And to borrow another from Jagger/Richards..."these days its all secrecy, no privacy."

The vast majority of these statutes address eavesdropping from a Forth Amendment perspective; that is preventing governement intrusion on citizens.  Accordingly, the extension of the law to probit eavesdropping by private citizens that were stuck onto these bills is awkward, given that the Forth Amendment constrains only government activity, not the acts of private citizens.  

Regardless, the notion that state governments would now wield a body of law designed to restrain the government to punish citizens is truly warped.  The Massachusetts case law and statutory construction is especially egregious.   In Comm. v. Hyde, decided in 2003, the MA Supreme Judicial Court held:

Every State, with the exception of Vermont, has some type of eavesdropping or wiretapping statute. The majority contain language that, to some degree, prohibits only the surreptitious recording of another's words when spoken with a reasonable expectation of privacy. .... We conclude that the Legislature intended [the statute], [to] strictly to prohibit all secret recordings by members of the public, including recordings of police officers or other public officials interacting with members of the public, when made without their permission or knowledge. .... [W]e would render meaningless the Legislature's careful choice of words if we were to interpret `secretly' as encompassing only those situations where an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy.

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The Massachusetts eavesdropping statute, enacted in 1968, was the state's response to the Supreme Court's landmark 1967 rulings in two separate cases (Berger and Katz), in which the Warren court held for the first time that government wiretapping requires a warrant based on probable cause.  In other words, government wiretaps by the police and FBI "triggered" the law.  A brief review of the Massachusetts wiretapping statute reveals that roughly 90% of its provisions apply to police wiretapping.  That cops would use the same law to prevent citizens from recording official government activity, conducted in public, is both warped and seriously out of touch with the times, given that a plain reading of the statute and caselaw suggests that recording anyone's words on your cell phone on a busy street and posting the recording to YouTube is a felony.

So long as a wire, oral, or electronic communication--including the radio portion of any cordless telephone call--is not recorded for a criminal or tortious purpose, anyone who is a party to the communication, or who has the consent of a party, can lawfully record the communication and disclose its contents. Texas Penal Code § 16.02.

Interesting article in the globe about this issue.  Apparently there have been a lot of court cases about it, and the law in MA is a bit more specific, in that it states you cannot tape someone without their consent, unless it's obvious that you're taping them (not verbatum).  So the way the court cases have played out, is that if you're being obvious about it, you're probably ok, but if you're hiding the camera or mic, than that's illegal.

"Jeffrey Manzelli ... was convicted of illegal wiretapping and disorderly conduct for recording MBTA police at an antiwar rally on Boston Common in 2002. Though he said he had openly recorded the officer, his conviction was upheld in 2007 on the grounds that he had made the recording using a microphone hidden in the sleeve of his jacket."

Ugandan Gay Rights Activist Is Beaten to Death

A few months ago, a Ugandan newspaper ran an anti-gay diatribe with Mr. Kato's picture on the front page under a banner urging, "Hang Them."

On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Kato was beaten to death with a hammer