The whole point of body cams is to divorce citizens from any identity protection under the law. This is also why the DoL takes your facial ID when you get a new license. The SPD doesn't want to protect your identity. They want to monitor your movements using public video rights to datamine your every coming and going, 1984 style. This is a direct attempt to negate the Federal freedom of association, from a coalition of multiple regional agencies.
My concern is that without strong controls constraining use of the devices, police-worn body cameras will eventually result in police building a database of where and when each of us is seen in public.
They're doing something very similar now with license plate scanners. Those were sold to the public as a way of finding stolen vehicles, abducted children, and fugitives. That may be the case, but it is not the primary use of ALPR. Police troll the streets with them, recording every time-location-plate observation and storing that information away in case it's useful later, regardless of whether a given plate they scan is associated with someone who has violated the law, or if the vehicle's owner is presumed innocent.
Hasn't the Supreme Court ruled time and again that you have NO presumption of privacy when you are in a public place? You can't have it both ways. Either the cops are recording everything or they should record nothing. Let the courts sort out what is and isn't admissible.
I offered that comment at the event after a discussion about blurring body camera video before releasing it to the public. I'm less concerned about that than I am about having video blurred before police share it with the federal government or perform face recognition on it themselves.
@4: If you and I are walking through a public park while having a quiet conversation, it's reasonable for us to assume that someone is not hiding in a tree with a parabolic microphone aimed at us, it's reasonable for you to assume that someone is not recording up your skirt from a camera mounted at the base of a park bench, and it's reasonable for us, as two presumed-innocent people, to assume that our government is not making a record of when, where, and with whom we walked after we left our private residences.
#8, Orwell's 1984 depicted a highly monitored state, with cameras watching the streets and in the televisions. Enforced uniformity is one of many concepts in 1984, and one of the less relevant ones in modern society. Propaganda and its use of NLP as well as surveillance methodologies are much more important in today's context.
@8 Venom-gash doesn't think cops videotaping everything is evidence of the surveillance state, in the way that the State, as the only possessor of the means of violence, won't abuse its station.
@10 Oh I'm sure he's read them already. I mean actually read them not just scanned the Cliffs Notes versions as your knowledge of those texts appears to indicate.
@7: The police don't have the numbers to care about your conversation in the park or who you meet for coffee. The camera in the park or near the cafe door may help find your attacker if you're mugged, though.
I don't have much of an opinion one way or the other about video-only static cameras in public, but some of the arguments put up are simply asinine.
@12: They don't have the numbers if you mean numbers of staff. Electronic surveillance devices, though, are limited only by their rapidly-dropping prices and rapidly-increasing capabilities.
The point I meant to make @7 was that we do, in fact, have some reasonable expectation of privacy when we are in public places. A quiet conversation in a public park when there are not people in earshot is private. The view up one's skirt while standing in a public place is private.
The history of where I go when I'm in public and with whom I associate there is nobody's business but those who were with me. Of course those who are nearby learn where and with whom I was, but the occasional human bystander is very different than a fleet of surveillance devices deployed by our government, slurping up and storing away everything they can learn about us when we are in public.
If ...
You're so adorable...
They're doing something very similar now with license plate scanners. Those were sold to the public as a way of finding stolen vehicles, abducted children, and fugitives. That may be the case, but it is not the primary use of ALPR. Police troll the streets with them, recording every time-location-plate observation and storing that information away in case it's useful later, regardless of whether a given plate they scan is associated with someone who has violated the law, or if the vehicle's owner is presumed innocent.
Christmas reading list:
1984 - George Orwell
Animal Farm - George Orwell
I don't have much of an opinion one way or the other about video-only static cameras in public, but some of the arguments put up are simply asinine.
The history of where I go when I'm in public and with whom I associate there is nobody's business but those who were with me. Of course those who are nearby learn where and with whom I was, but the occasional human bystander is very different than a fleet of surveillance devices deployed by our government, slurping up and storing away everything they can learn about us when we are in public.
You have no right to assume privacy when in public.
Everyone has the right to photograph whatnot when in public.
You guys at the Stranger SHOULD DAMN WELL UNDERSTAND THIS BY NOW.
Ref: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/hosti…