This ACLU lawsuit is great news for citizen rights in IL. As we advised you previously in this article, here, Illinois law which makes it a Class I felony (punishable by up to 15 years in prison) for anyone to record an on-duty police officer or any other public official, without their knowledge or permission. According to Radley Bradley, the senior editor of Reason magazine, Illinois law is the most extreme law on the subject in the country, and that it is so bad that state prosecutors probably don’t enforce it very often because they probably recognize that it unconstitutional.
Responding to a series of incidents in which individuals in four counties in Illinois have been charged with violating Illinois’ eavesdropping law for making audio recordings of public conversations with police, the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois today asked a federal court to rule that the First Amendment bans such prosecutions. The ACLU lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Chicago, argues that individuals (and organizations such as the ACLU) may make audio (and video) recordings of police who are performing their public duties in a public place and speaking in a voice loud enough to be heard by the unassisted human ear.
RichardWanke.Com 