On 23 September, a group of students known as the “Irvine 11” were handed three years probation, as well as 56 hours of community service and fines for disrupting the 8 February speech of Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States.
District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said that the students censored Ambassador Oren, and labelled their behaviour as “thuggery”. The decision was met with outrage from supporters, and at a town hall meeting held on 25 September, the students announced their plans to appeal the court’s decision, and one of the attorneys for the group, Jacqueline Goodman, vowed to continue fighting for the rights of the students, “even if it means going to the Supreme Court”.
In February 2010, a group of 11 students disrupted a speech by Israeli Ambassador to the United States. They shouted protest slogans for 20 minutes before they were arrested during Michael Oren’s hour-long speech at the University of California Irvine’s campus . Last week, ten of the students went on trial for misdemeanor charges of “conspiring to disturb a meeting” and “disturbing a meeting”, they face up to six months in prison.
Both parties believe that their First Amendment right to free speech was trampled on in the incident. Prosecutors said that the disruption prevented attendants from being able to listen to Oren. The student’s defence attorneys argue that the students were expressing their views, and their prosecution violates their right to freedom of expression. On Tuesday (13 Sept), the defence argued that Oren actually left the lecture because he’d been given VIP tickets to a Lakers game — he was pictured with Kobe Bryant — rather because he felt threatened by the protesting students as the prosecution claims.
With the frequency of student protests on university campuses, the severity of the potential sentence is mystifying. John Esposito, director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, pointed out the regularity of these kinds of protests on university campuses across the nation, including the UC Irvine campus, where a Muslim speaker was kept from speaking back in 2001. Others have pointed out the waste of taxpayer’s money, especially after the university already disciplined the students, handing them 100 hours of community service, two years of probation, and a quarter-long suspension of the Muslim Students Association.
The authorities insist that the student’s religious beliefs have nothing to do with the case, but according to Dan Mayfield, the attorney of one of the students, prosecutors were able to illegally obtain search warrants through focusing on the religion of the students, even going as far as calling the case the “UCI Muslim case”. As a part of the jury selection process, potential jurors were required to fill out an eight-page questionnaire, which asked questions about their views on the Palestinian and Israeli conflict, as well as whether or not they “harbour negative feelings towards Muslims”.
Focusing on the role of Islam in the prosecution of the students could easily turn the conversation into one about freedom of religion, which is not necessarily interchangeable with freedom of expression. What must be protected is the right of students to express their views, regardless of what they might be.
A Georgia mayor has banned a local production of Rocky Horror Picture Show. A theatre company in Carrollton, Georgia was set to perform the show until a rehearsal video posted on Facebook revealed dance moves deemed risque. Shocked by the video, Mayor Wayne Garner decided to shut down the show, even though organisers planned to restrict the audience to adults.
Perhaps Mayor Garner would be happier with the censored Glee take on the film:
A US court of appeals ruled this past week that citizens — whether they’re journalists or not — have a right under the First Amendment to peacefully film or record police officers on the job in public. The question has come up repeatedly as the widespread use of sophisticated camera-ready cell phones has enabled a level of transparency and accountability in public safety that potentially makes every civilian on the street on a backstop against police misconduct.
Police officers from Maryland to California have cited vague state wiretap laws to not only object to the practice but also arrest citizens caught doing it. Some state laws make it illegal to record audio or video of a person without his or her consent. Police officers have also argued that such footage violates their privacy.
Many legal scholars, though, have countered that such logic can’t reasonably extend to police officers performing their duties in public — and that such a policy clearly violates the public interest. A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit unanimously agreed, writing:
It is firmly established that the First Amendment’s aegis extends further than the text’s proscription on laws ‘abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,’ and encompasses a range of conduct related to the gathering and dissemination of information. … The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within these principles. Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting ‘the free discussion of governmental affairs.’
The case began in October of 2007 when Simon Glik, a lawyer, shot video footage with his cell phone of police officers in Boston whom he believed were using excessive force to arrest a young man. Glik objected to one of the officers, explained that he had recorded footage, and was promptly arrested himself. His cell phone was also taken.
The charges against Glik — which also included disturbing the peace — were dismissed by a judge several months later. Glik attempted to file an internal-affairs complaint with the Boston Police Department against the officers involved. When that complaint went nowhere, he filed a lawsuit, in February 2010, against the officers arguing that his civil rights under the First and Fourth Amendment had been violated.
In siding with Glik, the court stressed that the right to collect information on public officials in public belongs equally to journalists and civilian bystanders, particularly in the age of “citizen journalism” and ubiquitous camera phones. The judges wrote:
Changes in technology and society have made the lines between private citizen and journalist exceedingly difficult to draw. The proliferation of electronic devices with video-recording capability means that many of our images of current events come from bystanders with a ready cell phone or digital camera rather than a traditional film crew, and news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper. Such developments make clear why the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status.
