Last week, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to a Massachusetts data privacy law that prohibits secret audio recordings. As a result, the statute remains unchanged as well as a First Circuit panel opinion from December 2020 that the public can secretly record police (notwithstanding that the Massachusetts statute otherwise bars all surreptitious recordings).
In 1968, the Massachusetts legislature enacted Section 99, which provides "that the uncontrolled development and unrestricted use of modern electronic surveillance devices pose grave dangers to the privacy of all citizens of the commonwealth." Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 272, ' 99(A). The statute...
