An op-ed on legislative efforts to restrict the public’s right to film police, written in the wake of several 2015 incidents — including the filming of Walter Scott’s death in North Charleston, SC — that turned on bystander video. Amer argues that recording technology cuts both ways: it can be a bad officer’s worst nightmare and a good officer’s best ally, and opens with a personal anecdote about two police officers who themselves helped protect his own right, as an amateur photographer, to photograph in public.
The piece specifically criticizes then-proposed Texas legislation that would have barred recording police from closer than 25 feet, arguing more broadly that poorly considered restrictions on recording risk the public’s ability to document, remember, and hold power accountable — a good more fundamental than any single incident.
@misc{amer2015righttorecord,
author = {Amer, Ahmed},
title = {Resisting restrictions on the right to record},
year = {2015},
month = may,
day = {1},
howpublished = {Re/code},
url = {https://www.vox.com/2015/5/1/11562226/resisting-restrictions-on-the-right-to-record}
}