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Comment by cruschtGlacz | Hacker News Reader

Surprise!

You can’t expect to extract any value from cameras under police control.

The cameras must exist beyond the reach of police departments, and publish footage in a way that cannot be censored.

The body cameras get censored because the police have created a system that benefits them, above all else.

The reality of this outcome should weigh heavily on everyone’s mind, about how this correlates with every other aspect of police activity.

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This summer, an officer in Maryland accidentally taped himself planting drugs. This case alone justifies the continued use of cameras (especially without the on/off button). Cameras should be under direct control of the judiciary, available to defense and not merely the district attorney's office.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-bod...

Allowing the police to have total control and oversight was, to me, the point where I knew the police body camera idea wasn't going to fix everything right away. It feels like mostly lip service but it has shown some good splotches here and there. LIke you said, until they are out of the hands of police they are basically useless... Unless buffoon cops forget to turn it on / off depending on the situation.

I would say if an officer has their camera off in line of duty, and something happens they should be charged with obstruction of justice.

Exactly my theory. Make any accusation by citizens against police have more weight over the cops' words in a court of law (they are after all "serving the people", no?), and they will find it in their best interest to keep the camera on at all times.

What if they need to go to the bathroom?

They should have to request it over the radio and the camera should be remotely disabled. This would mean they couldn't turn it off in mere seconds in the heat of the moment or right after taking a call before it was resolved. It's not a perfect solution but it's pretty good.

Another option would be for the "off" button to mark that section of the tape as "off duty" and store it in a special archive that required a court order to access. That way the only time we would need to look is if there was some issue where there was an empty spot in the recording during an event where they were clearly not "off duty".

I think it's worth pointing out that while using the bathroom I don't think a chest/shoulder mounted body cam would see much, if anything, inappropriate. It's not attached to their head looking where they look.

Try not to assault anyone in the stalls?

OK, the above is slightly tongue in cheek, I know, but this seems like a fairly weak "what if". We're primarily talking about confrontational incidents of conflict where there's issues of trust around accounts of events. The majority of these incidents will hopefully not take place during toilet breaks.

Then they should briefly go off duty... I fail to see an issue here.

If I was interviewing you and I told you that if your laptop stopped working during office hours you could be brought up on criminal charges that could include jail time - would you take the job?

If your DLP mysteriously turns off and then corporate data gets leaked you could be brought up on criminal charges that could include jail time. Which is the present scenario nearly all of us are in.

More like if your laptop stops working you are obligated to call tech support immediately.

Well, I can’t shoot people to death and potentially get away with it at my job. If I was interviewing for a job where I literally held the power of life or death for other people, then yeah, I would probably expect some pretty strict controls on that power.

> and publish footage in a way that cannot be censored

Easier said than done. Police officers are often seeing people on the worst day of their life. It would be an incredible decrease in privacy and general dignity if all footage was just published uncensored.

If someone assaulted you and stole your cloths would you want a video online of you being interviewed about the experience with just a towel on (and probably a few scenes where you are completely naked before they get you the towel)? That is potentially an extreme example, but ever day police officers interact with innocent people and victims that don't deserve to have that experience made public domain.

In short, the police need some way to make sure some video is kept private.

Police abuse of power is a terrible thing. I have no doubt they are literally getting away with murder and framing people in many cases. But we have to remember that a vast majority of what officers do is to protect us and help us in our time of need.

In principle, it ought to be possible to ensure an encrypted version of all the video is always uploaded to some governmental servers that the police can not tamper with, where the video can only be accessed under appropriate circumstances by an appropriate authority.

You're abstracting a lot of your argument away. When are "appropriate circumstances?" Who is an "appropriate authority?" Surely not the police department? Or the DA? Those questions are the crux of the issue, not the medium on which the recordings are stored.

An appropriate authority is a judge, and appropriate circumstances are if and when it passes the requirements to be shown in court or accessed with a warrant.

You can create a system with authorization, ACL and an audit trail with justifications. It is less complicated to implement and can be audited after the fact.

When you need access to an information, the system ask a reason (a procedure number or something) the system can grant it or not and all is logged. You can have a third party or authority notified and they could grant access to more sensible information.

> Those questions are the crux of the issue, not the medium on which the recordings are stored.

They are definitely important, but remember that I was replying to a comment that implied the only option was for the video to be made publicly available, and my comment was primarily trying to say that was not the only option.

I'm not sure exactly what the appropriate circumstances/authority are -- not my area of expertise -- but I think ones must exist. I don't know if you're arguing against the idea that there is some appropriate circumstances/authority.

The related argument against this that I've seen from a few cops is that this also removes their ability to use discretion and not charge people. If somebody reports a crime and happens to have some drugs in their pocket and the police find them, they could have just ignored them or confiscated them and not charge the guy in pursuit of the greater good, but with the whole thing on tape, they essentially have to charge everything they see/find.

Is that an issue though? It's my understanding that police are allowed a lot of discretion as to whether or not they should charge someone with a crime. ianal, so genuinely asking

This argument makes no sense to me. Are police allowed to use discretion?

If Yes - then doing something they're already allowed to do on tape makes no difference.

If No - then either they shouldn't be doing it and tape stops them from doing something wrong. Or they should and laws can be updated to allow it.

Having things float in a legal grey area is terrible for society. If it isn't legal, make it fully legal and cops are now fully covered.

The video should be able to be presented in court, unaltered and verified for both parties involved, whenever the need comes up.

Or if anything, they should not be tampered with and disabling them should weigh heavily against the police in the courts - it's one of the few ways they can disprove excess violence and such.

The only place that can is the justice department which outranks the police. Which means you have to be really serious about bringing the case to court. That serves as a big deterrent since you don't know what kind of evidence has been recorded or if it is even useful.

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