I have read hat there are some people who want to protect the police by making it illegal to video them when they are doing their duty. I know many out there say it is their right to do so under the First Amendment, but that has never been challenged in court and with the courts being pushed to the right by conservatives, we will not know how they would rule until they do. So, do you believe that the government should make it illegal to video the police?
This is the short and quarter-assed version, but yes it absolutely has been tested. I'm not digging in other federal circuits or in states.
In line with these principles, we have previously recognized that the videotaping of public officials is an exercise of First Amendment liberties. In
Iacobucci v. Boulter, 193 F.3d 14 (1st Cir. 1999), a local journalist brought a § 1983 claim arising from his arrest in the course of filming officials in the hallway outside a public meeting of a historic district commission. The commissioners had objected to the plaintiff's filming. Id. at 18. When the plaintiff refused to desist, a police officer on the scene arrested him for disorderly conduct. Id. The charges were later dismissed. Id. Although the plaintiff's subsequent § 1983 suit against the arresting police officer was grounded largely in the Fourth Amendment and did not include a First Amendment claim, we explicitly noted, in rejecting the officer's appeal from a denial of qualified immunity, that because the plaintiff's journalistic activities "were peaceful, not performed in derogation of any law, and done in the exercise of his First Amendment rights, [the officer] lacked the authority to stop them." Id. at 25 (emphasis added).
Our recognition that the First Amendment protects the filming of government officials in public spaces accords with the decisions of numerous circuit and district courts. . . . . It is of no significance that the present case, unlike Iacobucci and many of those cited above, involves a private individual, and not a reporter, gathering information about public officials. The First Amendment right to gather news is, as the Court has often noted, not one that inures solely to the benefit of the news media; rather, the public's right of access to information is coextensive with that of the press
Glik v. Cunniffe, 655 F.3d 78, 83 (1st Cir. 2011) (but noting filming is subject to reasonable time and place restrictions).
See also Gericke v. Begin, 753 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2014);
Cunningham v. United States DOJ, 40 F. Supp. 3d 71, 87 (D.D.C. 2014).
tl;dr
In summary, though not unqualified, a citizen's right to film government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public space is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment.
Glik v. Cunniffe, 655 F.3d 78, 85 (1st Cir. 2011).
Other random sources:
A Judge Ruled You Can Secretly Record Police, Officials in Massachusetts
Mass. Court Weighs Ban on Secret Recordings of Public Officials – NBC Boston
Martin v. Rollins (formerly Martin v. Evans, Martin v. Gross) | ACLU Massachusetts
Court Rules Cops Can't Arrest You For Secretly Filming Them