From: "P. J. Alling" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Putting on my philosophers hat, in answer to your question, yes the professionals and the amateurs have the same rights to record the scene. So to take that to the practical, under any rational understanding, of those rights the police have no legitimate power granted to them to keep the bystanders or News photographers from recording the scene. There maybe legitimate exceptions. National security may or may not be one of them, however if that isn't involved then to limit the amateurs is a violation of their rights. Of course the Police have the power to do anything they want that the Citizens will let them get away with, but that's a different story. Your use of "legitimate" is a clue to your problem, it presupposes that those without credentials from a "news" organization are illegitimate and there is the wedge that allows petty tyrants to begin to erode the rights of all. Before long the tyrants aren't so petty...
Keep in mind Cotty is writing from the U.K. where they do not enjoy the same guarantee of free speech, free press & free exercise of religion; nor the guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure; nor the right against self incrimination ... the Bill of Rights we take for granted here in the U.S.
Their courts are far more deferential to the prerogatives of the state over the rights of the individual than courts in the U.S. have been in the past.
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