For the record

With the greater availability of cheap recording devices and the growth of the "citizen journalist" movement, there are more and more clashes between authorities and those trying to document their activities. Just in today's news, for example, there are stories about a Concord man threatened with wiretapping charges because he refused to stop filming a police officer, a woman aquitted of criminal eavesdropping charges for secretly recording an interview with two Chicago police officers, and two Democratic activists whose video cameras were seized by police at the direction of a U.S. representative at a town hall meeting. The fact is there is a war on photography going on out there, with our right to record public officials doing public business in public settings under assault.

Anyone who intends to get involved in this new kind of Internet-based reporting should be aware of Indiana's law on recording. The good news is that we're a state with a "one-party consent" law, which means:

. . . you may record a telephone conversation if you are a party to the conversation or you get permission from one party to the conversation.

That's also the federal law, by the way. So as long as you're a part of the conversation, whether it's on the phone or with somebody in person, you don't need permission or even to tell anybody what you're doing. And if you attend a public meeting, you may not be prohibited from making a sound recording. (The status of video and still photography isn't as clear, but they're both commonplace.)

None of this means officials will always be reasonable and won't get bent out of shape, trying to stop you no matter what the law says. But forewarned is forearmed.