Body worn cameras for law enforcement.

[Tubetec]

The minority government here now want to bring in body worn cams for law enforcement .
I wanted to check with people in other jurisdictions about their experience of it ,
Of course the usual line trotted out is ,I have nothing to hide so it doesnt concern me , but how our data is processed should be of  concern to us.
The Gardai here in Ireland ,it seems ,have been operating its own ad hoc facial recognition database all along without proper legal underpinning , I even had a chance to discuss the matter with a retired and now deceased superintendant  who expressed deep concerns about its usage , and pointed to several problems arising out of the system .

Governments around the planet are materially changing the relationship between the citizen and the state with out proper consent or even making people  properly aware of it .

I know of one person who pretended to be filming a possible incidence of police brutality here , phone was snatched off them and they were jumped upon by 6 cops , in the end they were released without charge ,but had to lodge a complaint over a stolen mobile phone at another station before they got their phone back  ,  also when footage of the incident was requested, the person was told street cameras were off at the time . The irony is, if the footage is in the polices interests it will exist if its not they try and make it dissappear , also each guard has the choice to either press record or not as they see fit , this government are driving a right wing agenda , an upsurge in subversive activities around the border areas is being used as justification to ram it through.

Here in Ireland we lived long enough with strong arm tactics on behalf of the state , both under UK rule and subsequently while steering our own ship , we dont need the 'closed loop'  control enabled by social media and facillitated by politicians enamoured with their own social media status . I noted the Irish prime minister,Leo Varadkar's  response to a question from media recently about Twitters ending of polictical advertising ,where he clearly said he favours the the Facebook approach.
His own particular Facebook approach has enabled  children who come to an untimely end's  images posted on social media
to be milked for absolutely all its worth in media frenzies surrounding the murder trials  , the family of a deceased girl here recently, in a victim impact statement, pointed out the the horror of having to see images of their baby in happier times on the paper and the news for months and months on end . 

 

[iomegaman]

Basically I try to distill these conversations to a handful of areas with my thoughts about society and its rules:

What are our filters (in this case "Face-not-a-real-book" and Twitter)...?

Who has skin in the game?

Can we maintain distinctions and autonomy without creating hostility?

Who benefits?

Bodycams seem to introduce some level of skin in the game for the policing wing of society, but as with any accountability there are always loopholes and ways to bend or even extort the system for bad actors...it is the nature of our evolutionary democracy...(which on the scale of human development is maybe 15 seconds old compared to our longer history)...

But skin in the game is only worth its enforcement...claiming to have skin in the game with accountability but having those oh so convenient moments where the body cams were all off for some reason (See Jeffry Epstein's curious suicide) while duty officers sleep is not an impossible scenario to imagine...in which case body cams just became filters and not accountability measures.

As with any new technology positioned to make people accountable there will be ways to wipe a little petroleum jelly on the magnetic strip and get a "failure to read" message...

So maybe the accountability is not in the policing sphere as much as we are being told to assume...with facial recognition software at work it is a very small step from "bodyc ams protect the information of the event" to "body cams collect personal data without consent"...

There are already private security guards in the USA who have been sold (at such bargain prices as to raise an eyebrow) access to the license plate data base and given rooftop cameras that drive around the strip mall parking lots collecting data on every car parked there, alse getting an "ALERT" to stolen cars/plates...all in the name of protecting consumers...

We have the right to remain silent, but the right to remain invisible was sold a long time ago.

 

[Tubetec]

Interesting perspectives ,thanks Iomega.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I won't speak to the sundry conspiracy theories, but body cams are double edged swords.

I'm not sure it is a huge invasion of privacy if I am stopped by police for suspicion of law breaking (it is a public cost for security... insert full Benjamin Franklin "liberty/security" quote here).  8)

On the other hand, actual law breakers, well aware of their rights to not incriminate themselves, routinely take it beyond that and lie about not only themselves but police behavior. If the miscreants know that they are being recorded they should (?) be less inclined to make up fictional accusations against arresting officers (but if they were smarter they wouldn't be breaking laws in the first place.).

The use of body cams in the US is not very mature but I perceive it as more of a potential positive than negative influence.  That said if they can't keep the suicide watch cameras working in Epstein's jail cell, body cams on police in dicey situations may be equally unreliable (sorry that was feeding even more conspiracy memes).  :-[ 

JR

 

[PRR]

Police bodycams and car-cams help individual officers be more honest. Their chief asks "What happened? and turn in your footage." Several recent cases, the chief did not support the officer because the footage was damning even incriminating.

I absolutely feel safer knowing that if the police beat me, it will be on film.

I have not been stopped for "a broken taillight" since carcams got common.

If your police chief and Prosecutor are apt to "lose" hard evidence, you have a much bigger problem to work on.

 

[Tubetec]

Thanks gents,