A bunch of people have e-mailed me asking that I post about the UCLA library tasering incident. A few have gone so far as to more or less demand that I post about it.

If I had special factual or legal knowledge related to the subject, I'd have been happy to blog about it, whether or not it involved UCLA. (See, for instance, my posts criticizing a UCLA dorm speech code, a UCLA administration Web site that I thought violated the Establishment Clause, and proposed UCLA general speech code.) Here, though, I lack any such special knowledge, nor do I have the time to acquire it, especially given that this is the sort of fact-dependent incident about which one needs to know a good deal to know even a little.

It's also the sort of blogging topic that risks consuming most of my spare time if I am indeed to venture serious opinions, given that I'd then be called on to respond to all the criticisms of my opinions, criticisms that may well be quite plausible given that my opinions are unlikely to be well-informed. (There is a video, but for obvious reasons it leaves many questions unanswered.) My tentative and highly unexpert thinking -- as opposed to a serious opinion -- is that at least some of the police officers' actions were likely unjustified, but what benefit is such tentative and highly unexpert thinking to my readers? Perhaps the outside investigation of the incident will reveal more, but for now I find I have very little to add to the inquiry.

As I do find things I think I might add to the discussion, I probably will post them, though they're likely to be quite tangential to the core "what happened here and what is to be done about it" questions that others are rightly focused on. For now, just so that there's something substantively helpful in the post, let me pass along the UCLA Police Department's Taser Policy, which (apparently unlike some other departments' policies) allows the use of tasers as "pain compliance techniques" in some situations. I can't speak in any helpful detail to what pain compliance techniques (as opposed to techniques aimed at more direct officer self-defense, rather than aimed at mere compliance) should be allowed: My tentative sense is that some are invariably allowed, and should be allowed, since even simply forcibly handcuffing a suspect usually relies on the threat of pain as a means of ensuring compliance, but that doesn't tell us whether tasering should be among such techniques, at least outside unusual cases. But I thought that at least passing along the policy might help produce informed opinions from readers who are more knowledgeable than I am about police enforcement matters.

As I noted below, I have little helpful to add about the UCLA tasering incident, because I know little about the subject. But I do know something about privacy and free speech, and the video recording of the incident (through a student's video cell phone, if I'm not mistaken) reminds me of this post of mine from a while back, called "A Sad Tale of Privacy Law."

The short summary: The laws of some states -- most clearly, Massachusetts -- make it a crime to "secret[ly]" record what others say, even when the recording is in public and the speakers are police officers who are arresting a suspect. This would certainly outlaw someone's recording the incident using a hidden audio or audio/video recorder (for instance, because the person is afraid that the police will retaliate if he reveals that he's recording them). It may also outlaw the recording if the recorder isn't literally hidden, but also isn't clearly visible to the police (for instance, if a student with a cell phone is in a crowd, and the police don't know what he's doing).

Fortunately, California law is limited to situations that involve "confidential communication[s]," and excludes communications "made in a public gathering . . . or in any other circumstance in which the parties to the communication may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded"; that law may still pose problems, but it's not as bad as the Massachusetts law.

In any case, here's my earlier post:

Sonia Arrison's TechCentralStation.com column points out, among other things, that some surveillance technology can actually help detect and prevent police abuse: "In California's Orange County, where video cameras were installed in patrol cars to protect against false accusations of excessive force, the tapes have been used to prosecute abusive police officers." (I love the column's title, by the way -- "Watching the Detectives.") I found the column via a post on [Radley Balko's] The Agitator, which pointed out that "the police brutality videotapes we've seen in the news are a good example of how civilians too can use surveilance to keep a check on power. When authorities start preventing us from accessing the same technology they're using, well, then it's time to start getting antsy."

Well, here's a story for you: Many states have laws that ban people from taping conversations without the speakers' permission. Some of them prohibit only taping conversations in which the taper isn't involved (the classic eavesdropping situation); I have no problem with that.

But others prohibit taping conversations unless all parties consent. I can see why this is done, but I can also see why it's troublesome: If you're being blackmailed or threatened, or if someone is saying something that acknowledges that he's guilty of some crime, it seems to me that you have a strong claim of entitlement to record this. The laws are justified by a desire to protect "privacy," but it's far from clear that we should value this privacy when it amounts to my right to deny later what I say now -- especially when what I say now might show that I'm trying to endanger you (or someone else).

And here's an extreme scenario, which happened under a law that seems to be among the broadest in the nation. I quote from last year's decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Commonwealth v. Hyde:

This case raises the issue whether a motorist may be prosecuted for violating the Massachusetts electronic surveillance statute . . . for secretly tape recording statements made by police officers during a routine traffic stop. A jury in the District Court convicted the defendant on four counts of a complaint charging him with unlawfully intercepting the oral communications of another . . . . We conclude that [the state interception law] strictly prohibits the secret electronic recording by a private individual of any oral communication, and makes no exception for a motorist who, having been stopped by police officers, surreptitiously tape records the encounter. Accordingly, we affirm the judgments of conviction.

. . . On October 26, 1998, just after 10:30 P.M., an Abington police officer stopped the defendant's white Porsche, because the automobile had an excessively loud exhaust system and an unlit rear registration plate light. Three other Abington police officers arrived shortly thereafter and the stop quickly became confrontational. During the course of the stop, which lasted approximately fifteen to twenty minutes, the defendant and his passenger, Daniel Hartesty, were ordered out of the automobile, and Hartesty was pat frisked.

One officer reached into the automobile, picked up a plastic shopping bag that lay on the floor by the passenger seat, and looked inside. (The bag contained compact discs.) At one point, the defendant stated that the stop was "a bunch of bullshit," and that he had been stopped because of his long hair. One officer responded, "Don't lay that shit on me." Later, another officer called the defendant "an asshole." The defendant was asked whether he had any "blow" (cocaine) in the car.

At the conclusion of the stop, the defendant and Hartesty were allowed to leave. No traffic citation was issued to the defendant, and the defendant was not charged with any crime. According to the testimony of one police officer, the defendant was "almost out of control" and the stop "had gone so sour," that it was deemed in everyone's interest simply to give the defendant a verbal warning. Unbeknownst to the officers, however, the defendant had activated a hand-held tape recorder at the inception of the stop and had recorded the entire encounter.

Six days later, the defendant went to the Abington police station to file a formal complaint based on his unfair treatment during the stop. To substantiate his allegations, he produced the tape recording he had made. A subsequent internal investigation conducted by the Abington police department, which concluded on February 1, 1999, exonerated the officers of any misconduct.

In the meantime, the Abington police sought a criminal complaint in the Brockton Division of the District Court Department against the defendant for four counts of wiretapping in violation of [the state law].

So there you have the dark side of "privacy" -- the law aimed at protecting privacy ends up quite improperly restricting people's liberty, and people's ability to protect themselves against police misconduct. Here's part of the court's rationale:

We reject the defendant's argument that the statute is not applicable because the police officers were performing their public duties, and, therefore, had no reasonable expectation of privacy in their words. The statute's preamble expresses the Legislature's general concern that "the uncontrolled development and unrestricted use of modern electronic surveillance devices pose[d] grave dangers to the privacy of all citizens of the commonwealth" and this concern was relied on to justify the ban on the public's clandestine use of such devices.

And this protection of "privacy" extends not just to allegedly misbehaving cops but also to . . . kidnappers calling in ransom requests: "In Commonwealth v. Jackson, this court rejected the argument that, because a kidnapper has no legitimate privacy interest in telephone calls made for ransom purposes, the secret electronic recording of that conversation by the victim's brother would not be prohibited . . . ."

Now this incident isn't necessarily an indictment of all such laws; perhaps such a law could be properly drafted to exclude audiotaping of conversations with the police, or with people who one reasonably believes are trying to extort something from you or threaten you. But it is a warning that not all laws proposed in the name of "privacy" are good, especially when they try to protect one person's privacy by constraining another's liberty to record conversations to which one is lawfully a party.

Commenter Sparky reports, and the Oxford English Dictionary confirms: The term "taser" comes from "Tom Swift's Electric Rifle." "Yup, THAT Tom Swift," writes Sparky; "He had an electric rifle in a 1911 story."

Sparky (and Wikipedia) report that it comes from "Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifle" (Wikipedia: "The 'A' is gratuitous; the character's middle name was never provided"), though the OED doesn't say so.