Well said

Liberal author and radio-show host David Sirota explains in Salon magazine the importance of not allowing the police to bully, intimidate, threaten with arrest or otherwise prevent people from recording officers going about their public duties (from a respectful and non-interfering distance, of course).

"That's what the practice of cellphone recording is supposed to do -- not mimic the national security state's Big Brother culture, but prevent that security state from trampling our freedoms.

Law enforcement officials, of course, don't like the cellphone cameras because they don't want any check on police power. So they've resorted to fear-mongering allegations about lost lives. But the only police officers who are threatened by cellphone cameras are those who want to break civil liberties laws with impunity. The rest have nothing to worry about and everything to gain from a practice that simply asks them to remember the all-too-forgotten part of their "protect and serve" motto -- the part about protecting the public's civil rights."

We vehemently disagree with Mr. Sirota on just about every political issue, but on this particular topic he's spot-on.