After the story was printed, ICE spokesperson Richard Beam reached out to ask about blurring the faces.
“I totally respect the media’s proper to take and use pictures taken in a public area and would usually not make such a request,” Beam wrote within the electronic mail to Chien. “Nevertheless, out of a priority for the security of our personnel I wished to easily ask.”
The Commonplace’s managing editor, Jeff Bercovici, stated he rapidly realized that ICE would wish a a lot stronger case for him and his colleagues to grant the request to change the photographs — and that doing so would set a harmful precedent.
“That’s the type of factor that anyone who works in legislation enforcement, anyone who works in authorities, any highly effective individual within the tech business might say,” Bercovici stated. “If we had been to think about each time somebody makes a plea like that, we might principally not run photos of individuals with energy or people who find themselves concerned with controversial authorities coverage.”
To his information, ICE is the one legislation enforcement company that has made such a request of the Commonplace. It’s unclear how typically ICE makes these requests to media retailers, however Beam advised KQED that the company “routinely” does so.
David Loy, the authorized director of the First Modification Coalition, stated that whereas authorities officers can all the time ask, there is no such thing as a legislation barring media retailers from publishing pictures or different figuring out info of officers conducting operations in public — reminiscent of on the road in entrance of immigration court docket.
“If it’s only a well mannered request, the federal government has the correct to ask,” Loy stated. “What the federal government ought to by no means do is make it in the least coercive or threatening, in substance if not in type.”
