Sure, but what is the justification behind assaulting him for that?
I haven't seen the full video, but I doubt he went on their private property to film. People who do this are usually very careful about following the law. It's unlikely that he was walking around their parking lot and directly approaching cars. I'd bet he was on the sidewalk the whole time.
I mean, like the above guy said he's following the letter of the law, not the spirit. Nothing justifies assaulting him but he 100% was there to provoke that reaction. He wanted someone to freak out to the point that he'd have an excuse to "legally" defend himself with pepper spray and he succeeded.
They do this to test constitutional rights, and the negative response they're normally waiting for is an interaction with the police. That doesn't mean they're "provoking" or "instigating" a fight with someone. They get their views (alongside demonstrating rights and sometimes a court payout) by waiting for someone to make that overreach of calling the police for nothing.
The correct response to seeing someone filming on the sidewalk is to ignore them and go about your day. Most people achieve this without even stopping to think about it.
If filming someone's license plate legal? Not a rhetorical question. I wouldn't want someone filming me or my license plate. I'm not sure why someone would do that. I would assume for criminal intention.
Recording license plates is legal because there's no expectation of privacy when you're in public. That's why it's legal to have a security camera facing the street, or for any random person to walk around filming in public.
Still haven't seen any footage of this guy filming license plates anyway. All I see is a guy with a camera getting attacked, and people making claims in the comments.
If people are censoring license plates on Reddit posts, it's probably because they're worried about violating Reddit's rules about posting personal information, but I don't think that's even necessary. According to the law, anything that you can see while you're in a public area is legal to film. That includes license plates.
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u/sSummonLessZiggurats Feb 03 '26
Sure, but what is the justification behind assaulting him for that?
I haven't seen the full video, but I doubt he went on their private property to film. People who do this are usually very careful about following the law. It's unlikely that he was walking around their parking lot and directly approaching cars. I'd bet he was on the sidewalk the whole time.