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Body Camera Maker Will Let Cops Live-Stream Their Encounters (fastcompany.com)
tedlistens writes: Police officers wearing new cameras by Axon, the U.S.'s largest body camera supplier, will soon be able to send live video from their cameras back to base and elsewhere, potentially expanding police surveillance. Another feature of the new device -- set to be released next year -- triggers the camera to start recording and alerts command staff once an officer has fired their weapon, a possible corrective to the problem of officers forgetting to switch them on. (The initial price of $699 doesn't include other costs, like a subscription to Axon's Evidence.com data management system.)
But adding new technologies to body camera video introduces new privacy concerns, say legal experts, who have cautioned that a network of live-streaming cameras risks turning officers into roving sentinels for a giant panopticon-like surveillance system. Harlan Yu, the executive director of Upturn, a Washington nonprofit consultancy that has studied body cameras, says that live-streaming could erode community trust and help enable more controversial technologies like real-time face recognition. "The capability to live stream all BWC footage back to a department- or precinct-wide command center... will further entrench body-worn cameras as tools for police surveillance of communities, rather than tools for transparency," he said.
But adding new technologies to body camera video introduces new privacy concerns, say legal experts, who have cautioned that a network of live-streaming cameras risks turning officers into roving sentinels for a giant panopticon-like surveillance system. Harlan Yu, the executive director of Upturn, a Washington nonprofit consultancy that has studied body cameras, says that live-streaming could erode community trust and help enable more controversial technologies like real-time face recognition. "The capability to live stream all BWC footage back to a department- or precinct-wide command center... will further entrench body-worn cameras as tools for police surveillance of communities, rather than tools for transparency," he said.
Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do?
Huh, wouldn't it seem that the events just prior to the cop shooting are what is actually relevant.
Perhaps they should figure out a way to trigger recording when the cop starts showing stress reactions (which could be triggered by fear, anger, etc)
the body camera as soon as a weapon leaves the holster instead of when it's fired?
This may end up more entertaining than Russian Car Crash Compilations.
Seems to me that turning it on at the sound of the gun shot might be a bit too late to get the complete picture of if the use of force was justified or not.
How about they are always recording a 2 min buffer and the sound of a gunshot triggers it to write the buffer and start the recording at a point 2 min in the past..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I thought the whole point of body cameras was to establish what happened during police shootings. Am I missing something? You can't have it both ways; either 1) you get recordings of police (mis)behavior, or 2) you get no recordings and your privacy remains intact. Pick one. Personally, I'd opt for letting the police record their interaction with me. I think it decreases the likelihood that things will end badly for me.