E-Mail This Article to a Friend The Eighth Annual Muzzle Awards (continued)

Kathleen O’Toole

Smile for the TV camera: Big Sister is watching you

For a government intent on watching your every move, last July’s Democratic National Convention was the gift that keeps on giving. Surveillance cameras in public places were hardly unheard-of before the DNC came to town, but the first major political gathering since 9/11 gave them a huge boost.

As a result of security concerns over the FleetCenter event, the city is now wired with more than 1000 cameras owned by various government agencies that are capable of monitoring huge chunks of downtown Boston from a single command post (see "Reality TV," News and Features, February 11).

The cameras are owned by agencies as varied as the Federal Protective Service, the Coast Guard, the Mass Turnpike Authority, and the MBTA — so there’s no shortage of candidates who could receive this Muzzle. For both symbolic and substantive reasons, though, the Muzzle goes to Boston police commissioner Kathleen O’Toole, whose agency has about 30 cameras, and whose underlings have been enthusiastically outspoken proponents of keeping an electronic eye on all of us.

As Superintendent James Claiborne put it after the DNC: "It was just amazing. You could read a license plate, capture a high-quality still picture. It’s all going to be very, very useful."

Despite the potential threat to civil liberties posed by such a network, it’s not clear how extensively the cameras are actually being used. "It’s all a big mystery," says Urszula Masny-Latos, director of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. "Depending on whom you talk to, you get a different answer."

Nevertheless, there’s little question that law enforcement is moving toward watching us with increasing regularity as we go about our business. Boston police have installed a network of cameras in Chinatown, with overwhelming (though hardly unanimous) neighborhood support. And, more recently, the contagion crossed the city border, into Chelsea, where 34 cameras will keep an eye on the entire city.

Twenty-one years after 1984, Big Brother — or, in this case, Big Sister — really is watching you.

City of Augusta, Maine

Pay-to-protest lawsuit enters its second year

This is not the first time we’ve had a repeat winner. Former Massachusetts governor Paul Cellucci took home three Muzzles, becoming the one and only inductee into our Hall of Shame (see "The Fourth Annual Muzzle Awards," News and Features, June 28, 2001). Nevertheless, a diligent search by dozens of Muzzle Central interns confirms that the City of Augusta is the sole recipient of more than one award for exactly the same offense.

Last year city officials in Augusta dishonored themselves for imposing $11,800 in fees on an anti-war group that was seeking to demonstrate on the streets of the state capital (see "The Seventh Annual Muzzle Awards," News and Features, July 2, 2004). US District Court judge John Woodcock ruled that the organizers would have to pay only $1800 for police details and clean-up costs — an abridgement of the protesters’ First Amendment rights, to be sure, but not nearly as onerous as what the city had originally sought.

Now the case is back in Judge Woodcock’s courtroom, with Timothy Sullivan, a leader of the anti-war activists, arguing that Augusta’s system of not-so-free speech discriminates against the poor. Sullivan and his lawyers also oppose requiring protest organizers to provide 30 days’ notice and to meet with the police chief. As one of Sullivan’s lawyers, Davie Webbert, has observed, the latter rule would be a real impediment if the purpose of the demonstration is to oppose police misconduct.

At a hearing on June 1, city attorney Stephen Langsdorf told Woodcock, "We think city taxpayers should not have to bear the cost of traffic control and shutting down streets." That is an exceedingly narrow view of the First Amendment. As Zachary Heiden, a staff attorney for the Maine Civil Liberties Union and co-counsel for the plaintiffs, puts it, "There should be no cost associated with free speech. All people in Maine should have the right to express their views in the state’s capital, regardless of their political affiliations or their ability to pay."

Judge Woodcock’s decision is expected soon.

Tom Menino

Hizzoner takes his time in street-musician dispute

There is, perhaps, no purer form of free speech than standing in a public place and speaking, singing, or playing music. But in Boston — in many ways the nation’s original public square — having that right recognized has been an uphill battle. Mayor Tom Menino, finally, did the right thing. But he earns a Muzzle Award for having taken too long to do it, and for leaving street performers still wondering whether they’ll run afoul of the police the next time they lift their voices to sing.

The quest to overturn Boston’s arcane street-performance regulations goes back to the summer of 2002, when folk musician Stephen Baird, of Jamaica Plain, took his acoustic guitar to Boston Common. Ordered by a Boston Parks Department ranger to obtain an itinerant-musician license, Baird returned the next day, license in hand, and began playing his hammered dulcimer. This time, he was told he needed yet another permit issued by the Parks Department — even though such a permit didn’t exist (see "Freedom Watch," News and Features, September 3, 2004).

Baird and his nonprofit organization, Community Arts Advocates (www.communityartsadvocates.org), sued in US District Court to overturn the 19th-century-vintage rules, which included a ban on playing within 500 feet of schools and on Sundays. In many locations, musicians could perform only between 6 and 9 pm.

Before the lawsuit could get very far, though, Menino threw in the towel, promising to abolish the regulations and recognize the right of the musicians to perform. "So you’ve won," Judge Nancy Gertner told Baird’s pro bono attorneys last December.

Not so fast. In late March, Baird claimed, three Boston police officers shut down his performance at Sam Adams Park, in Dock Square. When he showed them a copy of the court order, Baird’s lawyers said, one of the officers "tossed it back at Baird and stated ‘the courts do not know what they are doing.’"

Menino and the city council finally rescinded the regulations on April 4. Whether the mayor has made sure that the news has trickled down to his police officers and rangers is another matter.