What if a citizen witnesses a pumped up roid rage cop beating the living shit out of someone? So in this situation he's supposed to walk up to the already enraged officer and say "excuse me sir, I'm going to film you"? Oh THATs going to go over well. Over like a lead Zeppelin.
Clearly, what needs to be done is the law itself needs to be changed, so that two party consent is in NO WAY required to record public officials in public places. Ideally, the Mass legislature could get the law changed, but that is not very likely to happen. That insane clown posse is much more interested in passing seat belt laws and pushing through boondoggle multi-billion dollar projects like the big dig. There is another way, although it's a tough row to hoe. Massachusetts has a Initiative Petition process where citizens can get laws passed if they first get enough signatures on the petition and then get a majority of people to vote for it when election time comes around. As stated before, this is NOT easy, it currently requires that "the initiative petition must be signed by a minimum of 68,911 certified voters. No more than one-quarter of the certified signatures may come from any one county (until the results of the 2014 state election are certified by the Governor's Council, this figure is 17,228)."
To accomplish this requires a person or persons with both some legal knowledge to write out the law change so that the cops can't worm around it and enough connections to be able to collect the large amount of signatures needed just to get it on the ballot, THEN publicize it positively to counter the no doubt negative press that law enforcement will put out in opposition. I have neither the legal knowledge nor the influence, but I'm putting out the idea anyway in hope that someone else does.

Edit: According to this precedent, audio recording of police in secret is not legal Right to record has an interesting article on the Glik case.
"Curiously, Lisa Skehill Maki, the author of the brief for the City of Boston, wrote her student note on how the Massachusetts law was wrong."
For those who feel my post was not highbrow enough, her dissertation can be downloaded in pdf format here.

Bye Bye Monkey House (for now)

Just a short post to mourn the death of my other, and I think better blog Monkey House. It was more specialized, dealing with copyright issues and the music industry. The server I was piggy backing on got shut down, and dummy me not being used to how CMS's work, had not backed up the file the posts were on. It was more than just a blog in that it had a forum and chat room as well. Forum posts too are gone. :(