Why and How We Must Protect the Right to Film Cops in Ferguson

Getty Images photographer Scott Olson is arrested while covering demonstrators Monday, Aug. 18, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo. AP/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, J.B. Forbes

The standoff in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson has had Americans, and many around the world, glued to their various screens. Two weeks after the shooting of teenager Mike Brown by a police officer, the Missouri National Guard is retreating from the city and the protests seem to be settling down. But the unrest in Ferguson stands as another painful moment in the history of the oppression of African Americans in the U.S., in which “Ferguson, 2014” will recall “Birmingham, 1963” and “Los Angeles, 1992.”

Protesters are too often restricted from using digital tools to exercise their rights to hold government accountable and participate in society.

In each case, local strife went global as U.S. communities protesting racial injustice confronted the kinds of military units that are often deployed abroad.

However, the people on the ground in Ferguson differ from the protesters in Birmingham or L.A. in one crucial way: Their ordeal is playing out on Twitter, Vine, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, while the mainstream media largely ignored the beginning of the conflict. Nearly every protester, journalist, and bystander at the scene is carrying a small recording device in her pocket, which is also able to signal a location, share images, and ping those nearby and around the world. In Ferguson and beyond, social media is central to citizens telling the story about what’s happening in their communities and hold governmental authorities to account.

It’s also a privacy nightmare. Recent protests around the world—like those in Iran, Egypt, London, Thailand, and Turkey—all stem from unique circumstances, yet in the digital age they share a similar problem: Protesters are too often restricted from using digital tools to exercise their rights to hold government accountable and participate in society.

Josh Levy

Josh Levy is Advocacy Director at Access, the international digital rights organization. He’s worked for more than a decade at the intersections of technology, politics, and activism.

In the last week, accredited journalists and others who sought to document the militarization of the local police were arrested and threatened, and had their equipment stripped apart. Even though it is completely legal to record the police. Other equipment, such as low-flying aircraft, was totally banned. Many in the digital rights community called for authorities to respect the hard-fought “right to record”—the constitutional right to hold government officials accountable via those small recording devices in our pockets. The ongoing arrests and harassment of people in Ferguson for the “crime” of documenting the police demonstrates the real need to keep fighting for this right.

Add to all of this long, sordid history of the U.S. government’s surveillance of civil rights leaders, dissidents, and pretty much everyone else—which has increased exponentially in the digital age—and it becomes clear that our internet-connected devices cut both ways: They help us get the word out, and yet they’re our weakest security links.

While we need laws and policies to better protect users and the values we hold most dear, including freedom of the press, it is difficult to think of legal reform when people are being beaten in the streets. There are steps that those on the ground—professional and amateur journalists, unarmed citizens, and peaceful protesters—can take right now to protect themselves.

We at Access and many of our friends have produced the Digital First Aid Kit, a one-stop-shop that offers a set of self-diagnostic tools for human rights defenders, bloggers, activists, and journalists facing online attacks. It provides guidelines for digital first responders to assist a person under threat, as well as contact information if you need digital security assistance.

When it comes to protecting the content on your phone, the Electronic Frontier Foundation just updated its Cell Phone Guide for U.S. Protesters, which offers advice on password-protecting your phone, using encrypted communication channels, taking pictures and video, and handling your phone if you get arrested. Protesters can consult both resources to protect their safety and security.

Though the nightly strife of tear gas in Ferguson may be coming to an end, the road to justice in Mike Brown’s shooting is just beginning. The rights of people on the ground to freely document what takes place there—and everywhere—must be upheld at all costs.