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Comment by deedub | Hacker News Reader

You mean showing a couple seconds of a clip without any sound or context is how these cameras are going to be used?

Yeah that's exactly what I thought. The guys dancing at the top of the article was a 3 second clip. You don't see the lead up or hear the sound, how are you meant to judge from that

The scary part in that is the line of what is admissable in a courtroom; what if a jury is provided the same video without the surrounding context?

The defendant's lawyer would say "this is footage of the officer dancing with my client" and context magically appears in the courtroom. But now we have to wonder why anybody is in a courtroom with a jury at all, if that's what the footage actually shows.

Absolutely.

Imagine a Fox news story about an officer shooting someone, with only a few seconds of a video clip released by the police (the rest of the clip is not privy to the public yet). They could replay the same 3-4 seconds over and over and build speculation.

That's not exactly a far-fetched idea, you can probably come up with plenty more. The authors are clearly trying to emphasize that a few seconds of footage is not enough to make a decision - so you agree with them.

I care less about what fox news shows people vs what the jury gets to see in the courtroom. So the article has nothing to do with the legal side of things? Skewing police body camera footage for entertainment is definitely going to happen and that doesnt really bug me, but what does bug me is that somehow people think a jury would only see a 3 second clip without sound or any context in a court room.

Been on a jury with video evidence. You watch the entire video, even if nothing is happening, if one of the lawyers requests it. Selective clips are frowned upon, at least in my experience.

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