Slashdot Mirror
Should Cops Wear Google Glass?
Nerval's Lobster writes "Over at The Kernel, staff writer Greg Stevens wonders whether police departments around the world should outfit their officers with Google Glass. There's some logic behind the idea. A cop with wearable electronics constantly streaming audio and video back to a supervisor (or even a Website) would be less likely, at least in theory, to take liberties with civilians' civil liberties. But not everybody thinks it's such a good idea. Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, wrote in a recent blog posting that society needs to make choices 'about the extent to which we want to allow the government to store up that data so that it has the power to hit 'rewind' on everybody's lives.' In the view of that organization, 'that's just too much power.' That being said, law enforcement wearing electronics that streams constant video and audio data would still be subject to the law. 'If the officer is recording a communication he has in public with someone, there's probably no wiretap problem since there's at least the consent of one party and no expectation of privacy,' Hanni M. Fakhoury, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote in an email to Slashdot. 'But if he's recording peripheral communications between two separate individuals, than there's potential wiretap liability depending on the circumstances.' What do you think? Are cops wearing Google Glass (or similar wearable electronic) a good idea?"
If the recording is "missing" for any reason, or if the cop stops recording or removes the recording device for any reason other than someone else breaking it (and visibly doing so), everything the cop says about the unrecorded events should be assumed to be a lie.
The streams from these "cop cameras" have to be restricted so that they can only be accessed by the officer's supervisors and with a subpoena. I strongly object to the proposals some have made that the footage be made public. I do not want my every interaction with the police made public, even if it's getting a jaywalking ticket.
"Innocent until proven guilty" can't be achieved when facing the court of public opinion.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The San Francisco Fire Chief just banned fire helmet mounted cameras after helmet-cam footage from the Asiana crash became public. Some say it was done to protect the privacy of victims, others to protect the city from liability as in this case where one of the victims was still alive when run over by a responding fire truck.
The answer to that ancient question, because we can actually do it with today's tech, is "everyone". So all public buildings and public/government vehicles should be wired with webcams that anyone can access at any time to see what Public Servants are actually doing (instead of what they claim to be doing). Remember Heinlein's "Notebooks of Lazarus Long", and the particular quotation "Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny." Cops that can do things without being watched are in a position to abuse power just like any other tyrant.