Everything online journalists need to protect their legal rights. This free resource culls from all Reporters Committee resources and includes exclusive content on digital media law issues.
Summary of statute(s): An individual not involved or present at a conversation must have the consent of at least one party in order to legally record either an oral or electronic communication. Intercepting such conversations without consent is a felony under Arizona law. This excludes situations where the person does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The state allows for civil suits for violations of its eavesdropping laws.
Arizona legislators say they are limiting the language of a controversial proposed bill that criminalizes speech via "electronic or digital device" that could, among other things, "offend or annoy" someone else.
The bill passed the Arizona house and senate in March, but is now back on the floor after First Amendment advocates complained that the bill's language was too broad.
Publishers of an alternative Arizona newspaper can continue their civil rights lawsuit against a special prosecutor who they say violated their constitutional rights by arresting the pair for publicizing purported grand jury subpoenas, a federal appellate court ruled last week.
A federal judge on Wednesday modified his previous blanket ban on the disclosure of investigation records relating to the January mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz., that severely injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.
An Arizona federal court last week dismissed a blogger's lawsuit against the city of Phoenix over a raid police conducted of his home that resulted in the confiscation of the laptop he used to manage a Web site that criticized the police department.
The blogger, Jeff Pataky, argued that the search and seizure violated the federal Privacy Protection Act, which protects journalists from searches and seizure of their work product.
The battle over the release of former Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Scott Schoeneweis’ wife’s death records must continue in a lower court, an Arizona appeals court said this week.
Schoeneweis’ wife Gabrielle was found dead on May 20 after overdosing on cocaine and lidocaine. The pitcher asked the court not to release her death records, but Commissioner Barbara Hamner denied his request on July 9.
The Arizona Supreme Court today ruled that metadata – information about the history, tracking and management of an electronic document – is subject to the state’s public records law.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph Arpaio's office will indeed have to pay more than $25,000 to cover a newspaper's attorney's fees in a public records case.
