Words by Nadia Shakur
There has been a voluminous amount of rumors circulating throughout the Internet stating that the Illinois legislature passed a bill prohibiting citizens from filming police interactions while they are on duty. This was a false assumption and the opposite of what the bill actually reads which the governor of Illinois is still mulling over. With more research, we will clear the misunderstanding while breaking down the actual law. The Huffington Post reports the law in question is a new eavesdropping bill that was created to replace the Illinois Eavesdropping Act, ruled unconstitutional prior this year.
Bill 1342 is the new law, which still allows civilian recording of law enforcement on duty with respects to our First amendment rights to do so. However the bill also expanded the circumstances governing law enforcement agencies and informants in surveillance operations on private communications such as phone calls, emails etc. According to state representative Elaine Nejkritz this was the compromise needed for civilian recording to be included in the bill.
The interception of private conversations by law enforcement or informants is given without the consent of the individual, the acquiring of a warrant nor a judges approval. The time period allocated to this surveillance expansion is 24 hours before a warrant is received on the grounds of certain serious crimes being committed and a State Attorney gives approval. read more
This raises some questions since a State Attorney’s duties include representing the State Government in legal matters within jurisdiction and occasionally acting as chief legal advisory to city, state and county law enforcement personnel. With the language of this bill’s stipulations to law enforcement being “when certain serious crimes are being committed” in regards to the state attorney approving unwarranted surveillance, there’s a lot of open-ended specifications on these crimes. The new bill doesn’t allow room for “checks and balances” of police misconduct during these operations. Previous loopholes to citizen’s rights concerning privacy were established by Homeland Security legislation and temporarily suspended citizen’s rights in The Justice Department Domestic Intelligence Operations.
Currently it is legal in all 50 states to film law enforcement on duty so long as there’s no interference with their duties. Still there are many cases of “Obstruction of Justice” arrests and many still question the limits around incidents when police officers confront civilians documenting police interactions.
With the body camera initiative on police officers still in question, state representatives say a separate bill is being made to discuss that specific policy. This all seems to be a double-edged sword solution and given the justice department handling of citizens, many are still skeptical of their being real steps toward fixing the overall broken Criminal Justice System.
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