"First Amendment auditing" is a practice done by many people, most often in the United States (and to lesser extent in some other countries), where they simply go to public places or public governmental buildings with a camera to see if their First Amendment right to film in public is respected by officials, police officers, governmental workers, security guards and citizens in general.
As you might guess, First Amendment auditors come in all sizes and shapes, and I'm not here referring to physical appearance, but to tactics, behavior and personality.
1) The absolutely best kind of auditor: The one who is always polite and respectful, knows all the relevant laws and statutes and always stays strictly within them, never bothers anybody, never even engages anybody unprompted, never does anything to deliberately or even indirectly provoke anybody, never even speaks to anybody unless spoken to.
When engaged by other people, he responds politely and with professionalism, is never rude, never insults or provokes anybody, and is always willing to have a polite conversation if the other person is being polite as well. However, he is usually not a complete doormat and is willing to defend his own rights (as long as he is staying within the law), which is the entire point of the activity: To exercise one's constitutional rights and to defend it if challenged, explaining to the other person that everybody has these rights and they cannot be removed nor restricted at a whim.
That being said, and as mentioned, he always stays within the law when doing so: He does not enter restricted access areas, he does not trespass, he does not enter private property without permission, and even if he happens to be in private property he obeys trespasses (ie. demands to leave). Moreover, the best auditors research in advance the site that they are going to visit to make sure to stay strictly in public property and never enter the limits of private property nor restricted areas.
The most experienced auditors are not afraid of being arrested (which most of the time happens unlawfully) and are willing to fight in court, and always have their lawyers ready (and usually even consult their lawyers when it comes to the legality of what they are doing.) They are willing to take the risk, and even the risk of being convicted by corrupt judges in order to expose their corruption. (This very rarely happens, but there are examples.)
However, when cops do know the relevant laws and respect the auditor's rights, the auditor makes sure to praise them for it and for upholding their oath to respect the Constitution. These auditors are not seeking for confrontation, they are checking if their rights are respected by authorities, and when they do, they respond accordingly.
2) The rude auditor: Like the first type, these usually stay within the confines of the law, but unlike them, they are often very rude, confrontational and sometimes even verbally aggressive (which in itself starts skirting the confines of the law, as deliberate provocation can be illegal.)
The level of rudeness varies, but in the worst cases they throw insults and derogatory and provocative language to people often for no good reason. Even when cops fully respect their rights, act completely professionally and appropriately, and don't even do so much as ask for ID, these rude auditors may still throw mockery and insults at them, for no reason whatsoever.
While not always, this kind of auditor often initiates engagement with eg. government workers, ie. directly going to them and talking to them, pretty much seeking for a reaction and for confrontation.
Needless to say, I don't like this type of auditor at all, nor watch any of their videos. They are just disgusting.
3) The smug self-aggrandizing auditor: This is the type of auditor who thinks a lot of himself and often boasts about his own abilities and credentials (often completely made-up). This is the kind of auditor who proudly boasts and proclaims to government officials how he is, for example, "a constitutional scholar" or how he "knows the law", or sometimes even going so far as outright claim being a lawyer (without actually being one). Quite often he also boasts to cops in a smug tone how he is going to sue them and make them lose their jobs.
Quite ironically, this kind of auditor is often completely wrong about the law (and may even sometimes delve into sovcit territory, parroting some of their talking points.)
Needless to say, this type of auditor is often also of the second type above to one degree or another, in which case he is even worse than those.
Also needless to say, I absolutely do not watch their videos. They are doubly disgusting.
4) The "wannabe auditor": These are people who have seen First Amendment auditing videos and are eager to engage in the activity themselves, but who have not done any research nor studied the relevant laws and statutes, and are often completely inexperienced and think that they can do pretty much what they want, with no understanding of how the entire thing works, or even what is and isn't legal.
They are often way too confident in their ignorance, and will genuinely break the law when doing their videos by eg. trespassing in private property (refusing to leave when demanded to do so), entering restricted areas, and so on and so forth.
Fortunately, this kind of auditor usually doesn't last for long (often just uploading a half dozen videos at most, before quitting), so they are relatively rare.
5) The fraudulent "auditor": Fortunately these are extremely rare, but there have been concrete examples of this. This is the kind of person who outright fabricates and fakes encounters with the police by, usually, calling the cops on themselves, just for content (obviously without revealing to his viewers that it was he himself who called the cops.) They may also fake other kinds of encounters eg. with friends or acquaintances, by having them act for the camera to create a completely fabricated encounter with an alleged "random member of the public."
When they falsely call the cops on themselves, they are actually committing a crime, so they are outright criminals.
Needless to say, this is the absolutely worst kind, and it's fortunate that they usually last even less time than the "wannabe auditor" type.
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