“Is it legal to take photos or record a police officer in the performance of his work?” asked the Cuban driver and lawyer Humberto López on Wednesday, June 10, in an edition of his program “Hacemos Cuba” . The answer was a kind of "yes, but no", which has generated various interpretations and an intense controversy on social networks since then.
As explained on the television broadcast by Joaquín Collado, lawyer and provincial deputy director of the National Organization of Collective Law Firms in the central province of Villa Clara, the act in its initial state is not a crime.
Collado explained that recording is not illegal nor is it considered a criminal figure. "The policeman is a public official in a public space, and in his performance he does not hide his identity," he summarized.
However –and here comes the controversial point–, “if that image is uploaded to a digital platform without the consent of that person, unauthorized use of the photograph is being made,” he said.
The jurist insisted that the police officer, as a person, is protected from the constitutional point of view by article 48, which stipulates that everyone “has the right to respect for their personal and family privacy, their own image and their voice, his honor and personal identity”.
Hence, publishing snapshots or videos of a police officer falls within the crime associated with the improper use of the image. “Your personal integrity and that of your family could be endangered. And jeopardize the result of the activity he carries out ”, added the jurist.
Similarly, he added that, if the publication aims to denigrate police action (he did not clarify whether it mattered whether or not it was true), an administrative court offense is committed, punishable by a fine, by violating Decree Law 370 of 2018 of the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications.
“An action that starts out legal can end up being illegal,” he concluded.
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— tyler Mon Jun 10 18:47:57 +0000 2019
Such statements quickly generated debates on social networks, especially associated with the double vision with which the aforementioned Article 48 and the unpopular Decree 370 are applied.
Different interpretations, as appropriate, can be found in the same program. In a broadcast on June 3, Maricela Sosa, vice president of the People's Supreme Court, made complex statements to understand this process.
As the host himself confirmed, among the most frequently asked questions on the program in recent weeks are those associated with the projection of images on national television and the press in general of people who committed alleged crimes of embezzlement and other similar facts. Photos, videos, dialogues and even personal data have been revealed in reports published daily by the state media in Cuba.
Responding to the question of whether or not the principle of presumption of innocence included in article 95 is violated or the image of the person is damaged as established in the aforementioned 48, Sosa replied that the press necessarily has to violate this principle. “They are talking about facts that are public conduct,” she said.
In other words: yes, the press can publish people's faces because they are actions of public knowledge; contradictory to what was later expressed by Collado. What is a crime in one case is not in another.
However, Collado insisted that the images must be published with the consent of the people, although it is not clear if this was the case in all cases. He also warned that press reports should not assume the responsibility of those presumed suspects that they are already perpetrators of these crimes, nor should they take statements or ask questions that lead people to give information that could harm them. In many of the reports, especially all the initial ones, this was almost the highlight of the narrative.
In the online debates, there were many opinions and points of view regarding the interpretation of the laws made in the television program about taking photos and videos of police officers, which IPS Cuba summarizes below: