UK Police Now Double As CCTV Cameras

First time accepted submitter Voxol writes "From the international capital of CCTV cameras now comes the latest innovation: always-on police-mounted night-vision capable cameras. 'I can't imagine that there is any downside to having such an invaluable piece of kit like this on hand' say police."

Comments

Oops - wire must have come loose.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was really hoping that this incident of police brutality was caught on video so as to prove my innocence, but unfortunately we've run into a hardware problem.

Re:Oops - wire must have come loose.

[Samantha Wright]

It's still a step in the right direction—it's no longer the police's word vs. the suspect's, but "the police officer says he was having convenient technical difficulties at the same time his account of the incident is in conflict with the suspect's." It looks worse in court, since police will be more than happy to produce video when they are innocent. This is much better than no camera at all.

Re:Oops - wire must have come loose.

[Urkki]

I was really hoping that this incident of police brutality was caught on video so as to prove my innocence, but unfortunately we've run into a hardware problem.

First step is having cameras. If there is a high rate of tampered cameras, next step will be more tamper proof cameras. Also, same officer always having camera malfunctions sounds like something many officers would want to avoid, for fear of internal investigation. If there's any chance of catching hell for being a bad cop, it will have a chilling effect.

Re:Oops - wire must have come loose.

[AmiMoJo]

The problem is that there is no damage to the police's case in court if they claim to have a legitimate reason why the video is not available. On the other hand if you fail to mention something you later rely on in court or if you forget your password it is evidence that you are lying and will be used against you.

Re:Oops - wire must have come loose.

[Imrik]

How about a data retention policy to delete any video not flagged as evidence. Make sure the retention time is less than it would take for a citizen to file the legal paperwork against an officer that would get it flagged.

Re:Oops - wire must have come loose.

[Samantha Wright]

I think it still leaves room for doubt, doubt that previously was much harder to place. If we assume the police are deliberately using (for example) scheduled maintenance windows to commit brutality, and the suspect is not aware the camera is disabled, then due to Bayesian reasoning we can say with certainty that the officer is more likely to be lying even when there's a legitimate technical failure. (Although we have no way of knowing how much more likely without a lot of data that has not yet been made and, anyway, wouldn't be obtainable.)

• 1. Cop knows the camera is working + suspect expects the camera to be working -> brutality claims easily proven/disproven, both parties have a disincentive to claim brutality occurred
• 2. Cop knows the camera isn't working + suspect expects the camera to be working -> brutality can't easily be proven, cop knows there won't be any evidence
• 3. Cop doesn't know the camera isn't working -> as #1

Obviously there are other factors at work like judgement of character, but the mere fact that the officer would be more confident in being able to get away with brutality should make even legitimate reasons cause a heightened suspicion.

Re:Oops - wire must have come loose.

[JaredOfEuropa]

I'd be happier if it were touted (and designed!) as such: a tool to protect the public as well as aid the police. The camera itself might still fail to work (intentionally perhaps), but if it does work, the video should be uploaded to secure storage immediately and treated as evidence, i.e. the coppers shouldn't be able to conveniently "lose" the footage.

Re:Oops - wire must have come loose.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which would lead one to wonder, are there really fewer assaults on officers, or is the BS charge of assaulting an officer no longer an option for dealing with "contempt of cop".

Re:Oops - wire must have come loose.

[rabbitfood]

I'm not sure about that. Judging by Hillsborough, De Menezes and Tomlinson, the courts never confuse suspicion with evidence, and are happy to accept almost any account, provided enough police officers deliver an identical version of it (even down to the punctuation, which just shows how well they're trained). Where the absence of video is concerned, the simultaneous and comprehensive failure of CCTV cameras in a given radius (which may, in London, be a few dozen) has become so commonplace in cases where police misconduct is alleged that it's hardly grounds for suspicion.

In any case, the courts rarely get involved until years later, if at all. In England and Wales, we have an Independent Police Complaints Commission, which deals with all such cases, and which is firmly on the side of justice. Where upsetting incidents occur, the IPCC's job is to issue a press release, an hour or so before any complaint, setting out the results of their inquiry. If an investigation is, despite that, still needed, they usually outsource it to the police force in question, who are better placed to know exactly what they want to have happened. This not only produces quicker results, but insures against the further waste of public money in the courts. It is a system that, bar a few high-profile cases pursued by especially persistent mobs of bereaved troublemakers, has served them all very well for many years.

Re:Oops - wire must have come loose.

[MalachiK]

It's still a step in the right direction—it's no longer the police's word vs. the suspect's, but "the police officer says he was having convenient technical difficulties at the same time his account of the incident is in conflict with the suspect's." It looks worse in court, since police will be more than happy to produce video when they are innocent. This is much better than no camera at all.

Not good enough. Look at the conveniently broken recording hardware that was watching while the Metropolitan Police executed Charles de Menezes on the London Underground. The evidence disappeared and was barely mentioned in subsequent press reports. Unfortunately it is the case that state owned surveillance technology is used almost exclusively to prosecute citizens and rarely as a check on the police.

Re:Oops - wire must have come loose.

[Richy_T]

Except, of course, that the cop is supposed to be acting not only in his own self interest.

Re:Oops - wire must have come loose.

[Frontier Owner]

one cop with one camera this may be true.

20 cops with 20 cameras, then you've got an argument against the department if 20 cameras fail.

You should atleast get audio from others along with video from other cops involved in beating your ass.

Re:Oops - wire must have come loose.

[Samantha Wright]

Actually this is a perfect example of how claims of unavailable evidence can help convict police. London Underground reported that the cameras were definitely functional, thereby helping to expose the cover-up. If there had been no CCTV cameras in the station, it's probable the final charges wouldn't have been as high as they were.

Re:Oops - wire must have come loose.

[Samantha Wright]

In the De Menezes case, the police claims were challenged by Underground staff. Perhaps they'll still get away with quite a lot of misconduct, but every lie they have to construct to do so increases the chance that they will be seen through.

But... But...

[Greyfox]

How are you supposed to bludgeon suspects mercilessly?

Ah, they have to download them onto a computer! Sadly the victim's resisting arrest appears to have badly damaged the camera. We were unable to recover any video from it. NOW I don't see any down sides!

Meanwhile In Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

All russian police cars got equipped with cameras.

Aimed inwards.

(At least there is an insight in, and admission of police corruption there)

I believe all police activity should be filmed

[BenJCarter]

To cut down on the "he said she said" and reduce the ability of police to lie. Pictures or it didn't happen. Or at least their testimony is more open to reasonable doubt.

Re:I believe all police activity should be filmed

[thegarbz]

To cut down on the "he said she said" and reduce the ability of police to lie. Pictures or it didn't happen. Or at least their testimony is more open to reasonable doubt.

Quite frankly I'm beginning to find the hate directed at police quite disappointing. I mean sure we hear about once or twice a month of a case of police brutality, but then there's 12000 police officers in the UK. Are you surprised that the occasional incident goes bad?

I think police should be filmed too. The last local case of police brutality was caught on film and run in the news which showed two officers run up to and beat down on some teenager.
More footage of the same event was released a few days later showed three officers, one of which was knocked unconscious when hit with a brick that was thrown by the teenager in question.

Re:I believe all police activity should be filmed

[ConfusedVorlon]

the shocking thing isn't so much that there are incidents where things go bad. As you say, there are lots of police, and lots of incidents - there will be some where things go wrong. The shocking thing is that there is almost never any consequence for the brutal officers.

Instead, the whole thing gets brushed under the carpet - sending a clear message to other officers that they are free to abuse their power without consequence. I have personally experienced officers casually lying in their statements to cover up a fairly minor offence by one of their own against me. Whilst most officers probably don't indulge in gratuitous brutality; It seems that most officers will not step in to stop it, or report it when they see it.

If the occasional 'bad act' resulted in all the officer's colleagues roundly condemning the actions and the discipline system enforcing significant punishment then I would start to believe that these were acts which did not represent the body of police as a whole.

Regarding the teenager incident you mention - this is actually a great case. Even if an office has been hit and knocked unconscious by a brick - the job of the arresting officers is to capture the teenager with a minimum of force and allow the legal system to administer justice. That's their job. However understandable their desire to give the kid a beating - it is not acceptable. They have a great deal of power and need to show restraint even (especially) when provoked.

Probably won't prevent police brutality

[Nyder]

Police wear the cameras on the front of their stab vests and after attending an incident download the footage captured onto a computer where if needs be it can be transferred onto a DVD to be presented as evidence in court.

Seems that since it's all in the police hands, they can make it disappear pretty quick also. So unless they have no way of tampering/deleting the video in the camera, my guess is they will just delete what makes them look bad.

EASY steps

[Anonymous Coward]

This is worth repeating, there are easy steps to reducing surveillance of your personal life:

I've moved my stuff off Google,Hotmail and Yahoo. I never used Facebook or the others on the list. You should too. It's the simplest easiest way of removing PRISM rights from the NSA.

To take yourself off the phone graph, use multiple prepay phones (not just cards), use one for home/private use one for work/business use one for girlfriend etc. Don't mix them up and don't use them repeatedly in the same location. Leave each phone is a single location is the easiest method of breaking the location test. Have a dodgy friend whose always spouting anger at [anything]? Best avoid talking too much to him on the phone.

The Internet surveillance is far more problematic. Watch what you say online, what for words that can be used against you. Be aware of people who try to take language to the extreme, they're no different than agent-provocateurs planting drugs on protestors. By adding extreme comments to this forum, they gave the NSA the right to dig into every Slashdot users mail as a potential terrorist. Be aware of that game and avoid joining in.

Re:EASY steps

[Chas]

Sorry, I'm more selective with my bed partners.

Re:EASY steps

[Rubinhood]

"I've moved my stuff off Google,Hotmail and Yahoo....
...use multiple prepay phones
...Watch what you say online"

It looks like NSA has already backed you into a corner. Doesn't your story prove that they have too much unwarranted power and should be dealt with, instead of everyone just quietly letting them get away with such atrocious invasion of privacy?

Re:EASY steps

[ledow]

1) Those steps aren't "easy". They involve conscious, thoughtful decisions at every point in your life and no mistakes.
2) That doesn't stop you appearing - in fact, it makes you more suspicious and thus worth investigating. Absence of data is a data point in itself - any old spy movie would tell you that. The guy who exists but has no records, no data, no phone? Yeah, we'll look into him first.
3) You're paranoid if you ACTUALLY do that.
4) As someone whose just trawled their Slashdot history going back years while looking for a particular post I made, I can tell you that I've crowed on these forums multiple times about everything from Guantanamo Bay, the government treatment of Alan Turing, the fact that I have an interest in cryptography, the stupidity of people who can't work out to encrypt data properly, even "potential terrorist scenarios" (i.e. if terrorists are so bright, why did they do X, leave trail Y, or not do Z?).

If the above targets me for interest, then I would be in deep, deep trouble already. Maybe I have been flagged already. Who cares? The fact is that I'm not doing anything that any random, thoughtful person isn't doing anyway - and I have zero intention of causing harm. And it's basically my country's intelligence services job TO FIND THINGS EXACTLY LIKE THAT, but most importantly to SORT THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF.

I once considered applying for jobs with MI5 and GCHQ. I'm a maths and computer science graduate, with an interest in cryptography, and they were advertising positions for exactly that. It seemed like an avenue worth looking into.

I didn't, mainly because 1) I disagree with militarisation of anything I do (a conscientious objector, you could say) and 2) I disagree with an awful lot of the military decisions made by my country (still "backing" the US and their illegal torture programs in Guantanamo, for instance - OOPS! I did it again!). Though I love the work of Turing, I don't love that it probably ended up, indirectly, killing people too. Sinking U-boats, things like that. Yeah, they were the enemy, and it was better than the alternative (i.e. more people dying), but still it's military action.

But if I'd applied seriously, with those organisations I would quite expected someone to dig around on the net and find these things out about me by themselves. That's their damn job, and they wouldn't want to be letting people like me in - people who place their own morals above that of orders from above. If someone tells me "shoot/kidnap/kill/injure him", my first question would be "What? Why? Is he about to do the same to me?" (unless I'm playing Counterstrike, in which case he'll be missing his head before you finished the sentence).

This is what they do. This is what they have to do. Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy. It's very easy to get the wrong people into a place that you don't want them to be. Hell, there's a CIA agent in the news at the moment telling everyone their secrets because he disagrees with how they function. That could be me, in the same position.

You have nothing to fear but driving yourself crazy trying to avoid the things you fear. "I don't like surveillance" leading to absolute paranoia that infests your daily life and stops you meeting up with friends? Yeah, the worst of two evils, I think.

That's not to say that I support a surveillance state (but, if I support ANY element of a surveillance state, it's to have constant, recorded surveillance of police and military procedures so that there is NO element of doubt when it comes to questions of justice being served and law enforcement following the law - hell, what I wouldn't give to have proper footage of some of the greater terrorist incidents that have been reported released, and even parts of the "war on terror"), or spying, or anything else.

There's a lot more wrong in this world than a few cameras here and there. In fact, I'd say there aren't ENOUGH cameras in the right places. Imagine how different the world would be right now if ever

Re:GG for cops.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who will watch the watchers watch the watchers?

Who will watch the watchers watching the watchers watching the watchers watching the watchers?

It's Watchers all the way down...

Re:all for it...

[techno-vampire]

Unfortunately, it's a rather one-sided protection, as the police would never show videos in which they'd appear to have abused their powers.

I don't know how things work in GB, but in the USA, the defense can subpoena the footage and, if they feel it would help, can submit it to the court themselves as evidence. And, I'd hope, any police claims that the video has been lost or not properly preserved would go a long way toward refuting their claims.

Q: How many cameras is too many to watch?

[NotQuiteReal]

I assume we are beyond the point that anyone can pro-actively watch all available cameras in real time (unless automation is much better than I would guess).

So, that moves us away from a priori prevention to simply making a posteriori investigation easier, no?

In other words, yes, you are being "recorded" a lot, but not being "watched". Get over yourself.

Re:Q: How many cameras is too many to watch?

[Jessified]

Great so basically we give up all our liberties and get no safety, but at least we can find the terrorists after they blow things up.

Re:Q: How many cameras is too many to watch?

[Benaiah]

As computer power increases, facial recognition improves, databases become linked, ai improves we will all be watched. Someone with the right authority could do a search for all footage, location data, internet traffic of an individual. And wham instant blackmail material. Any activist, opposition member could be charged with enough crimes to give them life in prison. Fake tagging someone in a photo, identity theft. Using your partners credit card, fraud. All of this evidence could easily be compiled and used against you. Having a game of thrones marathon with some friends from an on demand streaming service? DMCA violation? CFAA violation? Illegal broadcasting? One party with infinite power.

Re:GG for cops.

[fredgiblet]

Well first off the cops already record most things (at least here in 'Murrica), this just adds another layer outside the cars. Second this could be a boon for accountability, though the rate of "missing" recordings will probably be troublesome. Third this is Britain, not America, the British long ago gave up any semblance of privacy.

Wish this happened in the US.

[flimflammer]

I actually think this is a step in the right direction. They should make it something that can't be tampered with by anyone, police or otherwise. I'm not sure how it works over in the UK but that kind of footage could be subpoenaed in the US if it's available and used for your defense, so it wouldn't be a tool only for police officers. If police are often reporting malfunction or missing footage in cases where their work ethic is being called into question, surely that can't look good for long in a court of law.

Actually, good!

[Cogent91]

Now this I actually agree with. I don't agree with cameras being everywhere, but an ability to know any Police Officer approaching you can have their choices reviewed on a real record is a good thing. It'll help keep Cops more honest.

Re:GG for cops.

[Adriax]

Sam Vimes.

Re:Prediction: Police Violence footage still missi

[tsotha]

But as Samantha Wright points out above, the very fact the camera was off casts doubt on the officer's testimony.

The "capital of CCTV cameras" thing is bollocks

[91degrees]

People always parrot this. The only source is a report based on a survey of two major shopping streets in London and extrapolating from that.

Now, a busy popular street with several banks, restaurants and shops, most frequently part of a chain, is not representative of all the businesses in London. These include one man businesses, consultants, delivery companies and home businesses which have no need for a CCTV system.

Even if the count is accurate, no similar survey has been taken of any other city. Tell me, are CCTV systems used in the rest of Europe? Are they used in the US? Or do business owners assume their customers are more honest there?

Not new, police have had similar cameras for years

[rHBa]

The police have had body mounted cameras in the UK for 5 years.

The only news here is that they've started using them in Melton (a medium size town in the Midlands) and presumably the tech has improved.

Re:Not new, police have had similar cameras for ye

[rHBa]

Sorry, I RTFM and it said to never RTFA on Slashdot.

Of course if you RTFS it does mention the IR capabilities but the summary title and most of the comments here are all about the fact that "UK Police Now Double As CCTV Cameras" which is not news.