FL, USA - Recording/Voyeurism Laws In Harassment Situation
<p>A good friend is being harassed by his neighbor, and is at the end of his wits trying to get some recourse. Essentially the neighbor is belligerent: comes out when family members are home specifically to verbally harass them, trashes the area around their house by blowing lawn debris or placing garbage around it, puts signs in his yard that points to their property to shame them, the list goes on. </p>

<p>They do not have property surveillance, so the attempt thus far has been to hide a cell phone with recording on when he comes out to harass them from his driveway, photo-document the trash/signs, etc. The police can't typically do anything in this dispute because a crime hasn't actually been committed, even with video evidence of verbal harassment.</p>

<p>Being said, in exasperation the friend has uploaded videos documenting the issue to a video-sharing site. I suspect there are Florida statutes that, regardless of reason, prohibit this manner of recording where the harasser is at home (a time/place which there is a reasonable expectation of privacy), does not know about the recording, and it has been disseminated online in a manner which would shame the harasser in the eyes of someone reasonable. </p>

<p>I'd like to think this is in violation of FL <a href="http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&amp;Search_String=&amp;URL=0800-0899/0810/Sections/0810.145.html" rel="nofollow">810.145</a> but the language there is almost specific for recording someone dressing or through their clothes. <strong>Am I correct in my thinking?</strong></p>

<p>As a side question, for such disputes, would the best course of action be to collect good audiovisual evidence and then file a harassment claim and just prove it in court?</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>FL 810.145 (c) - "Place and time when a person has a reasonable
  expectation of privacy"</p>
</blockquote>

<p>In Florida, there is no expectation of privacy in public. You can legally record both audio and visual anything you can see in public. </p>

<p>As for the harassment, set up security cams and record as much of it as possible in order to provide the Police with evidence of any potential crimes. </p>

united-states privacy harassment