GREEN BAY, Wis. (WFRV) – A Brown County judge issued a temporary restraining order that will shut off the controversial audio recording devices at Green Bay city hall and prevent anybody from accessing any recording that comes from those devices until litigation concludes.
“I think that the biggest concern here is that private people who think they are having private conversations have the capacity to be heard by the government,” said Brown County judge Marc Hammer.
Attorneys representing the city of Green Bay say the audio recording equipment is there for safety reasons after a series of verbal altercations at city hall. They say the altercations happened between members of the public and city employees and in one case members of the public and a journalist.
Lawyers representing the Wisconsin State Senate argued that the audio recording equipment weren’t even in the spots where the verbal altercations occurred nullifying the argument they were put up for safety reasons.
The lawyers representing the city of Green Bay argued that unless you whisper you should expect that somebody can hear your conversation in a public building.
“We’re not talking about rooms in city hall, bathrooms we’re talking about two particular hallways, two very public hallways in a very public place,” said the lawyer representing the city of Green Bay.
The lawyer also mentioned that city leaders told all members of the city staff that the audio recording devices were getting installed. They argued
