First of all, it doesn’t read like a bill, it reads more like an abstract (for a future bill) prepared upon wishful thinking.
Some of those confined grow operations are deplorable, the things they do to those poor animals are a disgrace. Somebody obviously got snooped on, and is trying to get protection. I doubt that this makes it into law.
Now, if the farm is situated such that the owner/operator could have a reasonable expectation of privacy, then he’s already protected by law. People who do horrible things out in broad daylight deserve to be discovered, IMO.
Well, that wouldn’t be too difficult, considering how few farms there are in the United States (the “breadbasket of the world”). You’d only have to remove most of Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, eastern Colorado, Montana, California…
So this means that if you are in Florida and you accidentally take a photo of a farmer jamming livestock together in a pen or barn so tightly that the animals can barely move, the farmer can have you sent to prison or even executed?
Based on the lay of the land…this means that if you take a picture in Florida you’ll be nailed. Take a picture in downtown Miami and that zillion milimeter lens could catch a farmer outside Tampa doing something; therefore you’re guilty. This is just anothe knee jerk reaction by a jerking knee!
I thought that the supreme court determined (Katz vs the USA) that only people’s rights to privacy are protected, not places? ->>“A big question in determining whether your expectation of privacy is “reasonable” and protected by the Fourth Amendment arises when you have “knowingly exposed” something to another person or to the public at large<<-”
The “knowingly exposed” aspect of their ruling has been kicked around at great length, and there is little mystery left, in so far as what’s included, and what’s not.
Just my hunch but this thing will get bogged down between the need to determine “willfull intent” on the part of the so called perpetrator, and his constitutional rights.
I agree that trespassing onto private property be it a railyard, a barnyard or a backyard is and should be illegal without the owner’s consent whether to take a picture or whatever…but that’s already the law, so why another? Ye$, therefore, it i$ de$igned to bring bu$$ine$$ and dollar$ to lawyer$.
There have been a few cases where animal rights groups have infiltrated corporate farms in Iowa. IRRC, in one case they had one of their members actually get hired at the confinement. Some of the things that go on are bad, and other things are sensationalized to play on the sympathies of people who have no idea; good, bad, or otherwise on how meat and dairy is produced.
I can understand where this bill is coming from, but don’t agree with it. Like many other laws, it’s full of “unintended consequences” waiting to happen.
I read in my local paper tonight a guest editorial/commentary about something similar being proposed in Iowa. Approved for debate a ban on anyone producing, possessing or distributing a (implied video) recording of a livestock operation without permission.
It doesn’t sound as restrictive as the one that started this thread. So I guess in Iowa, if it becomes law, you can have a corn field in the background, but not a livestock confinement. (It doesn’t really say, but the intent seems to be for those who enter onto property or into buildings to take the videos.)
Again, I don’t agree with the ban because of unintended consequences. However, I don’t have as much sympathy for those who authored the commentary. I’m sorry, I don’t want to see animals raised for food unduly mistreated, but some of these animal rights people distort methods that are used.
Jeff, an evil person because I eat veal, and like it.
I still say, trespassing is trespassing. It is illegal and therefore punishable. The reason for trespassing is inconsequential thus new laws will hamper freedom and give police non-reasons to illegally stop and search anybody and everybody. Just like Homeland Security gives every cop and bystander the right to have a railfan photographer get hauled in for no other reason than the hauler feels it is his right and duty to do so.
In some of the Iowa cases, and maybe others from around the country too, the people who took the videos weren’t tresspassing. Some of the videos were made by people who worked at the facilities.
So now (if the Iowa bill would become law) you would need not only permission to be on the property, you’ld also need permission to take pictures/videos. A person who worked at a facility couldn’t take videos of conditions there without specific permission to do so.
I’m surprised amtrak hasn’t questioned people who take photos of them at places like Rondout Junction in Illinois. Thet almost always have the numbers of their locomotives photo shopped out of their pictures.
Jeff H,…I’m pretty sure that you and I are on the same page with each point you mention.
There are scoundrels on both sides, IMO… I saw a tv documentary a while back was trying to claim that egg laying chickens were actually happier in “confined grow” operations. The claim being that in a natural setting, the strongest chickens dominate the food supply, leaving the subordinate peers to scratch for limited rations.
While that might be logical, to some extent, I don’t believe that a tightly caged chicken is a happy chicken, no matter what.
I actually pay the premium price for eggs from ‘range fed’ chickens, and some scoundrels have even managed to corrupt the meaning of “range fed”…to the extent that allowing the birds out of their pen for 1 hr per day somehow qualifies them as “range” animals…pretty sad if you ask me.
Taking pictures is not a crime. Taking pictures in public is not a crime. Taking pictures in public of a crime is not a crime. Taking pictures of trains is not a crime. Taking pictures in public of trains is not a crime. If anything is open to public view it is not a crime to look at nor take pictures of. If one were to climb a fence or otherwise gain access to private property, that is a crime. If one is committing a crime it is incumbant upon that individual to hide such crime from public view if he does not want to be caught. But it is not incumbant upon any and every police agency or individual police officer to stop people from taking pictures. If taking pictures is a crime then Kodak should not have been allowed to manufacture film and camera’s, sell the film and camera’s to the public, nor to process the film…it would have been declared some kind of unscontitutional behavior or something a long, long time ago. In both Florida and Iowa, we have politicians trying to hide thier constituants crimes. Homeland Security is trying to secure thier jobs. Photographers are being asked to bear the brunt of the fight by having to pay fines and/or lawyers. Politicans often are lawyers…
Well, here we start to bump up against the bigger picture. Big business has succeeded in buying government to the extent that individual freedoms are being forced into the back seat, bound and gagged.