Law enforcement officers are adapting to new technologies as more and more departments record interactions with civilians using body cameras and dashcams.

But what are your rights if you film a police encounter? We asked Elie Mystal, an editor at the legal news website Above the Law and managing editor of the site's Redline blog. Mystal is also editor-at-large of Breaking Media. 

See Also: How Policing Changes When Everyone's Filming

Here, he shares five things you need to know before whipping out your cell phone and video taping a police encounter. 

1. You Have a First Amendment Right to Record

First and foremost, understand that you do have a First Amendment right to videotape or photograph a police officer performing their duties in public. It's a Constitutional right, but the way states are going to implement that right is going to vary. But as a general rule, you do have a right to pull out your cell phone camera—especially if you ask nicely—and videotape a cop.

2. Can the Officer Delete Your Pics or Video? No.

The officer does *not* have a right to take or delete the pictures or videos on your cell phone. This would be an obstruction of justice and they'd be destroying evidence. They might do it, but there are a few that have have gotten into significant legal trouble for doing so.

3. You Cannot Break Laws While Filming

You may want to start recording or taking pictures, but keep this in mind: You can't break any other laws in the context of filming an officer (like trespassing on private property), and you certainly can't obstruct police activity while filming a police officer.

When an officer tries to make you stop recording or taking pictures, many will argue that you are obstructing their work and that you are violating other laws. But they may just be saying that to get you to stop—you have to understand what the laws are and make sure you're out of their way as you're filming them.

4.  Are You Violating Wiretapping Laws?

Some states try to get tricky with the audio portion of a video. The federal statutes aren't as concerned about video as they are about audio, and it's the federal wiretapping statutes that get a lot of people in trouble. The way these laws are applied again vary greatly state to state.

But in general, if you're in the Northeast, you're OK to record an officer as long as you do it openly, and as long as the officer knows that you're recording him—if you're doing it in secret things can get a little bit hairy. In other regions, states have laws that will vary depending on the consent statutes they have for wiretapping and eavesdropping.

5. Know When to Walk Away or Stop

If you are stopped, the first question you should ask is, "Am I free to go?" If you are, do so. If not, you are being detained and then you have all sorts of other rights. Mystal says this is the most important point. An officer's word in an actual stop is the law.

We like our rights, enjoy our First Amendment protections, but we also enjoy not being violated as well. If the officer orders you to do something, do not put yourself in danger. Fight it out in court as opposed to fighting it out with the officer on the street. "They are the law in a very real and visceral way when you get into these issues," Mystal says.

Mystal is actually worried about the proliferation of police body cameras, as he's written about at ATL Redline. 

Aside from the fact that catching a police officer on camera is no guarantee that their actions will prosecuted, there are two big civil liberty issues to worry about:

• Creating a public record of an entire stop can just as easily be used to smear an individual with otherwise inadmissible evidence, especially in the court of public opinion. And it has the potential to take a person's worst moment (say, drunk and disorderly in front of a cop) and create a Google-ruining footprint.

• The police can act based on "plain sight" rules, which allows an officer to seize and use evidence that is in plain view from a lawful position or during a legal search when the officer has probable cause to believe that the item is evidence of a crime. When that "plain sight" is augmented with technology, things can break down. For instance: A police body cam zooming into your car may see something even if the officer didn't have probable cause to search your vehicle in the first place.