Photographing Police: What Happens When the Police Think Your Phone Holds Evidence of a Crime?

Ever since 9/11 there's been some paranoia about people photographing buildings, particularly federal ones or those involving transportation. Remember this? Photograph Amtrak Trains For Amtrak Contest: Go To Jail. So apparently the ACLU has been working with organizations to resolve this.

Photographing Police: What Happens When the Police Think Your Phone Holds Evidence of a Crime? "The Washington, DC chief of police on Friday issued a new ‘General Order’ to members of the police department on ‘Video Recording, Photographing, and Audio Recording of Metropolitan Police Department Members by the Public.’ The order, which was part of the settlement of an ACLU lawsuit, includes some very interesting, groundbreaking provisions."

So you can take pictures of public things, including police officers "in the public discharge of their duties", though you can commit other crimes (like trespass) to take photos and you can't interfere with police in their duties.

"The part that actually took longest to negotiate was the question of what do you do if the police have reason to believe that someone’s camera has evidence that might be important, either in prosecuting a crime or in perhaps in showing police misconduct. We didn’t want the police to be just grabbing people’s cameras—which has certainly happened sometimes—and we also certainly didn’t want police to be browsing through people’s photographs and video to see what else might be there that’s really of no legitimate interest to the police.

And we eventually agreed. I think the most creative thing about this order—my idea was, why can’t the police department set up an email address so that someone can simply email the relevant photographs or video, so you’ll have it, but I get to keep my camera. So that’s been incorporated in the order."

If the person still refuses there can be some cases where the police can seize the camera, but they can't look at the photos without first getting a warrant and then they can only look at the photos mentioned in the warrant, they can't look at any random photos on the camera.