WASHINGTON – On Thursday, nine leading free speech and digital rights groups called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to focus attention on the alarming number of arrests of people documenting Occupy protests. Free Press has chronicled more than 70 such arrests since September.

In a letter delivered to Holder yesterday, World Press Freedom Day, Free Press, along with Access, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the National Press Photographers Association, the New America Foundation, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Reporters Without Borders and Witness noted that U.S. police have arrested dozens of journalists, activists and bystanders attempting to document protests in public spaces.

In January, the Justice Department filed a statement urging the U.S. District Court of Maryland to uphold an individual’s “First Amendment right to record police officers in the public discharge of their duties” and to find that “officers violate citizens’ Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights when they seize and destroy such recordings without warrant or due process.”

Here is the full text of the letter sent to the Justice Department.

According to Josh Stearns, Free Press's Journalism and Public Media campaign director, “The right to record is vital at a time when so many people who witness public protests are carrying networked, camera-ready devices and smartphones. As the media landscape changes, we are witnessing an escalation in First Amendment abuses on the streets and in the halls of power. Freedom of the press is more important, not less, when anyone with a mobile phone or computer can act as a journalist.

“The First Amendment guarantees both freedom of the press and freedom of expression, and those freedoms extend to everyone documenting public events. That's true even if — or perhaps, especially if — law enforcement finds such reporting to be a nuisance. Now, more than ever, we need to proactively protect people’s right to record.”