Article by Julia Angwin: “We are in a phone war. Ever since cameras became embedded in cellphones, people have been using their devices to bear witness to state violence. But now, the state is striking back.
I don’t think it is any coincidence that Alex Pretti was holding his phone when he was shot to death by federal agents in Minneapolis. Or that Renee Good’s partner was filming a federal agent seconds before he killed Ms. Good. Agents have repeatedly knocked phones out of the hands of observers. They have beaten people filming them and followed them to their homes and threatened them. Of the 19 shootings by federal agents in the past year identified by The Trace, a news outlet that investigates gun violence, at least four involved people who were observing or documenting federal agents’ actions.
Courts have long granted citizens a First Amendment right to film in public. But this right on paper is now being increasingly contested on the streets as federal agents try to stop citizens from recording their activities…
Government officials have openly equated filming an agent with violence in statements and in court testimony. In July, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that violence against agents includes “videotaping them where they are at, when they are out on operations.”
The nation’s founders worried that if the state had a monopoly on weapons, its citizens could be oppressed. Their answer was the Second Amendment. Now that our phones are the primary weapons of today’s information war, we should be as zealous about our right to bear phones as we are about our right to bear arms. To adopt the language of Second Amendment enthusiasts, perhaps the only thing that can eventually stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a camera…(More)”
