Extracting video and audio from used police body cam
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We don’t need to see the officers’ unblurred faces to confirm that these were successfully extracted from a random eBay purchase, as their precise identities are not relevant to the story.
We do need to see the cop cruiser unblurred, because that’s materially relevant to the story and serves as likely (but not certain) evidence of the source of the images.
We don’t need to see the exterior shot of someone random person’s house, because that could result in their location being identified and the press mobbing them pointlessly.
We do need to see the safe interior shot of someone’s house, that doesn’t reveal any identifying information, since that protects their identity while supporting the story at hand.
This feels like bootlicking. Officers are legally allowed to be filmed while doing their job. It may not be relevant to the story, but its irrelevant to blur them at all.
>We don’t need to see the exterior shot of someone random person’s house, because that could result in their location being identified and the press mobbing them pointlessly.
Sorry but this too is considered public photography. photos of a persons house exist on google maps and generally across the internet as a whole.
>We do need to see the safe interior shot of someone’s house, that doesn’t reveal any identifying information, since that protects their identity while supporting the story at hand.
Nope, not at all. You generally cannot just film a private home or business, and police filming a home is a pretty shady area for anything but the purportedly advertised use for a bodycam. the TV show COPS learned the hard way that just because the police can enter a home, doesnt mean you get to film it without permission or consent. places like Disneyland and concert halls routinely have legal standing to enforce a restriction on flash photography as it is again, private property.
By this logic, if the police break into your house while you're having an affair, you have no right to deny them publication of it immediately to a public website. There is tremendous potential for abuse here. For example, corrupt cops would immediately begin 'accidentally' (wink, wink) recording bodycam footage while 'not on duty' (wink, wink) when paid to by their buyers, or whenever someone is naked, since publication would be automatic and they would be immune to prosecution for their corrupt and abusive actions.
From a societal injustice standpoint, it would be an extremely effective way for abusive police to enforce white male privilege upon citizens (in the same way that doxxing does). If you aren't white and male, you're at a much higher risk of being killed or driven to suicide by this "publish everything" approach capturing some behavior that abusive people can use to justify attacking you. If you are white and male, you can just shrug it off and other white men (the most likely attackers in this scenario) will give you a pass so they can get away with it too. Statistically, significantly fewer white men will suffer as a result relative to other subgroups.
If you're able to see a way forward that does not have a high risk of doing damage to US society (including to people other than white men), please share it.
> By this logic ...
No, not really. The point of this is to establish a form of full disclosure - this is also my position about disclosing vulnerabilities. It should be public and uncensored so that the public knows about the full extend of data leakage and can act accordingly. I do not see how what you said follows from what I said.
> while 'not on duty'
They can just use normal cameras then.
The possibility of jurors disclosing sealed evidence does not negate the importance of the jury process, or of sealing evidence from public disclosure. It is still valuable to take these steps, even if fewer than 100% of participants adhere to the rules.
> It should be public and uncensored so that the public knows about the full extend of data leakage and can act accordingly.
I disagree. If medical records are leaked, they should not be treated as "public and uncensored". If criminal records are sealed and then leaked, they should not be treated as "public and uncensored". If the home address and work phone number of every citizen is leaked, that should not be treated as "public and uncensored". The public does not need comprehensive access to the data that was leaked in order to grasp "the full extent of data leakage". It is absolutely essential that a dependable third party review that data set — I trust HaveIBeenPwned, and I mostly trust press reporters — but their summary is generally quite sufficient without having them republish all of that data for anyone to review.
> They can just use normal cameras then.
Per your statement, bodycam footage should be disclosed publicly regardless of content, which would require legal protections against anyone suing to have footage taken down. Use of normal cameras would not provide such legal protections. This is not a valid equivalence to consider.
I personally think that the review process should instead follow the jury duty process, where citizens are selected at random from the population to review police footage, but I would accept an independent review board as long as less than one third of the members are political appointees.
This is not a contrived example: Equifax was, apparently, compromised in full, which means that all American social security numbers issued prior to that compromise can safely be considered 'leaked'.
The logic follows that I should be permitted to post anyone's social security number for any reason at all, without regard for the ethics of doing so, because "it's been made public" and therefore all ethical concerns are void.
I disagree with this premise. Context of disclosure matters, even if the information has been previously disclosed. Ethical considerations apply regardless of previous disclosure.
One disclosure of personal data does not negate the ethical considerations around that same disclosing personal data, even if it has been made public at any point previously. This approach ends up supporting doxxing — where 'public' information is used unethically to target individuals for harassment.
What would be a better system?
Combine this with a PKI and you should then have a solid solution. If you want maximum traceability, you could throw in LTE or satellite connectivity for logging major audit events or triggering certain device features remotely.
The police can and should be held to a higher standard regarding evidence and chain of custody. The tools are only half of this picture. It is a synergistic approach.
I'm curious as to who is responsible for not properly erasing the files: the IT department, or the manufacturer. It could be that the station didn't wipe/reset the cameras before selling them. Or they only reinitialized the file system. Or the firmware's reset function only reinitializes the file system rather than shredding the contents.
I can only imagine that the information security story around all of this kind of hardware is probably pretty awful.
This is precisely why you should drill through hard drives and flash media before removing them from your secure areas.
https://www.azmirror.com/blog/fort-huachuca-police-body-cam-...
Its kinda sad, I love the idea of reusing old electronics instead of dumping them, but is usually too difficult to secure.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Please, read the guidelines. It should be pretty clear that I know an SD-card isn't a server.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1278413772680507392.html
Personally, I think this is bad form. He should have quietly told the seller that the data is recoverable rather than broadcast it all over Twitter. The last thing we need is the Police finding reasons NOT to wear bodycams.
Even if they're busting a brothel? Or arresting drunk drivers? Or breaking up a bar fight?
I get that people want transparency for "public servants" but I dont think people necessarily want transparency into regular peoples lives even if their actions are questionable. That leads to 24/7 suveilence under the poor argument of "if you have nothing to hide..."
I work with a company that provides this type of technology for FOIA requests so I'm fairly familiar with it :)
This isn't a hypothetical btw. This is actually how it happens in many jurisdictions, and some law enforcement agencies are being proactive about this and thinking through how to be more transparent without risking privacy of innocent or guilty parties (both deserve privacy).
I mean, many employers go as far in that direction as they legally can. See the recent thread here about "bossware."[0]
However, my employer can't seize my private property, lock me or my family in a cell, torture me or simply shoot me dead in the middle of the street in broad daylight and get away with it. Police can, and do, all of those things all the time.
What might be a better idea is stripping them of their privileged position. Today, if a police officer says something in court, it is automatically the truth. Take that away from the police, and let the camera be the official truth teller. Give accused people automatically a full version, so prosecutors can't edit against them.
UPDATE whoops, this should be attached to the grandparent post.
Furthermore, when I was being paid by government grant money, we were accountable for every thing we did while being paid and every penny we spent. We were required to make regular reports and justify everything. It'd be nice to see even that level of accountability with policing.
You can always... get another job. If you don't accept the surveillance that comes with your power to inflict violence with impunity, maybe you shouldn't be given the power in the first place.
In EU there are shows where TV crew is embedded in highway police (traffic police). They never let people off with a warning. I literally never seen it happen.
And in Europe in real life you have a chance to be caught for small infraction and receive waggle of the proverbial finger of the law.
So having all police live stream their cams might not only curb bad behavior of bad cops, but also good behavior of good cops.
So to answer your question, yeah, I fully expect my employer to record what I am doing all the time and it’s a price that unfortunately I have to pay to survive in this digital world.
If the DA determines that a crime was likely committed, then they can decrypt the footage and review, otherwise it stays stored for a short period of time, then destroyed.
On the other hand: Not letting police get away with torture, murder, planting evidence, lying about what happened, throwing innocent people in jail.
Hmm... tough choice.
Do not compare it with other jobs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(Eggers_novel)
Spoiler: creating a public panopticon doesn’t necessarily results in a sane society
I don't think OP believes that. But it's what they said.
I suspect that there probably is a way to wipe these, although I don't know for sure, and the manufacturer should take this as an opportunity to remind agencies to do so before disposal.
Another reason Twitter is a poor substitute for a blog post.
I only see 4 photos at that point and have to click "11 more replies" to see more, but there's no indication that there's more before you "open" the first tweet.
> Me trying to extract video from this body cam like: OHHHH please work!
more like: "me putting my head in a lion's mouth"
Not an attention seeking twitter thread with lolspeak...