Slashdot Mirror
San Francisco Fire Chief Bans Helmet-Mounted Cameras For Firefighters
New submitter niftymitch sends this quote from an article at SFGate:
"San Francisco's fire chief has explicitly banned firefighters from using helmet-mounted video cameras after images from a battalion chief's Asiana Airlines crash recording became public and led to questions about first responders' actions leading up to a fire rig running over a survivor. ... Filming the scene may have violated both firefighters' and victims' privacy, Hayes-White said, trumping whatever benefit came from knowing what the footage shows. 'There comes a time that privacy of the individual is paramount, of greater importance than having a video,' Hayes-White said. Critics, including some within the department, questioned the chief's order and its timing — coming as Johnson's footage raised the possibility of Fire Department liability in the death of 16-year-old Ye Meng Yuan. .. [Battalion Chief Kevin Smith, president of the employee group that includes Johnson, said,] 'The department seems more concerned with exposure and liability than training and improving efficiency. Helmet cams are the wave of the future - they can be used to improve communication at incidents between firefighters and commanders.'"
Since when did government care about the right to privacy?
sudo make me a sandwich
This is all about not creating evidence that could cost the government money.
No, you don't understand. The people have privacy, not government officials acting in their official capacity. The firefighter has no expectation of privacy when they are performing their official duties. This camera ban seems like an attempt to jump on the wave of NSA hate in order to provide cover for future incompetence.
If privacy is what matters, then require that any firefighter with a camera keep the memory locked in a secure location at the station. Simply banning the cameras, especially after this incident, requires that they don't want to be subject to turning over any evidence. It's class CYA, plain and simple. I don't know who has the power to argue against this. These guys are union; but the union reps can surely see that such things might be used against them as well. They'll probably go along with the ban. The politicians are paid by the unions. Nobody really stands for the people here the way I see it. The people would, IMHO, best be served by having as much information as possible provided that it's properly secured, which is really not that hard to do.
Fuck you, you fucking fucks!
The only reason you could want to ban cameras is to hide your mistakes. You have no expectation of privacy in public, especially when you're working to protect and serve the public. If anything, this shows why cameras should be MANDATORY . With cameras on every responder and 360 degrees of coverage from the top of every vehicle. If you screw up, you need to know it, determine liability, see what led to the mistake(s), and develop ways to avoid screwing up like that in the future.
SF's fire chief needs a swift kick in the groin.
If you don't have anything to hide, why are you against cameras?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
They (partially) backtracked and may allow cameras:
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SFFD-backtracks-may-allow-helmet-cameras-4744090.php
In an apparent about-face, San Francisco Fire Department officials said Monday they will revisit restrictions on firefighters' use of helmet-mounted cameras after concluding that footage from the Asiana Airlines crash showed the value of the devices.
"In an apparent about-face, San Francisco Fire Department officials said Monday they will revisit restrictions on firefighters' use of helmet-mounted cameras after concluding that footage from the Asiana Airlines crash showed the value of the devices."
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SFFD-backtracks-may-allow-helmet-cameras-4744090.php
Yes, we understand these tags always apply: fud, dupe, typo, slashdotted, topic name
laws for government:
smashed your hard drives?
We protected public from chinese data theft!
cell phone stolen by cops while recording cops?
We need it for evidence!
no manslaughter charges for fire chief throttle spaz?
We need to protect your privacy and ours!
laws for citizens
intentionally smashed someones hard drives?
felony assault/reckless endangerment
stolen cell phone left at bar (Apple/Engadget fiasco)?
theft of lost property.
ran over someone at accident scene?
vehicular manslaughter
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
When cameras are outlawed, only outlaws will have cameras.
Doesn't it seem odd that while they're adding more cameras in the streets and using surveillance drones that they're also banning helmet cams? When will they start banning individual business security cameras-- when a police or fire or other government "mistake" is recorded by them? Welcome to the modern age, cameras are ubiquitous. If ANYTHING ought to be continuously recorded on video for posterity, it's GOVERNMENTAL activities.
It would be more effective to ban stupid things like driving through the debris field.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
when they say "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" only applies to us private citizens. What's good for the goosed is not, they're arguing good for their gander, and so ironically, they want to hide behind "privacy".
We must respect the privacy of the girl who was run over by the fire truck, (or future victims like her, more to the point) by NOT recording events that could facilitate knowing how she died, or how to prevent other such tragedies in the future. Apparently her 'right to privacy' trumps the right of society for justice, or government accountability, (including government employees).
By this same piss-poor argument, I'm sure a number of people in the LAPD wished someone had respected Rodney King's PRIVACY by not videotaping his brutal beating and (let's face fact, folks,) attempted murder by LAPD thugs... how much better things would be not only for Rodney King, (who would consequently have been denied justice... oh, wait...) but no one would even know the full extent of what happened unless they happened to be there personally.
Someone please make sure whoever is San Francisco's fire chief's boss hears this argument, or THAT person's boss, etc., that this is just a step in the direction of banning video footage being taken AT ALL, with the attendant even free-er reign on the part of government and their employees to misbehave while being paid to do what for want of a better word, let's just call THEIR JOBS.
The last thing I want to see is some "lol cool" video of firefighters trudging through the burning ruins of my life. I think it's bad enough that 911 calls are made public. Those calls are made in desperate, personal times in a victim's life and they get turned into reality tv for the Nancy Grace's of the media. No need to add video to the soundtrack of my life in flames.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Seven FOIA requests and a wad of cash, and I was able to see my autistic son being abused by government employees.
I am grateful for the cameras.
by Upton Sinclair applies here:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
Is that a KTVU confirmed driver's name? :D
As others have pointed out, the original story is very out-of-date and ignores the fact that the policy has been in-place for a long time.
Privacy vs. public access is not completely black and white. Just a few issues that could be reasonably debated (not on the Interwebs, of course, where no reasonable debate occurs) are:
Should firefighters be rescuing people and fighting fires or d*cking around with their GoPro to get cool Youtube videos?
As medical responders, what about HIPPA? Does a person have the right to call for help secure in the knowledge that the rescuer won't be spreading helmet-cam footage of their nude mangled body across the Internet or news?
I see some similar issues with radio traffic and release of 911 recordings. While I enjoy checking the local goings-on with a scanner I wonder if "...respond to 1234 Main Apartment 3 for a 34 year old female suicide attempt via overdose..." is broadcasting just a bit too much personal medical info.
And don't get me started on search-warrants. The cops *love* to issue press-releases about all the stuff they have recovered even though nobody has been charged or convicted. A couple bricks of .22, a Playboy and the pills from your doctor are "drugs, pornography and thousands of rounds of ammunition" by the time it hits the blotter. It just a bit too much power to smear someone's reputation without trial for my taste.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
When I worked for a municipal department in Texas, we had policies concerning any and all video shot while on duty. First of all, cameras were to be carried by fire trucks. Whether they were helmet-mounted or not was actually kind of a silly question. Second, all photos or videos shot with during incidents had to be reviewed by officers before it could be used for any purpose. Third, and most importantly, it doesn't matter how many years you have been in the service, you keep yourself acutely aware of any cameras in your vicinity and ensure that you only do what you would not be embarrassed to see on the news tonight.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
America today is a dog protecting Europe from its own violent adventures in Imperialism.
America is protecting Europe from American violent adventures in imperialism?
Ezekiel 23:20
You Americans are not paying for European defense. You are paying for defense of American interests in Europe. Troops are stationed in friendly countries simply because they are within striking distance of unfriendly countries.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
This is especially weird for two reasons directly associated with the Asiana crash:
1) The department has generally been lauded for being upfront and honest about having run over the girl. It's weird that the takeaway from that is to do something which appears to be just "cover your ass".
2) I haven't seen the video, but by the accounts I've read the video corroborates the claim that running over the girl really was just a tragic accident. It's weird that in the future they want to avoid having corroborating evidence like that.
A lot of comments are comparing this to police wearing cameras and while they're both public servants, the situations are very different. Why? Because the majority (if not all) cameras on firefighters (FF's) helmets are owned by the FF. I've not heard of a dept that is actually buying and distributing these. TFA mentions that 2 other big FD's have banned them and the SFFD implicitly banned them in 2009 when all cameras were banned from fire stations.
There has been mild controversy in the fire service over the use of these cameras, mostly related to auto accidents where FF's are likely to see injured or deceased victims.
While these videos can serve a very useful training purpose (and buff privileges), the victim's privacy is obviously a concern. And since the cameras are privately owned, the govt. can't ban them once they've been recorded, but they can ban FF's from using them while carrying out their duties.
Emergency services have a social contract with the general public that isn't examined too often. It's something that isn't taught to recruit classes, but it definitely should be. In exchange for the privilege of being a FF, we agree to help the public (some of us even get paid to do it). What's not clearly defined is whether or not the FF's should serve the public as best as we can. While it seems simple, many FF's succumb to the "good enough" mentality and don't actively seek improvement. The public puts a lot of trust in the emergency services and it only takes small mistakes to damage that trust.
Disclaimer: I am a volunteer FF and I design fire apparatus for a living.
Secondary Disclaimer: The amount of chrome on a fire truck does not improve the fire suppression abilities.
"Troops are stationed in friendly countries simply because they are within striking distance of unfriendly countries." is the nut of it.
In the main, I think that it's likely past time to bring the bulk of our European forces back, but I'm not a military planner, just someone who's been curious about the situation, nothing more.
Historically, for the length of the Cold War, everyone's eyes were on the Fulda Gap. The calculus was always the same: The Gap, territory for time, attrition, 30 days. Thirty days for Europe to hold until US could get the bulk of their armor and all the rest in place. (It was ironic in a way that after the fall of the Wall, when ex-Soviet planners were much more free for a while to speak with their Western counterparts, that we learned they'd spent more time thinking about defending than adventuring.)
Unless one thinks that, given the spate of comments coming out of Putin's Russia for instance, we again have to consider the Gap as a real possibility.
I got into thinking more on this simply because during the Fifties, living outside of Augsburg, my Dad would get a phone call or a driver with holstered .45 would appear at the door, and he'd be gone for four days to a week. These were not, so far as I or my mother knew, planned exercises. (Parents talk, children listen and compare notes.) A few times we stayed home from school and waited with a packed suitcase. So I got a bit more interested in later years about some of this.
So, anyway, time to come home. Drones, strategic strikes, reaction forces, airlift, and pre-positioned stores should likely handle the rest, this amateur thinks.