The “Weaponing” of Social Media by Law Enforcement:  It is well established that a private citizen has a First Amendment right to videotape public officials, including, but not limited to, police officers while performing their duties in any public place.  (e.g., see Gericke v. Begin (1st Cir. 2014) 753 F.3rd 1; Glik v. Cunniffe (1st Cir. 2011) 655 F.3rd 78, 82-84.)  This is sometimes done at the scene of a public demonstration or protest as an intimidation tactic in an attempt to prevent officers from performing their duties, capitalizing on the officer’s knowledge that the resulting video will later be publicly posted on one or more of the available social media sites, one of the more popular being YouTube.  In response, a new tactic has been developed by some inventive law enforcement officers, not to prevent the recording of their actions, but rather to prevent the resulting videos from going viral.  When the protesters’ cellphone cameras come out, an officer might simply pull out his or her own cellphone, playing as loudly as possible any copyrighted music recording such as one by the popular recording artist Taylor Swift.  When a protester later attempts to post the video on a social media cite such as YouTube, with Taylor Swift’s melodious singing in the background, the video will predictably trigger YouTube’s automated content ID system as it picks up on Swift’s copyrighted music, and automatically trigger a block on the entire video.  If not actually blocked, use of a copyrighted record label will at the very least cause the social media cite to request that the video be removed.  Referred to by some as “weaponizing” YouTube’s copyright flagging system, such a tactic won’t prevent protesters or on-lookers from recording what the officers do, but will effectively prevent the resulting video from going viral.  Note, however, that there is no case law telling us whether the use of such a tactic itself implicates in some way a protester’s First Amendment rights.  And the California Legal Update is not advocating that you try it.  Just know that should you choose to use this tactic to prevent your public actions at the scene of a protest from going viral, you might well be making case law should you get sued.