back to article Security fears arise over body-worn plodcam footage

Fears have been raised over the security of information from the new police bodycam recordings held in the public cloud by US company Taser. Many police forces are increasingly opting for body-worn video as a way to increase transparency and evidence gathering. The Metropolitan Police had been trialling 1,000 Taser cameras. It …

  1. Eric Olson

    It's funny...

    Because the argument over here in the States is that body-cam footage is more than likely subject to various Freedom of Information Acts and would be released to reporters and other interested parties unless it was fell under some narrow exceptions in the law.

    And the other concern is that dash-cams are much the same, but cops have "problems" with those videos getting lost, destroyed, or misfiled after a citizen, usually the one who was being videotaped, requests a copy because there is belief that it would refute the officer's account of the situation or even exonerate the person facing prosecution. It's funny how quickly and easily the department gets the Quicky Mart security video or the dash cam out to the news stations when they think it proves their case, but it gets misplaced when there's a chance that Office Meathead is shown pistol-whipping some person who is already on the ground and restrained.

    1. Fred Dibnah
      Big Brother

      Re: It's funny...

      It's funny how quickly and easily the department gets the Quicky Mart security video or the dash cam out to the news stations when they think it proves their case, but it gets misplaced when there's a chance that Office Meathead is shown pistol-whipping some person who is already on the ground and restrained.

      Or how the CCTV just happens to not be working when armed Met men follow an innocent Brazilian into Stockwell tube station and shoot him dead.

      Unless plod have their plodcams on all the time, they will protect plods more than the public.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: It's funny...

        Bodycams should be legally required to record when they are turned on and off, and if a cop is found to have turned his off before an incident where there's a dispute, the court should weigh that strongly against his account of the facts.

        That would clear up a lot of these things and make bodycams useful for citizens to prove misconduct instead of just for cops to cover their ass.

      2. Adam 52 Silver badge

        Re: It's funny...

        The usual response to turning on a body worn camera is that the opinionated member of the public finds somewhere else to be...

        Camera on all the time? Like when you're taking the intimate sample from the rape victim or searching recently deceased granddad? You sure about that, people deserve some dignity in death and when they're the victim.

  2. Vimes

    In other news regarding servers and jurisdiction...

    http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/08/uk-wants-to-create-worlds-largest-honeypot-of-centralised-personal-financial-data/

    Microsoft & Google. Now what could possibly go wrong with that one?

    1. Mark 85

      Oh my... and we thought that there were issues with just corporates and the 5-eyes owning us.

  3. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

    Heads, you lose; tails, you lose.

    Relax, it's a privately run IT system; want could possibly go wrong? What's that you say? Ashley Madison? Y'know, you're right.

    So let's go with a publicly run IT system; what could possibly go wrong? What's that you say? Edward Snowden? You're right, we're fucked.

  4. Bob Dole (tm)

    Given the number of issues we have with be police departments, I'd like the body came to be like other webcams where anyone can pull up a browser and see what officer joe is doing today.

    Further I'd like the evidence rules be changed such that an officer can not give testimony unless the recording from the encounter is also available.

    I know there are a lot of bad people out there. The unfortunate thing is that the police force is also known to be harboring some of them and they need to be held to a much much higher standard.

    1. VinceH

      "Given the number of issues we have with be police departments, I'd like the body came to be like other webcams where anyone can pull up a browser and see what officer joe is doing today."

      Well, subject to a few limitations, yes. It would need to be off (or inaccessible to the public) in certain situations - for example, you wouldn't want this sort of conversation happening in Mr Bad Guy's house:

      Fred: 'ere, Bob, y'know that copper what was pestering us the other day?

      Bob: Yeah, PC Plod. What about 'im? 'e 'ad nuffink on us.

      Fred: 'e might of 'ad more 'n we thought.

      Bob: Whydya say that?

      Fred: I've just logged on to 'is bodycam.

      Bob: And?

      Fred: 'im and a bunch of other coppers are standing just around the corner...

  5. Steve 129

    But any Tom, Dick or Ass'ole can record, edit & release phone video??

    Double standards people. Why is it OK for every idiot to record something they don't like, edit the good bits then release to YouTube and the world as "All cops beat small black disabled, gay children" ??

    All the video SHOULD be open and available.

    Why do we never see phone video of the (pick your [un]preferred race) thug running up behind the cop and beating the crap out of him, putting him in hospital (as happened a few weeks ago) !!?? Ohh right... THAT side of the story is just not as exciting or contentious !!!

  6. tom dial Silver badge

    The rush in the US to mount body cams on all police officers so as to gain proof of or prevent allegedly unprovoked police murders of unarmed civilians of color often has led the advocates to skip over a variety of considerations. Cost is one. Despite the federal government proposal to offer money for purchase of a significant number of these, the ongoing operating cost remains largely unaddressed. Another big one is privacy, noted in this article. Many police encounters are for domestic matters likely quite embarrassing to all parties and in the end often of little or no enduring interest and not worth storing (and risk of public exposure). Repositories of such videos surely would be attractive hacking targets. In addition, custody and authenticity of police or other videos of events involving police could be an issue in later court proceedings. Some of the videos that were objects of great interest in connection with claims of police misbehavior either clearly were edited (Eric Garner's arrest) or were temporarily suspected of editing (Sandra Bland's arrest). Any editing of these particular videos probably is immaterial to any subsequent legal action, but as the number increases, chain of custody and security will be a significant issue if anyone wants to use them as evidence.

    As often happens, people lock onto simple answers to complex problems that are likely to be wrong or at least far from complete (credit to H. L. Mencken). Police use of body cameras may well inhibit bad behavior by both police officers and their clients, but will not end either. It is too easy for a police officer to turn off, forget or omit to turn on, or for a camera to be knocked off during an encounter that turns nasty. On the other hand, if these cameras are to be left running at all times the amount of mindless video collection is quite large, nearly 1,000 hours daily for the force in the middle sized city where I used to live that typically had 16 officers and 4 supervisors on patrol.

    1. Bob Dole (tm)

      @tom dial:

      Although you make an interesting argument, I'd like to point out a few things.

      1. Cost - The cost of body cameras is trivial compared to everything else they have. Taking the Ferguson force which has 54 officers, the cameras would run about $20,000 (US). That's far less than the price of just a single police car. BTW that city's police budget for 2014 was $5.2m, so we're talking about an amount equivalent to a rounding error. Of course, that's only one piece. Data storage runs around $60/month per camera, but, again, it's still peanuts.

      2. Risk of Exposure - Why would video be any more problematic to keep safe than normal police computer files? Presumably the same people interested in those "embarrassing" situations would equally be interested in any filed police reports. Never mind that you're right in that the vast majority of video would be incredibly boring: Cop sitting at a doughnut store, Cop driving the car, Cop getting coffee at a convenience store, and on and on. Quite frankly it would be boring as hell to sift through all that recorded video to find anything juicy. Either way, just because the data is saved doesn't mean it needs to be online 100% of the time. There are many ways to store video in a disconnected state, even if it means throwing it on SSD drives and left on an evidence shelf.

      3. Regarding an officer "forgetting" to turn on the device or "losing" the video. There are several potential ways of handling this. What would happen to a cop that habitually forgot their badge or gun? What if they left their belt behind? They'd be reprimanded and, if it continued, would eventually be fired over it. More importantly though you can bet that as the cameras become ubiquitous district attorneys would stop attempting to prosecute cases which didn't have video evidence. That alone would encourage a police officer to make sure the thing was on.

  7. JustWondering

    Perhaps ...

    ... the police are worried about unedited videos getting out into the wild. If I were them, I would want to be sure I had the only copies too.

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