BETA - LIVE Elwood Police Scanner Online

Well yeah......I'm not trying to make a deal with you. LOL

Thanks to everyone who participated in the beta. We're gonna leave it up as is for a bit, but there will most likely be some changes to how you access it (for various reasons...) Thanks again and stay tuned...

This was posted to Poynter's Online-News group today and I thought some of you might be interested in seeing what we might come up against moving forward with this project...

Any consideration of the legal issues?

http://www.monitoringtimes.com/html/mtlaws_jan04.html

Any of you run this past your attorneys?

Seem to be an unsettled issue, as far as I can tell.  Who wants to be
the first to get sued and report back to us know how it goes?

According to this post:

http://www.radioreference.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-81717.html

You might actually win.

-Howard Owens (He's one of the 'good guys' imho...)

Another question for the community here at AFP. Please answer if you have the time. The world is watching this thread now. ;)

Legal or not, I find the idea of letting the public listen in on police
scanners to be something of an invasion of privacy. I know the calls are
being aired over semi-public airwaves that anyone can intercept with the
right equipment. But as a one-time night cops reporter, I can attest to the
fact that there's a lot of personal information that gets transmitted over
those radio waves. Domestic violence situations (alleged or real), problems
with troubled teens, medical problems. I can't imagine being thrilled having
my neighbors listening if tragedy like that visited my household. What's
more, there's little real news value, aside from the occassional blockbuster
fire.

What's the point?

Michael Bazeley

If Michael thinks it is so bad maybe he should start a campaign to ban all scanners in the United States.  The people that post on here never use a name or complete address.

As far as Elwood it again goes back to ban all scanners if you don't want people to listen. 

Vin Crosbie (another one of the good guys in the journalism world, imho), had this great contribution. He's obviously not a member here, but I wanted to share his words with his permission of course...

From: Michael Bazeley [mailto:mbazeley@gmail.com]

> Legal or not, I find the idea of letting the public
> listen in on police scanners to be something of an
> invasion of privacy. I know the calls are being aired

...

> there's a lot of personal information that gets
> transmitted over those radio waves. Domestic violence
> situations (alleged or real), problems with troubled
> teens, medical problems. I can't imagine being thrilled
> having my neighbors listening if tragedy like that
> visited my household. What's more, there's little real
> news value, aside from the occassional blockbuster
> fire. What's the point?

News organizations and journalists are rightly interested in reporting to
the public whatever publicly occurs, particularly if it involves public
funds.

If an event causes fire trucks or police cars to race with sirens blazing
through public streets, the public takes notice of that public event. People
hear the sirens and they want to know what's happening. They turn to the
news media to find out what's happening.

The ideal news medium in the 21s Century should be able to provide
information on all levels and subjects in real time to the public. It should
provide the public with police and fire logs and court dockets in real time,
for those members of the public who want to see such things. It should
likewise provide the public with anything openly broadcast on public
frequencies that involves a public event (such as open conversations over
police or fire radio frequencies, manned spacecraft transmissions, or
conversations between an airliner and air traffic controllers). The pubic
already has the ability to see and hear those things by visiting the police
or fire departments or courts and looking at those logs or dockets or by
listening to radio scanners. Moreover, there is nothing new about newspapers
publishing such information, something that has been routinely done.

I understand Terry Heaton's point about how in a previous era the Federal
Communications Commission discouraged television or radio stations from
rebroadcasting police or radio conversations in real time. However, the FCC
discouraged any broadcaster from rebroadcasting in real time any other
broadcasters without that other broadcaster's prior permission, regardless
if the other broadcaster is the police, fire, another commercial
broadcaster, or Radio Moscow. But The FCC does not regulate the Internet nor
is it chartered to do so.

> One could presumbaly go to the police station and dig
> up addresses of people who have been raped in your
> community and print them. But should you? You could
> also go down to the courthouse, pull the info from
> recent divorce cases and run a weekly "Nasty Divorce

> of the Week'' feature with all the gory details.

> But should you? You could list the names of all the
> poor suckers who've filed for bankruptcy or had liens
> placed on their homes. But where is the news value in
> that? I don't think that just because something is
> accessible necessarily means it should be widely
> publicized. Again, are we interested in civic
> engagement and community building, or just titiliation?

That's surprisingly traditional or 'one-to-many' thinking! I don't mean
whether or not to report the name of someone who publicly files a complaint
of robbery, rape, or murder (I submit that the murder victim should be the
most aggrieved of those three). I mean the idea that the editor should be
the person who decide what public information the public has access to
through the media.

The only reason why journalistically responsible daily newspapers don't
publish all of their community's fire and police logs and court dockets is
limited space in print. The only reason why journalistically responsible TV
or radio news programs don't is limited of air time. No such limits exist
online.

We're not talking about writing stories about each or any divorce case or
'poor sucker' who's filed for bankruptcy. We're talking about providing the
public with publicly accessible documents and with dialogues by public
servants on publicly accessible frequencies.

A journalist's job isn't titillation. But neither is it community building
or civic engagement (those happen to be the public servants' jobs, if anyone
cares to remember). A journalist's job is to accurately and objectively
report public events and public information. Not to withhold from the public
the parts the journalist chooses.

Vin

_____________________________________________

Vin Crosbie, Managing Partner, Digital Deliverance LLC

www.digitaldeliverance.com http://www.google.com/search?q=%22vin+crosbie%22

Adjunct Professor of Visual & Interactive Communications
S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications,

215 University Place
Syracuse University,

Syracuse, New York 13244-2100

USA
254 NCCIII http://sumagazine.syr.edu/fall07/features/feature2/index.html