I can see that I'm in the minority here, but that's OK.
On a somewhat different tack, here's a federal judicial decision about police seizure of electronic equipment.
It is a moderately long article detailing the events leading up to the arrest
and the police officer's viewing the video in a camera used to record the event.
Jury verdict: arrest without probable cause
Judge's ruling: search without a warrant
The Oregonian
Bryan Denson,
January 30, 2012
Eugene verdict clarifies legal protections for protesters who turn video cameras on police
Quote:
[Oregon] State law permits protesters to record police in public places.
But courts have made few rulings on what officers can do with the
recording devices they seize from people during arrests.
The rules of engagement became clearer in Eugene's U.S. District Court last week,
when a civil jury determined that a city police sergeant violated an environmental activist's
constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure
during a 2009 leafletting campaign outside a bank.<snip>
U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin ruled in a pretrial hearing in the Eugene case
that [police officer] Solesbee violated [activist] Schlossberg's Fourth Amendment rights
by searching the contents of his camera without a warrant.
That ruling marked the first time that a federal court in Oregon
weighed in on warrantless seizures of digital devices.
"Across the country right now, legal scholars and lawyers are just eating it up,"
Regan said of the ruling, "because it's actually a solid statement
of the right to privacy in the age of technology."
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