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Comment by OrganicMSG | Hacker News Reader

> "Kevin Richardson, the Police Department’s top internal prosecutor, said he believed so-called testilying was nearing its end. “I think it’s a problem that’s very much largely on its way out,” he said."

Very much largely?

Now, without wanting to cast aspersions on a prosecutor, is this guy lying about lying?

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It's a problem on its way out because of the rapid adoption of body cameras on police officers.

If you look at the next 25 years, not only will every cop have a camera running 24/7, but also all vehicle's including the suspect's will be recording events from multiple angles.

Most homes will have cameras at the front door, and throughout the home in some form or another.

Many witnessneses are already recording things through their phones.

People may be wearing augmented reality style "google glasses" that can retroactively record important moments. Meaning they won't even intend to record the things that they do.

Right now its possible for the police to intimidate someone who pulls out a phone and starts recording, but soon there will be just too many devices, and it will be impossible to tell what is recording.

And drones... Traffic and delivery drones, can easily be rerouted during police incidents to provide overhead video feeds that help the officer, or help the court determine what happened at a later date.

People who expect to be exempted from consequences then attempt to lie about what the video represents or things that are out of frame.

Until there is a culture of routine and serious consequences for police lying in court, police will continue to lie in court.

That's hopeful... but false. If there are no consequences, then it doesn't matter whether or not they lie, does it? The accused's outcomes are +1 or -1. The officer's outcomes are +1 or 0. The rational play for the officer is to lie for the +1.

Sounds possible - but what about faked video that looks real?

That is - deep learning NN generated aerial drone footage (or altered footage) - could certainly be done...

I'm not sure where this ends...

Deep fakes take time. No one could possibly know that an incident is about to occur, so I wouldn't worry about that.

Also if a police department wanted to undertake a full on conspiracy to fabricate evidence, their will be so many cameras from so many angles, that there lies would quickly be outed.

> Deep fakes take time.

For now.

Not to burst your technocratic bubble, but if you want to know how body cams work in the practice you can take a look at the Baltimore Police Gun Trace Task Force trial.

They stole money, then they filmed themselves afterwards (re)discovering the (now reduced) money.

I very much largely believe he is indeed lying about lying

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