Seattle Police Held Hackathon To Redact Footage From Body Cameras

An anonymous reader writes: Hackathons are common these days, but you don't often hear about events hosted by law enforcement. That's what the Seattle Police Department did on Friday, with the solitary goal of finding a good way to redact the video streams taken by police body cameras and dash cameras. Seven different teams demonstrated solutions, but in the end, none thought automation could realistically handle the task in the near future. "The Washington State public records act requires that almost all video filmed by any government agency – including police – be disclosed upon request. The only real exception is for video which is part of an open case currently under investigation. However, various parts of the state code include other restrictions – the identity of minors cannot be disclosed. Requests from victims or witnesses who may be at risk if their identities are disclosed also must be honored. However in all such cases the video still must be released – it is just the faces or other potential identifying characteristics, which might include gender or even a person's gait – which need to be blurred and redacted." The city just started a pilot program for body-worn police cameras.

Comments

Re:Why dashcams?

[Trepidity]

It's in public space, but not always a good idea to release publicly. For example, if a cop happens to be the first person on the scene of an accident I was involved in, I would prefer if that video is not released, unless it's necessary to a court case. If it were a medical first responder it'd actually be illegal for them to release film of me in that situation, under HIPAA. Cops are exempt from HIPAA, but that doesn't make it a good idea for them to completely ignore privacy of 3rd parties.

Re: Redaction is Insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

This is where a DMS comes in. TRIM could do the job. Once a file is stored it can not be deleted exept by admins. All views are logged. Everything is logged.

Once a video is cut upload it, encrypt locally and upload to the server later.

Introduce severe penalties for tampering.

There may even be an open solution DMS capable of the same.