At his request, I had met with him and with the director of the women's side of the Pine Street Inn. He wanted to see a video that I had recorded of a security guard who had told a female guest "I will f---ing drop you" for no reason while he was removing her from the shelter.
After he saw the video and recorded it with his phone so that he could investigate the security guard's behavior, he told me that, even in public, it's an "arrestable offense" to audiotape people without their knowledge. He said that you have to say "You're being recorded" so that people know that they're being recorded.
During that meeting, I asked that the Pine Street Inn be checked for hidden cameras in the bathrooms, locker rooms and showers. I don't think that he or the director of the Pine Street Inn are going to follow through about that.
He and the director of the Pine Street Inn, who is female, both coughed loudly once during that meeting. I didn't assume that the coughing was deliberate. I think that I heard him cough once also after the meeting, when I turned away to go to the main part of the shelter.
I don't film video of people who aren't being or who haven't been aggressive toward me or someone else for no reason. I never film people in situations where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy and I never film them in ways that are meant to expose them to ridicule or humiliation. Whatever interpretation anyone wants to make about the recording law in Massachusetts, I know that it is illegal to videotape people in bathrooms, locker rooms, showers and sleeping areas and that it's illegal for landlords to put hidden cameras in their tenants' apartments, whether or not you deny that you're doing that when the targets of your voyeurism confront you about what you're doing or have done.
Also, I would be surprised if there's a police station in Massachusetts that hasn't heard of me. I know that because of the conglomerate-supportive police officers who have stalked me and because of the police officers who aren't corrupted who have protected me. They have all had years to arrest me for publishing video of what happens to and around me every day. It's nice of them that they haven't, that even those who promote crime haven't been so unfair as to arrest me for trying to survive.
That's the Web address of a page about the Massachusetts recording law.
Nobody has a reason to arrest me. The same can't be said of the people who have put hidden cameras in bathrooms, showers, locker rooms and other places where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
If stalkers and harassers don't like being recorded by me, it's their responsibility to walk away when they see that I am recording them with my phone. That's what I tell them to do; there are many videos that I have published in which I'm telling someone to walk away from me.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 17, 2015 @ 10:33 a.m.
