Seattle Police hackathon to redact video streams recorded by police cams
geekwire.com
geekwire.com
As an example, cops show up on most EMS calls around here. I must admit, I find it a bit disquieting when a cop wearing a camera walks in while I'm providing care... Especially since HIPAA does not cover cops, so there is no legal protection for the information that ends up on the camera, only department policy. I would feel much better if I at least knew it was going to be automatically redacted, with the original video only available under a subpoena.
Then we'll just get to a point where the situation with the camera recording is actually worse than what we have now, because the cops we'll get only recording that benefits the cops, and none of the recording that doesn't.
It seems the government can "swing the pendulum" as much as it wants against the People, but it seems nobody wants to swing the pendulum against the government too much. God forbid the People get "too much power".
I am a paramedic. I take care of people in very compromising positions (most people don't worry about getting dressed if they're having a heart attack at 2am). I worry that _their_ privacy needs to be protected.
This also isn't simply about 'modesty'. There are many ways medical information could be used against someone (denied a job, denied housing, denied various forms of insurance, etc...). There are many reasons personal medical information needs to be protected.
It may seem trivial, but most people would be less shy about most of their transactions going out in the world than naked pictures of them in compromising situations.
If I didn't know it, why would I care?
If I did know it, then I would care a great deal, as HIV is still very much a stigmatized infection.
Having a camera in the room just runs counter to that idea, and makes me uncomfortable.
If anything every got out, I would have been liable. I fully accepted that. But I had full control.
If anything stored in the cloud ever got out, I still would have been liable, but I wouldn't have had any control. For sure, the cloud storage provider would have disclaimed liability and I'd still be the man on the spot.
I was glad to see it's actually quite reasonable.
That said, I'm not sure how it could ever be completely automated, short of accurate face recognition software trained with everybody in the region.
Obviously this is far from a simple task (how would you know if someone was on duty, etc), but it's certainly not impossible.
The code used should be free and open source. The hardware it's running on needs to be known, inspectable, and tamper-proof.
It's probably a good idea to get these questions answered first/soon. Proprietary and secretive code can stay entrenched for a long time and I'm not sure we want that.
The fact that I know that Video X at Specific date/time/place identifies someone means I can now correlate other records with it. In the case of witnesses, that's probably an issue.
They would be better having a discussion about controls on who can view such videos. For example, lawyers and juries see things under seal all the time. Also, it would be good for there to be a destruction date or a lockdown date at which point it requires more paperwork to get at the video. So, the general public can request within a year, legal requests to 3 years, judicial requests to 5, and destruction after that unless involved in a case.
Yes, I want the cops on video to be required to release to the press. But I also don't want to be front and center just because some cop walks by.
Which, of course, is where we seem to be headed anyway, and I think a significant portion of the audience on HN has no problem with it or is in favor of it.
I think it's distressing.
The reasons those on here give is along the lines of: because HIPAA, because it may be embarrassing for me if I get caught on video in some compromising way, because I might not get that job/promotion/etc (which seem to not be the ones we hear parroted in the news i.e. terrorism, to justify current asymmetries, not to mention no questioning of the utility of a job done by people which people seem to implicitly equate to be the only way resources can be allocated to people in any system).
I have yet to see those then go on to acknowledge in their plausible theoretical scenarios (that probably already happen to some degree without [sous]surveillance available to all easily) that because I may think I was wrongly looked over/scrutinized, what would stop me from then doing the same to those who would wield such over me in those same situations or anyone else?
I can see why it can be distressing if one is convinced that the way one grows up, is normalized to, generally reinforced by their society at large (and maybe less so as time goes by as society…changes) and finds solace in such way of being, figures that is the way the world must be. The unswaddled babies and young children uploaded to internet by their parents (and their parents friends and relatives) without any say, will probably wonder why all the old folks of their time care much when all they have known will be what is so foreign us today.
Wouldn't you want that video redacted in that case? There are plenty of other scenarios I can think of where redaction is very appropriate.
I know that more positive public interaction with the police is a Good Thing.
I just wonder why, as developers, we build tools that are used to oppress and capable of supporting oppression.
Unlike people who built large infrastructure in the past, we aren't slaves. We aren't starving indentured servants. So we have other options.
Why do we develop Prism. We do we develop tools to erode net neutrality. Why do we start hacking at the tools to erase police action before we understand the how and why behind the use of those tools.
Maybe its just been a long Sunday.
The human links tend to be the weakest ones.
"Your code will, in the literal sense of the word 'literally', save people's lives."
How do you pass that opportunity up?
On the flip side, when have tools of power ever been given up voluntarily? [ I don't know how to say this. I mean this stuff is all a Pandora's Box. Once it's here, it's here. ]
It's kind of like land mines. When you put them down you may have a very noble and legitimate goal to save the lives of your troops. In 20 years, the mines are still lying around for anyone to find. But does that necessarily invalidate the immediate needs of the time? It would be tempting to simply think "In 20 years we'll have the land mine problem solved, let's try to save our lives today".
I really think I could argue it both ways.
[Update: Maybe a better way to express my thought(and stay on topic) is relating to security vulnerabilities. You don't just pass around exploits to people. Some of the people are genuinely interested, but others will do harm.
People who take the time to learn and solve problems themselves have a greater respect for the tools they've built. People who inherit things don't necessarily respect them the same way.
Seattle PD is trying to solve a tough problem, and I would trust them. I don't necessarily trust them in 15 years though, when all these tools just kind of "exist"]
If you are receiving medical care do you want everyone to know about it just because a cop walked into the room?
If you are a minor should your sealed records be more easily determined? (because a cop recorded them)
If you are a victim of a crime should your identity be made knowable to others who may wish to silence you? What about witnesses?
Note what the article said: The video must be released! Even if it's mostly blurred out. If it's suspicious then the police department can be sued to get the full video.
The problem is that we don't have the open source (or for that matter publicly available private technology) technology to easily deploy a verifiable DRM (which is what we want, we want to manage the digital rights of how this video is edited) system. The police of Seattle are willing to equip every officer with cameras "TODAY", "right NOW", except and besides some problems. This was a question of "how can we solve this problem so that we can do this thing". It doesn't have to be perfect.
I live in Seattle and have interacted with SPD a few times. Never have seen a camera on anyone. That's a lot of data. Dashboard cams, I suppose?
Even assuming this hackathon(first-ever apparently) meant well, in the context of recent events and the main purpose of these cameras being introduced, this hackathon has horrible optics. Also, this quote implies a separation of "members of the public" and "police" which is a very big part of the problems we see today. The police are(or at least should be) considered part of the public(more specifically, the community they work in) and they themselves should not expect any privacy while on duty. This separation is a catalyst to apathy.
The opposite, however, is not true. Individuals--the set of humans who are not police officers undertaking duties--do have an expectation of privacy except when the law or common practice says otherwise. For example, I have no expectation of privacy when walking down a public street. I, unlike a police officer, do have an expectation of privacy when I am at work, except from my employer.
The Seattle Police Department has a bad reputation inside Seattle. (King County's Sheriff isn't too far behind, sadly.) As a voting resident of Seattle, I am thrilled both that the police department is working on it and that the City Council is holding them to reforms.