Looks like this is finally going to be a thing. Obama is dumping some money into it.

It's interesting for a lot of reasons, but it's noteworthy that this is a technological solution, that's only enabled by recent technological advancements. There's also major issues around privacy of these things.

Yeah, they can protect the public and officers equally, but what happens when police departments start mining the camera footage? Why shouldn't they be allowed to catalog OCR and face recognition data from their own body cameras?

Combined with tech like this:
http://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/deepimagesent/

Just merely having cops walk around the street could allow a dispatcher to see a live text-based log of what's going on around the city. Before a cop even calls an incident in, it could show an alert on a map, that the computer has visually identified. And because all this data starts out in the computer, it would allow police to track crime hot spots without anyone doing any extra work, just by having the right software backend to the police cameras.

But would people be okay with this? Would this even be legal? in the past, TWW has not liked this kind of technology. I've often argued that if you could theoretically hire humans to do a job, it shouldn't be wrong for technology to fulfill this role. For example, you could hire thousands of humans to just sit on sidewalks and log reports of what they see, for a people at dispatch to keep an eye on what's going on. Or you could just use the data from the cameras, and have a computer handle the dirty work.

Pretty crazy world we live in...

12/1/2014 4:52:29 PM

Yes, there are massive privacy concerns, and yes, this information could be datamined in a million different ways.... but, I think we're so far past privacy being a thing anymore that the potential benefits outweigh the potential damage. It's damage that has already happened IMO. If Snowden and Manning proved anything it's that our government has been spying on us and collecting all of our data for a long time now.

I'm a huge privacy advocate, but the 4th amendment is dead and we've gone so far towards a surveillance state that there's no turning back now without a total reboot of the government. Best to utilize the surveillance to protect ourselves from the government and its agents at this point.

12/1/2014 4:57:31 PM

odds they're "broken" all the time?

12/1/2014 6:10:40 PM

this isnt going to change anything

cameras are racist and so are the people interpreting the data (statistics are racist)

12/1/2014 6:30:20 PM

http://gizmodo.com/why-body-cameras-arent-a-cure-all-for-police-violence-1663231540

12/1/2014 7:08:18 PM

Nope, they won't be a panacea for all that ails us, but coupled with some good legislation about records retention, public record access, and doing things like throwing out charges against non-police when video evidence is lost, destroyed, or not present would help.

Ultimately I think what's needed most is a cultural shift in the eyes of judges and juries. The default stance should not be that the officer's version is more credible than that of any other person.

12/1/2014 8:18:15 PM

Quote :

"There's also major issues around privacy of these things. "

Yep, that's why I don't get why so many liberal and libertarian-minded people are so gung-ho about police body cameras. I think the very last thing that we need is a dramatic increase in government cameras recording everything.

Quote :

"If Snowden and Manning proved anything it's that our government has been spying on us and collecting all of our data for a long time now."

I think the revelation is even less about what they have been doing, which I think that an educated observer could have probably surmised roughly, but that it can be put on public display for the masses, and most people don't even give a shit, let alone that half of those who do actually support it.

Quote :

"I'm a huge privacy advocate, but the 4th amendment is dead and we've gone so far towards a surveillance state that there's no turning back now without a total reboot of the government. "

Yep, 4th is in a vegetative state. 10th is dead, buried, and decomposing underground (which effectively also means the 9th). 1st is a mixed bag but more protected than infringed, 2nd is reasonably well protected (but under constant narrow escape from serious infringement). We seem to be not particularly concerned with the 5th with respect to asset forfeiture to the police.

12/1/2014 9:34:49 PM

Quote :

"I think the revelation is even less about what they have been doing, which I think that an educated observer could have probably surmised roughly, but that it can be put on public display for the masses, and most people don't even give a shit, let alone that half of those who do actually support it."

Yeah, that's how you know there's almost no point in advocating for privacy laws anymore. People not only now know that their own government has been spying on every facet of their communication for years now, but many either don't care or think it's fine if it helps us stay "safe" from "bad guys."

Fuck, look at the reaction to the boston marathon bombing. Most people were completely fine with locking down a whole city, allowing warrant-less door to door searches of any and every structure in a 20 block radius. Martial law and suspension of constitutional protection shouldn't be something that happens because of 3 deaths. I don't mean to sound callous, but that's terrifying evidence that we don't live in anything resembling a free society anymore.

Police wearing cameras are a minor worry given the potential positive benefits that could be provided by them (better behaved police and public, additional exculpatory evidence, etc.).

12/1/2014 9:49:28 PM

Quote :

"Just merely having cops walk around the street could allow a dispatcher to see a live text-based log of what's going on around the city."

Well then why the fuck are we bothering to pay these meatbags anyway? Just stick the cameras on these friendly job killers:



A computer can racially profile just as good as a human can. We already have cops riding segways, just remove the most expensive part of this - the cop. When there's a crime going on, the stickbots can call in backup from quadcopters with guns and pepper spray. For the stop and frisk programs, we'll just use radiation or something.

12/2/2014 12:08:12 PM

Definitely another part of solving the problem is reducing the overall size of the police force, and divert the resources to improved training for whoever's left. I mean, holy shit, my wife and I were on a walk the other day through a residential neighborhood on a golf course and saw 4 police cars, a fire truck, an ambulance and like 10 cops at the scene of what looked like a teenager smoking a joint while walking down the street. What the fuck.

12/2/2014 12:28:17 PM

^ well, we'll definitely have these things one day replacing police I believe:
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/20371/20141118/its-not-a-dalek-its-knightscopes-k5-robot-security-guard.htm

They're already taking the jobs of some rent-a-cops. I could see a future version of this device handling the patrol duties of some officers.

12/2/2014 12:28:56 PM

^

12/2/2014 2:05:37 PM

I'm in favor of body cameras because I think the privacy argument is a bit of a stretch. Whatever the camera sees is already being seen by the officer. Officers already have "face recognition." We're enhancing their abilities somewhat while enhancing their oversight by a lot more.

The "they could use it to undermine our privacy" argument doesn't hold much water with me. A lot of things could be used to undermine our privacy or mine data about us, and we don't care. A lot of things are used for those purposes, and we don't care -- I suspect even the most libertarian people on here have cell phones, customer loyalty cards, and amazon/ebay/google accounts. So we're obviously not that worked up about the concept of people using technology to record data about us.

I guess what I'm saying is, I don't see the big deal. Maybe someone could explain it to me, because I'm not sure how "facial recognition software" is all that different from wanted posters and people just recognizing your damn face.

12/4/2014 10:44:31 AM

I vaguely remember that this popular design that people have been talking about has a sliding piece of plastic that allows the officer to turn it off at will. That would rather obviously defeat the point. I would doubt that they'd ever be turned on in the areas of greatest tension.

12/4/2014 10:47:01 AM

if i'm a cop and i'm following the rules, i'd want a complete record of the encounter to cover my ass. also, they can make rules requiring the use of the camera and punish officers who don't use it. an officer in Albuquerque was just fired for not having the camera on during an encounter where they shot someone.

the privacy issues could be largely mitigated with some rules about record retention and use.

[Edited on December 4, 2014 at 10:49 AM. Reason : .]

12/4/2014 10:49:13 AM

It would be easier to make it like a car EDR, where it always keeps a cycling buffer of the last hour or something and then stores it permanently whenever a shot is fired... which is about the easiest event to detect, of like all possible events.

12/4/2014 11:23:20 AM

cars have a nice big 12v battery source, can you make a body-mounted camera last all day without recharging? i assumed that's why they turned off.

12/4/2014 11:27:08 AM

Quote :

"Whatever the camera sees is already being seen by the officer. Officers already have "face recognition." "

Really? Come on, you don't see the difference between someone seeing something and an electronic recording being taken that can be preserved perfectly, stored indefinitely, and processed, even synergistically with other data?

Quote :

"the privacy issues could be largely mitigated with some rules about record retention and use. "

Right, that's an easy solution, if they'd just make those rules and follow them.

As a side note, when I was in the USMC and flying in attack jets, we would load our LITENING targeting pod occasionally and go out to train with it. It was no big deal when we used it in Iraq or Afghanistan; we kept all that shit and turned it in to intel, but when we trained with it stateside, there was some legal requirement to erase the footage when we were done. I don't recall the details or specifically what law dictated it. It's just kinda funny to me in light of how much more extensive and detailed observation/recording goes on that ISN'T deleted. I guess the distinction is that we could have been construed as domestic use of the military, and were more restricted than civil agencies doing the same things and more.

12/5/2014 1:11:54 PM

Quote :

"It would be easier to make it like a car EDR, where it always keeps a cycling buffer of the last hour or something and then stores it permanently whenever a shot is fired... which is about the easiest event to detect, of like all possible events."

They could also tie it to the radio and have dispatch responsible for triggering the saving of the recording, or make it an automated process for whatever they're typing into their computers (assuming they're using computers).

There's a ton of good solutions to protecting the privacy of both the police and the civilians.

The device in use by a dept in California is tied to the holster, if the gun is unholstered, the recording starts (this isn't a good solution to me though just because it's no just non-lethal encounters that need to be captured).

[Edited on December 5, 2014 at 2:06 PM. Reason : ]

12/5/2014 2:05:50 PM

Quote :

"cars have a nice big 12v battery source, can you make a body-mounted camera last all day without recharging? i assumed that's why they turned off."

My understanding is that the cameras we're talking about are like $100-200 units. I don't think cops have ever worn a piece of equipment cheaper than this. The baton probably costs more. But by the time the contract for the $100 camera is drafted it'll be $500. I don't doubt that.

GoPro runs for 2.5 hours supposedly. But you can be darn sure you can record more if you're not trying for 1080p or something. Cops clearly have a longer day than this, and any camera that requires action in the middle of their beat is a failed tool from the outset IMO.

Even if I wasn't convinced that any encounter the public needs video for wouldn't be recorded, applying a standard that cops turn the camera on before every encounter would be unreasonable.

The most reasonable course of action would be a continuously updating buffer that has to be turned in whenever someone is arrested. Camera is stopped and a computer automatically stores it in the database with no human action other than connecting the plug. For this you'll need batteries that last the entire day.

I think that can be done technologically.

12/5/2014 3:17:18 PM

what if these cameras prove something we dont want proved

hypothetical: black people are more often than not up to no good

DISCLAIMER: I DONT BELIEVE THIS TO BE TRUE

im just making sure you guys know that as this data becomes available it might be used in ways you dont expect. imagine the headline on drudge for example:

COP CAMS PROVE ALL WHITES INNOCENT

etc.

12/5/2014 3:36:38 PM

What if they show a man getting choked to death, and the grand jury does nothing about it.

12/5/2014 5:08:59 PM

be careful !

thats the kind of talk that some number cruncher will use in a cost benefit analysis to prevent these things from being implemented.

12/5/2014 6:05:50 PM

That's a massive systemic issue that a lot of us have been howling about for literally years now. Way before Ferguson, way before Eric Garner, way before the DC metro shooting, and so on.

Prosecutors who rely heavily upon and have an entirely too close relationship with police officers should not be the ones presenting to the grand jury when there is a question of police misconduct or questionable use of force. They are incapable of being honest with the evidence because they NEED a friendly relationship with the police and cannot afford to have an adversarial relationship with them. That's why you need an independent branch who only deal with cops.

It's not that grand juries love cops so much more than all of us (though the average american does have an unhealthy level of respect and deference towards authority), it's that they only get he information that the person seeking the indictment gives them. If they don't want an indictment returned they just don't truly pursue one and put on a sham showing to the grand jury.

12/5/2014 6:32:36 PM

what if these cams show y0willy0 sucking a giant fat veiny dick

DISCLAIMER: I'M LITERALLY SAYING THAT THEY WOULD

[Edited on December 5, 2014 at 7:44 PM. Reason : because statistics ]

12/5/2014 7:44:21 PM

Whenever your Tourette's acts up you should confine yourself to Chit Chat.

I haven't provoked your stupid troll ass in a long time.

12/5/2014 8:42:36 PM

Quote :

"Come on, you don't see the difference between someone seeing something and an electronic recording being taken that can be preserved perfectly, stored indefinitely, and processed, even synergistically with other data?"

Not a meaningful one, no. If a guy with eidetic memory wanted to be a cop, we wouldn't tell him, "No, your memory will perfectly preserve peoples' faces."

Stored "indefinitely?" Anything longer than a human lifetime is pretty much irrelevant, because invading the privacy of the dead is considered scholarly research. And it turns out that "a human lifetime" is about as long as a human cop can remember things.

Processed? Synergistically with other data? What horror. You've basically just described how the human brain works.

If you're in a position where a cop is looking at you, the privacy is already gone. The body camera has nothing to do with that. The traits you are ascribing to a hypothetical body camera program -- very much hypothetical, since no police force has the resources to store and process all of the footage generated by all of their officers at all times -- are not fundamentally different from what police officers themselves are capable. They just enhance those abilities.

Or let's think about it another way. If we developed a pill tomorrow that made everyone's brain work better -- improved their memory and their ability to process information -- would you be opposed to people taking this pill on privacy grounds?

12/5/2014 10:35:22 PM

yay, more ways for big brother to keep track of you!

12/5/2014 10:55:03 PM

Quote :

"That's a massive systemic issue that a lot of us have been howling about for literally years now. Way before Ferguson, way before Eric Garner, way before the DC metro shooting, and so on. Prosecutors who rely heavily upon and have an entirely too close relationship with police officers should not be the ones presenting to the grand jury when there is a question of police misconduct or questionable use of force. They are incapable of being honest with the evidence because they NEED a friendly relationship with the police and cannot afford to have an adversarial relationship with them. That's why you need an independent branch who only deal with cops. It's not that grand juries love cops so much more than all of us (though the average american does have an unhealthy level of respect and deference towards authority), it's that they only get he information that the person seeking the indictment gives them. If they don't want an indictment returned they just don't truly pursue one and put on a sham showing to the grand jury."

Pretty much this. Body cameras are only treating the symptoms, and not all that well, as the Eric Garner case makes abundantly clear. I think I could probably summarize this a little better: Instead of giving the cops more tools that they can use to fuck us on a regular basis, let's get them to stop fucking us on a regular basis.

^^ I guess I have a problem with this on a couple grounds. First, you take up the idea that because we wouldn't reject a hypothetical cop with a perfect, never-degrading memory (which isn't eidetic, but roll with it) from the police force, that we should then treat all existing cops as having perfect, never-degrading memories. That's a bit silly. Our acceptance that cops can "see and process" is partially based on their humanness, the fact that they do process the information they receive from sensory input and filter much of it out and discard it. We are perfectly happy to have a person rolling around, processing data, operating on hunches, when he is doing so in an active manner, and not passively scanning for any and all possible signs of even the slightest shady thing, and doing so for days, even weeks after the fact.

Then, comparing a human's capacity to connect different data sources actively while walking around is entirely different than a massive data-mining operation that is utilizing multiple data sources consisting of the most mundane details, the likes of even the smallest of which a single human would be entirely incapable of containing or comprehending. It's even more different when you comprehend that the processing might be done after the fact, simply looking for the smallest detail to nail a random passersby who happened to be unlucky enough to be filmed by a cop that day. Yes, we see an enhancement, but the enhancement is so far beyond the capabilities of a human (and beyond likely what the capability ever could be), that it puts it in an entirely different ballpark than a simple bag of meat and calcium roaming the streets.

12/6/2014 1:09:20 AM

Whatever extrapolation I'm making with my hypothetical cop is not inherently sillier than going from the idea that a police force hypothetically could, with enormous resources and unlikely political backing, use body cameras for a vast data mining program that would passively scan for "signs of even the slightest shady thing...for days, even weeks after the fact."

Quote :

"Yes, we see an enhancement, but the enhancement is so far beyond the capabilities of a human (and beyond likely what the capability ever could be), that it puts it in an entirely different ballpark than a simple bag of meat and calcium roaming the streets."

For now. At this point it seems inevitable that wearable and implanted technology will become a bigger part of our lives. Google Glass hasn't been the massively popular thing some people predicted, but it's unlikely to be the last wearable consumer device that can inconspicuously film things. It strikes me as absurd that we should expect the police to remain in the past while everything else advances. And part of my point is that this has already happened. We gripe a little bit about the vast amount of data mining that already happens -- has been happening since before we knew the term "data mining" -- but we don't seriously suggest doing anything to stop it. Buying shit online is too convenient. Credit scores are too necessary. Customer rewards programs are too rewarding. All this, we pretty much accept. But here we have this thing which, by its very existence, increases police accountability, and we flip out because of the possibility that it could conceivably be used to do something kinda bad with the goal of supporting the public good.

12/6/2014 1:34:03 AM

I have a huge problem with Obama dumping money into this when part of the problem is police departments having too much money aready. They need to be using their own weapons budgets to pay or this. At the same time, Obama should be dumping money into communities, but rather further militerize police.

12/6/2014 1:41:38 AM

wait... you consider body cameras as militarization of the police?

12/6/2014 11:31:32 AM

^^ The thing is, I don't think there are many people who say "let's keep the police stuck in the past." It's more that people see that these new tools have serious privacy implications, and they want the government to have restrictions in place on their use. Not only that, but, as the Eric Garner case points out, if the police still won't be held accountable for their actions, then why give them new tools to use to continue trampling on our rights, along with a blank check to use them? It's basically the worst of both worlds.

And my extrapolation to the massive data-mining isn't absurd, as the government is already doing it, albeit in the guise of protecting against terrorism. It's just a hop, skip, and a jump to applying it for other purposes. Moreover, when police departments learn they can supplement their county's budgets by mining this footage, you better believe they will do it. They already do it for local school districts in small towns by setting up absurd speed traps and enforcement regimes, and this is AFTER we passed laws to keep police departments from subsidizing their own budgets via such schemes.

And I don't buy the red herring of "you gave Google this info, so why not the police?" 1) I may willingly give my info to Google or Apple or whoever, and maybe that's stupid, but I still willingly gave it. That's wholly different than having the government take the information without your permission and then mine it to see what you did wrong. 2) More importantly, Google isn't going to throw me in jail or try to find some crime I committed. They just want to make some more money off of me. Put a little differently, Google is a private entity, and it doesn't have the force of law (and law enforcement) behind it in order to utterly wreck the rest of my life and/or throw me in prison.

Sure, we've abrogated our responsibility as citizens to reject government intrusions into our privacy, but that doesn't mean we should completely ignore new and obvious threats to it.

12/6/2014 2:16:37 PM

Quote :

"Fuck, look at the reaction to the boston marathon bombing. Most people were completely fine with locking down a whole city, allowing warrant-less door to door searches of any and every structure in a 20 block radius. Martial law and suspension of constitutional protection shouldn't be something that happens because of 3 deaths. I don't mean to sound callous, but that's terrifying evidence that we don't live in anything resembling a free society anymore."

I agree with this 100%. It's scary how effortlessly people complied with those government actions. It's the reason why the bill of rights is so goddamn hard to defend. One little scare and the public hands over all their rights.





In regards to police cameras. I think it will likely happen. But yeah, it's a huge privacy concern (and I'm a huge 4th amendment kinda liberal). But the evidence currently shows that merely having a cop wear a camera reduces the amount of complaints by the public toward the police department (some county in California started doing that and saw a ridiculous reduction -- like 80%).

The concern becomes when it is the norm, and things like the Eric Garner case (which was videotaped) STILL don't pass muster in a grand jury. But that could be resolved by having a separate prosecutor (federal?) who doesn't require a cozy relationship with the police in order to do his job.

I think some legislation needs to accompany this. Something like an addition to Miranda rights. If a person is detained or questioned by a police officer, he or she should have immediate access to the video tape that they can use in part of their defense, and a failure to be given this video evidence should be enough to throw a case out (much like how not being read your miranda rights worked). Likewise, the video evidence needs to be destroyed for privacy concerns if there is no arrest.

legislation and culture have massively swung in the favor of police, and it desperately needs to swing back in toward the direction of the public.



[Edited on December 6, 2014 at 3:14 PM. Reason : ]

12/6/2014 2:57:38 PM

Quote :

" It's more that people see that these new tools have serious privacy implications, and they want the government to have restrictions in place on their use."

Well if this is all it is then we're on the same page. I took it as a given that there would be restrictions on their use. I think we're all in favor of limits here, because our goal with body cameras isn't a massive upgrade in national security, it's to a) increase police accountability, b) improve relations between the police and the population, and c) potentially help catch people that kill cops. I'm certainly not in favor of a blank check. Although that should have gone without saying. Who ever wants to give anybody a blank check to do anything?

As far as Eric Garner, no, film of police actions isn't a magic bullet, but it is something that helps on a number of fronts. We shouldn't throw out solutions because they fall short of perfection.

I stand by the google comparison. We give our information to these organizations, and continue to do it even when we find out that they are cooperating with the government to varying extents. We mumble complaints when they sell our information to other groups. We seem completely unconcerned with the vast amount of information on us that credit rating agencies compile. Compared to these things -- really, compared to the vast number of cameras already operating in every public space in America, from cell phones to security cameras and everything else -- body cameras are a drop in the bucket.

Of course, we shouldn't just let things slide because they are small. But in this case I think the good outweighs the bad -- especially if they come with some simple regulations on their use.

From what little I've heard about police and departments on this issue, they don't love the body camera idea. If they don't want them, that says a lot to me, primarily that this is the first idea in a while that is designed and sincerely intended to protect us from the police rather than give police power over us.

12/7/2014 1:42:17 AM