Olympic Backpedaling
I called the congressman's office and asked them what the hell is up with the video. Basically, they explained that some constituents would go to town hall meetings and expound about their private lives in front of everybody and they didn't want people's private circumstances up on youtube.
They admit that their policy was a mistake, taking people's cameras, and say the congressman has been on an apology tour of sorts after what happened. Now the policy is that if a constituent has something they want to share that they don't want the public to know about, that the constituent should approach the staff in private and not talk about it in public at a public meeting.
Kind of a DUH moment if you ask me, but at least the guy realizes it was a mistake.
Honestly, I think this incident is indicative of a much bigger problem congress faces. My local congressman has several people on staff (yes, taxpayer funded staff) who do nothing but solve people's problems. Things like welfare applicants who got denied, people having problems with the city, etc. The problem isn't that people bring up things to their congressman, but that they're so uneducated to think their personal or local government problem is something they should expect their congressman to do something about!