Should Cops Wear Google Glass? 223
Nerval's Lobster writes "Over at The Kernel, staff writer Greg Stevens wonders whether police departments around the world should outfit their officers with Google Glass. There's some logic behind the idea. A cop with wearable electronics constantly streaming audio and video back to a supervisor (or even a Website) would be less likely, at least in theory, to take liberties with civilians' civil liberties. But not everybody thinks it's such a good idea. Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, wrote in a recent blog posting that society needs to make choices 'about the extent to which we want to allow the government to store up that data so that it has the power to hit 'rewind' on everybody's lives.' In the view of that organization, 'that's just too much power.' That being said, law enforcement wearing electronics that streams constant video and audio data would still be subject to the law. 'If the officer is recording a communication he has in public with someone, there's probably no wiretap problem since there's at least the consent of one party and no expectation of privacy,' Hanni M. Fakhoury, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote in an email to Slashdot. 'But if he's recording peripheral communications between two separate individuals, than there's potential wiretap liability depending on the circumstances.' What do you think? Are cops wearing Google Glass (or similar wearable electronic) a good idea?"
San Francisco Fire is banning helmet cams (Score:5, Interesting)
The San Francisco Fire Chief just banned [sfgate.com] fire helmet mounted cameras after helmet-cam footage from the Asiana crash became public. Some say it was done to protect the privacy of victims, others to protect the city from liability as in this case where one of the victims was still alive when run over by a responding fire truck.
not google glass, but recorders (Score:4, Interesting)
It is a good idea to have cops wear personal video recorders at all times.
By the same token, it might be a good idea for a lot of other people to do the same thing.
The wiretap laws need to be adjusted to make recording anything you might otherwise see with your eyes permissible unless its copyrighted information. Obviously you can't have people walking into movie theaters with cameras active. But a lot of situations legally would be a lot more simplistic if we had video evidence in all altercations.
Corruption and bribery would be less of an issue. Various types of non-fatal assault... accidents. All of it would be easier to process if we had video evidence.
Re:Just for video recording? (Score:2, Interesting)
Because it enables constant video recording in a way which is much easier than using a separate video camera or a smartphone.
The point is that glasses with video cameras have been available for quite some time. As well, there are devices specifically targeted at Law Enforcement that you can clip to your pocket that also can "stream" video to a recorder or Internet connection.
The thing that Glass has is the "HUD".
Re:Who watches the watchers (Score:4, Interesting)
You act like every cop in the world needs to be monitored so they don't do bad things. How often do you actually hear about a police officer in America doing something wrong on national tv? Very rarely, even locally I barely ever hear about that. So yeah, there a couple bad cops, but what about the other 934,976 cops that never get in trouble or do bad stuff?
You hear about it almost every week, if not every day. If you don't, then its only because you are not paying attention.
Google "police officer suspended" and limit it to any time frame you want. If you don't get 10 pages of hits I'd be surprised.
There are a lot of bad cops, and a lot of cops that are just bullies. There are even more cops that are provoked into taking actions they shouldn't take by taunting assholes, who somehow never show up in the news.
But by and large, this group of cops is small by comparison to the total number of cops that follow the rules most of the time, do their jobs without trying to piss off and provoke everyone they come into contact with.
So no, not every copy should wear recorders. But maybe if X number complaints filed against against an officer that guy gets to where the camera for a month.
It would serve two purposes. Shame the officer into better behavior, and warn the public that this guy has a short fuse.
Complicated Balance (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering the immense amount of power bestowed upon them and how they continue to demonstrate just how undeserving of it really are, we certainly want all actions of law enforcement to be fiercely scrutinized with the undeceiving eyes and ears of a camera and microphone. On the other hand, it carries a considerable potential to frequently violate individuals' privacy.
On balance, it should probably be uploaded to a private server, accessible only to some sort of civil rights watchdog group with the power to charge law enforcement with violations; and these charges need to have TEETH. No, officer, you don't get a paid vacation for bludgeoning and tazing a suspect because he might have been a bit rude or simply defensive of his rights ... you get charged for felony assault with a deadly weapon AND your wages/pension/whatever are garnished until you've paid out restitution, medical bills, etc.
A court order would be required for police access to specific footage and an additional, separate order for general publication. Release to private citizens or attorneys strictly for the purposes of legal defense would require only identification and an internal report.
Additionally, police should be required to immediately relinquish their duties to a fellow officer the instant the recording device ceases to function for any reason and continue only when it is repaired or replaced. Otherwise, the entire system is useless because oops, it just happened to malfunction at exactly the time I was accused of beating the suspect to a pulp -- I swear, he tripped and fell!
But who am I kidding... this is all a pipe dream as we are waaaaay too far down the rabbit hole of tyranny for anything like this to gain traction.
Re:Who watches the watchers (Score:5, Interesting)
That is exactly why they are so badly needed. Not Glass, but a continuous recording device.
Several cities started pilot programs with cop-cameras, and mine was among them buying 80 cop-cams. We had a few bad cops fired, complaints against cops almost vanished, and now the city is trying to make it mandatory for all cops on duty. They provide strong evidence both to support your innocence and to support your guilt. They also provide evidence against bad cops.
Look at the New York Times article regarding the results from one city: Complaints about abuse and civil rights violations dropped by 80%, use of force dropped by 60% [nytimes.com].
Bonus points are that the camera footage is evidence. If they are notified to keep the footage, they MUST do it and the MUST turn it over to your defense. As this type of footage grows we can demand "pics or it didn't happen". Just like the dash cams transformed traffic tickets (rate of claimed abuse plummeted, rate of fought tickets increased because there was video evidence) the same should spread to all aspects of police work. Around here it is already transforming defense lawyer's approaches because they can get unmodified views of the crime scene from every officer's point of view. (This becasuse the recordings are evidence, and any potentially exculpatory evidence must be shared with the defendant.)
I hope it takes off. If an officer says there was anything from a 'confession' of a crime or there are claims of police abuse, if there is no cop-camera footage the judge and jury should be asking, "what is this cop trying to hide?"
Re:Who watches the watchers (Score:5, Interesting)
There are even more cops that are provoked into taking actions they shouldn't take by taunting assholes, who somehow never show up in the news.
Don't call me an asshole. The cop swore at me first. So cops have the right to swear at regular citizens, but we do not have the right to swear back at them? Is this some kind of aristocracy class system, where cops are the only first class citizens?
But maybe if X number complaints filed against against an officer that guy gets to where the camera for a month.
Unfortunately in my state complaints against cops are kept strictly confidential. The only people who would know about them are the people who filed them and the cops themselves and the cops are not going to police themselves. That much should be pretty clear by now. Law suits are public record of course. That was one reason I wanted to sue my police attacker, but I couldn't afford the law suit and the cop probably would have finished off what he started and simply murdered me anyway. He's just that kind of guy.
But by and large, this group of cops is small by comparison to the total number of cops that follow the rules most of the time, do their jobs without trying to piss off and provoke everyone they come into contact with.
Bullshit. You have no better statistical basis to make such a claim than anyone else. Go read about the Stanford Prison Experiment and then try to say this with a straight face. Given power people turn bad. They turn mean and violent. And those are people that didn't even start that way. Most cops start that way and just grow worse when they graduate frorm school yard bully to professional thug.Your claim is more wishful thinking than anything else.
Re:Who watches the watchers (Score:4, Interesting)
You act like every cop in the world needs to be monitored so they don't do bad things. How often do you actually hear about a police officer in America doing something wrong on national tv? Very rarely, even locally I barely ever hear about that. So yeah, there a couple bad cops, but what about the other 934,976 cops that never get in trouble or do bad stuff?
Considering locations where they've equipped their cops with body cameras have seen as much as an 88% drop [techdirt.com] in excessive use of force complaints you might want to rethink those numbers. And in that case only half the officers were wearing the cameras.
"Wrong" is a relative term. I'm betting a great many cops do "wrong" things all the time and it doesn't get reported on the news. When the actions are being recorded all parties involved are much more likely to keep things civil. It means cops have to actually do what they're supposed to in de-escalating confrontations rather than instigating them.
Re:Federal Cop Experience (Score:5, Interesting)
And those thousand want the dirty ones gone, I bet.
I have a very high opinion of police. The level of professionalism has gone up so much in the past 40 years (at least in Northern cities) that it's like a completely different animal. Used to be, the guy from the people you hung out with who became a cop was the last guy you'd want with any authority. Now, the young people going into the academy are first-rate. I deal with them every day, living two blocks from the Chicago Police Academy. Maybe my perspective has changed, now that I have a family and property, but I know for sure they've changed. For the better.
The civilians who are giving the orders? Not so much. They seem more entranced by paramilitary hardware and tactics than by community policing, which is a damn shame.