Should recording a cop in a public place be illegal?

You'd think that recording what a police officer says in a public setting would be fair game, but in some places it isn't:

Drew is a free-speech advocate; his State Street appearance was part of an ongoing protest against a Chicago law restricting where artists can sell their wares. A Chicago police officer noticed Drew in the off-limits area, and told him to move along.

Drew was hoping to get arrested to test the city's law; he got his wish. Prosecutors charged him with two misdemeanors. He was not expecting what came next. After police found a small recording device in his belongings, Drew was charged with a felony for violating the Illinois eavesdropping law, which requires all involved to consent to any audio recording

Full article at NPR

Total Recall for Police Officers

Police in San Jose are testing head-mounted cameras. Meanwhile Vievu is making a chest-worn "video camera for cops." Evidence.com wants to be the storage system for cops:

EVIDENCE.COM™ is a full featured system designed around easy-to-use dashboards that turn geospatial multi-media evidence, such as GPS tagged video, into visual dashboards and tactical maps with full click-through to underlying video data

For soldiers and cops, video may be the first thing to start capturing. For the rest of us, it is probably the last, with things like health data, personal correspondence, and vacation photos being near the head of the list.