You are right. What I could have said more clearly is that she may have no more power than the bullied kid to hold her abuser to account.
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Not all schools.
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I was bullied once as a child back in the 70s. Unbeknownst to me, my mother found the kid and told him, “If you ever touch my son again, I’ll tear your arm off and beat you with the soggy end.” I don’t think that would be considered acceptable today. Oh, and our family highly suspects that she may be a reincarnated Spanish Inquisitor.
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We need more Dartington Halls
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Fair enough.
It’s a weird quirk of law, that if she’d somehow rigged an optical surveillance device that didn’t record audio, she’d have been fine! America is weird.
I usually do, but your stance triggers me extremely.
I’m sorry I can’t really elaborate in detail, b/c I am 1) very angry and b) have some things to do which need my full attention. In a nutshell, what you say is wrong. There is no such thing as a non-private conversation as long as all parties agree that it is recordable.
Children, in this special case, are never to be recorded without the explicit consent of their parents and themselves. Children need extra protection, and by no means it is acceptable for someone to record them stealthily.
If you have a problem you think you can solve by stealthily recording children, your in deep ethical trouble, pal.
I am not willing to discuss hypothetical cases under which this would be acceptable. If someone does this to my child, I’ll see them in court, and if necessary, I’ll go to the European Court of Human Rights.
FTR, check the Guardian piece. I grew up in Germany. And I don’t give a flying fuck if Big Brother, Uncle Google or Little Brother concerned parent is recording my child.
*** No. Fucking. Way. ***
Sorry again, I haven’t got the nerve to elaborate a calm response with a academically sound argument.
But rest assured, I’m in firm ground here. You, OTH, are not. “Nothing to fear” is a fallacious pseudo-argument. And your defense of it doesn’t come close to be valid.
Thanks for taking the time. And having the calm. I didn’t.
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I don’t think the two of you are as far apart as you think. However, this is a stressful time of year. I find that when I’m stressed, the internet isn’t the place to center myself. That’s advice I’m trying to do a better job of listening to myself given the damage this year has done to my equilibrium.
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Rest assured, I’m not focusing on the interwebz. I’ve got very positively stressful time, and the BBS is just something I check for fun.
This wasn’t fun, admittedly.
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Isn’t in Virginia it’s on party consent on recording conversation?
Yeah, I overstated the case a bit, but on balance, I really do think the benefits of letting individual people record their own interactions is far more than the costs.
I think we’re conceptualizing one recording conversations one is a part
of very differently: you as a sword, and I as a shield. The thing is I
really don’t understand why that’s your default framing.
A recording by itself harms no one. There can be no harm until it is
revealed to non-participants. The pearl-clutching I hear resembles the
old chestnut about a tribe that believes photographs steal people’s
souls. But even without revealing, it can safeguard you from gaslighters
intent on making you doubt your recollections.
So let’s focus on the harms revealing to non-participants can cause.
Breaking this down, you can be harmed by:
- Confessing to unpopular, but legal acts
- Confessing to unpopular opinions
Children, of course, may not be aware of wha’s popular, or who can be
trusted to be quiet.
But even without recording I assert that merely having someone reporting
what was said is nearly as damaging. In fact, abusers, bullies,
harassers, and trolls don’t even need to use what was said. They’re just
as capable of spreading malicious false rumors, and many are capable of
lying convincingly with a straight face, whereas even truthfully denying
a nasty accusation can be hard for the socially awkward, shy or merely
surprised.
All a recording does is tilt the balance of who will be believed from
the one with high status or who can lie easily, and replace it with the
truth of what was said. It can act as a shield against false rumors while
making true ones more believable.
A real problem for indiscriminate recording is:
- Confessing to illegal acts (whether or not they are popular or should
be illegal)
Here, the recorder can sic the state on the recordee, in a way that mere
hearsay wouldn’t allow. For illegal acts with reasonable punishments,
I see no problem. For illegal acts that should be legal, or have
inflated punishments, there is indeed a problem. Of course, from the
point of view of the state, and thus what laws on recording should be,
the other laws are assumed just.
Addressing your points:
-
No, they don’t. Nor do obtrusive recording devices. I’m not sure what
your point here is. If it’s about incidentally catching the conversations
of those around you, I don’t count that as a large cost. -
With respect to this case in particular, I am assuming that the
child was in on it. If not, I do indeed think that punishment is
warranted for the parent. However, I seem to be disagreeing with a lot
of case law on the subject, where parents are allowed to give vicarious
consent for their children if they “have a good faith basis that is
objectively reasonable for believing that it was in the best interest of
the child”. This is split between different one-party states, however. -
It doesn’t assume a rational and impartial audience, but rather one
that shares the recordee’s values, or the recordee knowing better than
to hand damaging information to enemies. I do see no reason to protect
recording and disclosing other people’s conversations, but case law,
even in all-party states, is very much on the side of no protection
in public. The general tack has been not on classifying the place,
but considering whether you can expect to be overheard. If people
can obviously overhear you, recording is considered acceptable. For
Virgina, this is even built in to the statute: “expectation that such
communication is not subject to interception under circumstances
justifying such expectations”. And again, people don’t need to record
information that is useful for harassment, they just need to overhear
it. Eron Gjoni didn’t need to record Zoe Quinn in order to rile 4chan
up against her, he just wrote down what he claimed to remember. -
I do see that children are more vulnerable than adults because they
are not aware of what dangers admitting certain things can cause.
I just don’t think this is anywhere near enough to alter the balance.
We don’t have any problems requiring recording of cops. And IMO the average middle school bully is a good deal more sociopathic than the average cop.
The concern isn’t that she recorded the bully, but all the conversations she incidentally recorded while her backpack was recording all day.
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As I said, I’m not universally opposed to it. But there are good reasons for the limits the law places on this right.
Analogies have their limits, but recordings can be both offensive and defensive, sometimes even at the same time. That’s why the law and social contracts must be nuanced enough to handle the complexities.
Information is power, power is leverage, and leverage can indeed do harm by it’s very existence.
In any culture, laws and popularity are not infrequently at odds with justice.
It can’t work both ways. If recording is a more powerful defense then it is also a more powerful offense. Unfortunately the truth can be used maliciously because society is not perfectly just. I understand wanting to live in a society where transparency is safe, but we don’t and it looks to get worse before it begins the long journey to get better.
I’m a big fan of David Brin’s non-fiction book The Transparent Society. If you haven’t read it, I recommend checking it out as I think you’d find it interesting. However, I do not believe we as a culture are anywhere near mature enough for a fully transparent society. And understand that I’m not talking about individual maturity, but the maturity of our social contracts. Brin, while quite incisive and making a noble effort to see things from all sides, does write from a position of privlage of which he doesn’t always show awareness in the book (which it’s worth noting is by now two decades old).
While this is a problem, it’s the lesser one in Western liberal democracies due to the sagely restrictive rules surrounding the admissibility of evidence. But that’s treading into questions of law and since IANAL I’m not qualified to offer an expert opinion.
You are of course entitled to your opinion. I disagree.
That’s not the impression I got from the article, but even if it was, as I said children are more vulnerable and deserve a higher degree of protection from covert recording than do adults.
Just to reiterate, I do not agree with the punishment, jail time, with which the parent is being threatened.
That’s beyond the scope of my legal knowledge.
Hostility is neither always apparent nor always present to begin with. Revenge porn is a stark example of this, though it’s far from the only one.
An elementary school is not a public place.
Again, IANAL, but I doubt one-party consent wiretapping laws protect the right to record overheard conversations. Otherwise there’d be no practical difference between one-party consent and no-party consent.
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This case tears at my heart and my gut. I could imagine myself being so frustrated by the lack of anyone stepping in to stop the bullying of my child that when told “There’s no proof! We can’t do anything if there’s no proof!” I’d be muttering “I’ll give you proof” as I go to lay in wait at the usual spots, hiding in the bushes with a video camera.
On the other hand, I’d hope the rational part of my brain would stop me with a gentle reminder that jail time is a real possibility and there has to be a better way, think about it.
Sigh. I’d probably be in jail if I was raising a kid nowadays.
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I think the discussion has largely covered all the points on which we disagree. I will say that a large part of my antipathy towards restricting recording is that it feels the same to me as saying that I have to plug my ears when someone is talking who doesn’t want to be recorded. I can certainly understand some desires to prevent recording, but it feels like it should have to overcome a very high bar in order to succeed, and thus must be quite narrow.
There are already laws against blackmail.
When you’re surrounded by other people, it’s public in the sense of reasonable expectation of privacy. I can think of a reason besides “children” to prevent recording, but it’s not because it’s not public. It’s because the children are forced to be there, and can’t leave to have conversations in private, or otherwise exercise care to prevent being overheard.
They don’t allow recording any overheard conversation, only ones where the participants can’t reasonably expect to not be overheard. If you hide in a closet, you can be prosecuted. If you use a parabolic microphone to listen in from across a field, you can be prosecuted. If you’re in the next booth and they are shouting, it’s fair game. Of the two-party consent states, I believe only Illinois and Massachusetts forbid any recording of others at all.
Anyways, thank you for presenting actual arguments that made me think about my reactions and public policy for recording.
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