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Comment by s73ver_ | Hacker News Reader

I would be shocked if the unredacted video still exists.

In many (most?) US jurisdictions, bodycam video is cloud-hosted by Taser.[0]

I don't have direct experience, but I'd bet Taser doesn't let podunk police departments really "erase" video. And given the volume, you'd think it's got to be built on AWS or another big cloud provider, with pretty good forensic tools.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/business/taser-internatio...

>I don't have direct experience, but I'd bet Taser doesn't let podunk police departments really "erase" video.

The NYTimes article you posted hints at an uncomfortably cozy relationship between Taser, law enforcement and local governments...

    Yet as Taser works to sell cameras and software to more departments, 
    it is coming under fire for questionable business practices. In some
    instances, it has paid police chiefs to travel to Taser conferences. 

    In other cases, chiefs who have bought Taser products have joined 
    the company as consultants shortly after leaving public service. 
    And several cities have awarded contracts to Taser without 
    competitive bidding.

I wouldn't trust Taser to act as faithful or impartial stewards of this data, when it's in their best business interest to maintain a positive relationship with the very entities whose corruption it exists to expose.

Taser also operates a legal-defense-aid operation for police officers who use Tasers to break the law.

I'm gonna need a source for that.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/02/tasers-delirium-...

Oh, don't think I'm suggesting they're impartial stewards. But they should have some incentive not to be the co-defendant in every police assault case where the video goes missing.

It is probably easy for a records clerk to export redacted video, but should be hard for them to really delete video, or tamper without leaving a trail.

Some customers might justify the risk, I suppose. But if they were to regularly winkwink at cops deleting video evidence, they'd get walloped.

> I don't have direct experience, but I'd bet Taser doesn't let podunk police departments really "erase" video.

They will if they want to keep getting contracts.

Maybe once. But if that's a repeating problem that the legal system can't solve, it'd be a symptom of something so fundamentally broken it really makes police behaviour the least of our problems.

It would be illegal otherwise, wouldn't it? Redaction of evidence

You would have to prove a) that it was evidence of a crime, and b) the police had reason to believe or know it was such.

In the absence of laws requiring full transparency and access to body cam footage, the body cams are just likely to be abused.

>You would have to prove a) that it was evidence of a crime, and b) the police had reason to believe or know it was such.

Missing audio and a big "redacted" sticker is a pretty damning evidence that "Something" was removed. IF there was nothing to hide, why did they remove it?

That’s logic, not Law.

In contrast, full transparency of body cam footage could and would compromise ongoing investigations and identities of people in witness protection and so on. So full transparency in private/closed court or redacted versions showing only 'relevant' information in public/open court. Maybe full transparency after the information in the video becomes irrelevant, but micromanaging a hude amount of body cam footage would prove to be quite difficult.

That doesn’t sound right. My neighbor is accused of a crime, and upon hearing that, I destroy all the evidence that would exonerate them. That doesn’t count as obstruction of justice / destruction of evidence?

Your neighbour is suspected of brutally murdering their parents in his backyard. One Sunday afternoon, you maw their lawn along with yours because they're really old and it really isn't that much work once you're at it anyway.

In the process, you destroy the evidence exonerating them, i. e. footprints of shoes much smaller than theirs.

Obstruction of justice? Nope.

Now imagine the same thing happened. Except that this time, you include their lawn not just because you always do, but to get them thrown in jail. You're really tired of doing all these chores for them, and it's time for new neighbours.

Obstruction of justice? Yep.

Intend matters.

It doesn't have to be evidence of a crime. It can be evidence of policy violations.

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