Source: http://volokh.com/category/freespeech/freedom-to-gather-information/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 05:09:18+00:00

Document:
So holds Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google Inc. (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 14, 2013). I’m still on the road, and thus can’t blog about the opinion in detail, but I’ve read it and I think its fair use finding is quite right.
As the previous post noted, I’m passing along another brief that the UCLA First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic has filed in the last few weeks. This one is on behalf of the Student Press Law Center and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, in O’Brien v. Welty (9th Cir.) (the link is to the decision that is being appealed). My students Curtis Brown, Sara Liss, and Ali Vaqar worked on the brief. I quote the brief below, for those who want to read it on the blog, though you can also find a PDF here.
Videorecording is presumptively protected by the First Amendment. To be sure, videorecording, like other protected First Amendment activity, may be subject to more restriction in nonpublic fora and limited public fora than in traditional public fora. If a university implements a policy clearly prohibiting videorecording professors in their offices without their consent, such a policy might be constitutional.
Lower courts have recently been holding that the First Amendment protects people’s right to audiorecord and videorecord in many public places, especially when they are recording the conduct of government officials. (See, e.g., ACLU v. Alvarez (7th Cir. 2012) and Glik v. Cunniffe (1st Cir. 2011).) This makes a good deal of sense; just as restricting the spending of money for speech interferes with the ability to speak, and is thus presumptively unconstitutional, so restricting audiorecording and videorecording events in public interferes with the ability to effectively and persuasively speak about those events.
1. Photographing (at least in public places) is presumptively First-Amendment-protected activity. This includes photographing people who are in such public places, with or without their consent.
Will NYT’s James Risen go to Jail?
Last Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the fourth Circuit rejected New York Times reporter James Risen’s claim of reporter’s privilege in United States v. Sterling. The underlying case is a federal prosecution of a former CIA official for allegedly disclosing classified information in violation of the Espionage Act. The federal government believes Sterling gave information to Risen, who subsequently published some of the material. A federal district court judge had quashed the federal government’s effort to subpoena Risen and force him to testify, but on Friday a divided panel of the Fourth Circuit reversed, holding that the federal government could indeed force Risen to testify. According to the Court, the First Amendment does not protect a reporter from having to reveal his sources (though Congress could well enact such protections).
For more on the decision, see Lawfare, Jost on Justice, Politico’s Josh Gerstein, and (of course) the New York Times.
The Hill reports that the House Judiciary Committee is investigating whether Attorney General Eric holder lied to Congress when testifying about the Justice Department’s surveillance of reporters and media organizations.
AtlanticWire has the full exchange that prompted the investigation and additional background here.
Now I’m no fan of the Attorney General, and have been critical of the Administration’s decision to target journalists in its leak investigations, but if this is all there is, I don’t see it. Did Holder suggest he had less involvement in the Rosen case than he, in fact, had. Sure. Did he say anything that was untrue or that would justify charging him with lying under oath? No. Based on what I’ve seen reported, it’s not even close.
Leaks to reporters — and investigations of the leaks that included subpoenas of reporters’ e-mail logs and searches of reporters’ e-mail — have been in the news; see this post by Orin about the AP story and this post by Conor Friedersdorf (The Atlantic) about the Fox News story. I thought I’d say a few things about the First Amendment issues involved in such matters, especially in response to the Friedersdorf post.
Federal law (18 U.S.C. § 793) does this (among other things) for secret defense information.
Federal law does it for confidential income tax information, and many other matters.
Trade secret law does it for certain kinds of business information (some trade secret claims are civil and some are criminal, but this doesn’t matter for First Amendment purposes).
Nondisclosure agreements do the same for other kinds.
Professional regulations and related statutes do this for attorney-client, psychotherapist-patient, and doctor-patient confidences.
Court orders do this for information gathered through discovery in legal cases.
Amid the filming process for “The Amazing Spiderman 2” in Rochester, film crews and police, have been walking a fine line with media and civilians over public photography rights.
Andrew Henderson watched as Ramsey County sheriff’s deputies frisked a bloody-faced man outside his Little Canada apartment building. Paramedics then loaded the man, a stranger to Henderson, into an ambulance.
One exception might be when a law enforcement officer decides that the recording is needed for evidence, he said. In that case, the officer would generally send the file to investigators and return the camera on the spot, Gustafson said….
A week later, Henderson was charged with obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct, both misdemeanors. He had been filming from about 30 feet away, he said….
The allegation that his recording of the incident violated HIPAA, or the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, is nonsense, said Jennifer Granick, a specialist on privacy issues at Stanford University Law School.
The rule deals with how health care providers handle consumers’ health information.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 § 793