NRA Security has implemented some security theater outside the Board Meeting, so we are unable to bring you the stats for this year live, but we’ll get close. NRA has traditionally not allowed recording devices in meetings, but it was never really enforced. This year you have to check your cell phones at the door. Oddly enough, they aren’t using the obvious measure of checking NRA membership cards. What’s wildly ironic about all this is that the person who has the recording device with an intent to cause embarrassment (which is itself kinda funny, given how dry Board meetings are) isn’t going to obey the “no recording devices allowed” sign, and it’s not like they are checking beyond asking. I’m just a big believer in, if you’re going to do security, do real security,or don’t bother with it. I’d feel sorry for any operative who had to sit through the whole thing anyway, just like I felt bad for the guy ThinkProgress sent to record the legal seminar. I doubt he could follow anything, and he sure as hell didn’t get anything juicy. But nonetheless I’m still flummoxed over the irony of a cell phone free zone. Or maybe I should call it a lefty-operative empowerment zone.
More to come when we have it.
Asking the question means they don’t have permission to record. taking the active step of trying to prevent recording devices means that in the event recordings occur and those recordings are put into the public space, the person who took the recording runs afoul of copyright and maybe state criminal law.
Texas is a one-party state, but generally most one-party states have exceptions for circumstances where one of the parties explicitly says, “I do not consent to being recorded” when in private locations that are not open to the public. So absent a clear statement that the recording cannot be made, they could do it. A cursory glance at Texas court cases suggests that there is value there.
But even easier, if the meeting is closed and no allowance for recording or public access is made, then the NRA could easily stop any news outlet from airing the material using copyright law. Same goes for DMCA takedowns on the web.
Basically, unless you create an “expectation of privacy”, then you have none. So NRA doesn’t need to frisk the people in the room, they just need to create the “expectation” that what goes on stays private.
Or something.
Have they announced who was elected as the 76th Director?
“Oddly enough, they aren’t using the obvious measure of checking NRA membership cards.”
I suppose they should do that too, but wouldn’t someone hell-bent on espionage go to the trouble of taking out a membership?
This isn’t like the Old Days, when we had to get an Officer of The State — or at least, an NRA Life Member — to attest to our good character (not to mention, our identity) before we could become NRA members.
I remember those days. I got a neighbor who was a NC State Representative to sign mine. He was also a Democrat and former School Superintendent.
“I felt bad for the guy ThinkProgress sent to record the legal seminar. I doubt he could follow anything, and he sure as hell didn’t get anything juicy.”
I made my daily tour of left-leaning websites this morning and this typifies about the worst that I found.
“The Houston Police Department may not have all the answers about [airport shooter] Moore’s motivations, but that didn’t stop former Fox News showman, talk radio host and gold bullion enthusiast Glenn Beck from connecting the dots for the rest of us. . . that the shooting was “too much to believe,” and might have been a “set up” designed to turn the public away from gun owners and toward gun control. His reasoning? The shooting took place as members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) were gathering in Houston for the group’s annual convention.”
Other than that little bit of paranoia, they seemed not to have found anything they could sink their teeth into.