Young Cannabis Activist Charged With Illegal Wiretap In Maryland After Publishing Meeting With Public Official On facebook Live

Reason.com reports…  October 2018, 20-year-old Jake Burdett was attending a medical marijuana protest organized by the advocacy group Maryland Marijuana Justice outside Harris’ office in Salisbury, prosecutors said in a news release. Burdett and several other protesters were invited to meet with one of Harris’ staffers in that staffer’s office. The staffer informed the activists they could not record in the office, but Burdett allegedly streamed the meeting to Facebook Live anyway.

Unfortunately for Burdett, Maryland is an all-parties consent state, meaning it’s illegal for one party to record a meeting unless the other parties say it’s OK. “We need to ensure people are respecting boundaries set by Maryland’s wiretapping law,” State Prosecutor Emmet Davitt said in a statement. Burdett was thus charged last week with “the illegal recording of the Congressional Staffer and the illegal distribution of that recording,” according to the news release.

“This sort of thing happens all the time in Maryland, but it is very rare for someone to actually press charges about it, and it saddens me that Rep. Harris has decided to needlessly drop the hammer to make an example out of me over a mistake I quickly corrected and apologized for,” Burdett said in an email to the Salisbury Daily Times. “I also find it odd that we, as citizens and constituents, are not allowed to record conversations with paid staffers by public officials in a taxpayer-funded space.”

When asked by Reason if Harris pushed for Burdett to be charged, a Harris spokesperson declined to comment.

Source:https://reason.com/blog/2019/02/14/marijuana-activist-streams-meeting-in-md

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