Police State: People Thrown In Jail For Videotaping police Officers

From ABC News: "That Anthony Graber broke the law in early March is indisputable. He raced his Honda motorcycle down Interstate 95 in Maryland at 80 mph, popping a wheelie, roaring past cars and swerving across traffic lanes. But it wasn't his daredevil stunt that has the 25-year-old staff sergeant for the Maryland Air National Guard facing the possibility of 16 years in prison. For that, he was issued a speeding ticket. It was the video that Graber posted on YouTube one week later -- taken with his helmet camera -- of a plainclothes state trooper cutting him off and drawing a gun during the traffic stop near Baltimore.
In early April, state police officers raided Graber's parents' home in Abingdon, Md. They confiscated his camera, computers and external hard drives. Graber was indicted for allegedly violating state wiretap laws by recording the trooper without his consent."... "The argument is, 'Well, can a police officer beside the highway have a private conversation with somebody that they pull over?'" said Joseph Cassilly, the Harford County prosecutor handling Graber's case.
Cassilly added, "Suppose a police officer pulled you over and he wanted to have a talk with you. 'Sir, I smell alcohol on your breath. Can you talk to me about how much you've had to drink? Would you want somebody else to stop by and record that and put it on the Internet?" Rocah of the ACLU disagreed. "It's not that recording any conversation is illegal without consent. It's that recording a private conversation is illegal without consent," he said. "So then the question is, 'Are the words of a police officer spoken on duty, in uniform, in public a 'private conversation.' And every court that has ever considered that question has said that they are not."
Rocah said actual wiretapping prosecutions, though rare, are happening more frequently. But intimidation with the threat of arrest for taping the police is much more common.
"Prosecution is only the most extreme end of a continuum of police and official intimidation and there's a lot of intimidation that goes on and has been going on short of prosecution," he said. "It's far more frequent for an officer to just say, 'You can't record or give me your camera or give me your cell phone and if you don't I'm going to arrest you. Very few people want to test the veracity of that threat and so comply. It's much more difficult to document, much more prevalent and equally improper."
http://abcnews.go.com/US/TheLaw/videotaping-cops-arrest/story?id=11179076&page=1
I have no problems with the police being videotaped as long as it doesn't interfere with the police officer's work or a person does it to harass an officer. The police officers video tape us using dash cams and in TV shows, like COPS.
The police officer is a public employee and their wages are paid by the taxpayer. They need to be held accountable and if that means being videotaped while they arrest someone, so be it. Is it against the law or wrong to video tape firefighters doing their job at a fire, rescue or shopping at Smiths? No, as long as it doesn't interfer with the firefighter's job. So, why would it be a crime to videotape police officers doing their job.
Of course, if an officer pulls someone over for a traffic violation, it would not be right for a stranger to butt in the middle of the traffic stop and put in a camera, though that's what the show COPS do. But it wouldn't be wrong if the person being pulled over videotaped the traffic stop, but people have been arrested for that.
The same would be true if someone videotaped a government worker working at a park and they were being lazy. Or videotaping a government worker going into a bar during working hours. Nothing wrong with that, but still, some people could be prosecuted for doing such a thing.
It's a shame that some parts of the U.S. have resorted to a police state where one cannot videotape a police officer or other government worker doing their job.