This week’s Acton Commentary from Rev. Gregory Jensen, “Finding the Balance: Privacy and the Civil Society,” is a thoughtful reflection on the place of privacy in our modern life.

I have recently made the claim that public persons, such as police officers and politicians, have a somewhat different claim to privacy than private persons.

This was especially in the context of controversy over the legality of videorecording police officers while on the job. Gizmodo follows up on a previous item (discussed here) with another one, linking to a Popular Mechanics article in which “Glenn Harlan Reynolds notes that mall cops may have a legal basis for asking you to put your camera away, public property (such as any sidewalk, street, or municipal area) is always fair game.”

The current situation is, apart from the special kinds of state-level legislation discussed in the previous post, that “Legally, it’s pretty much always okay to take photos in a public place as long as you’re not physically interfering with traffic or police operations.”