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UK Rolls Out Police Headcams
It's been a while since I've written about the coming surveillance society, but I couldn't let an AP story in today's newspaper about British policemen equipped with helmet cams go by without comment. By providing dramatic footage of victims, suspects and witnesses, judges and jurors will be able to ``see and hear the incident through the eyes and ears of the officer at the scene,'' Minister of State for Security Tony McNulty said. Given various incidents of police brutality, you can see the additional upside that police might be more restrained if they knew someone was watching -- or they might just turn off the camera. The story also cites rowdy crowds quieting down when they realized they were being filmed, women having more confidence in pressing charges in domestic abuse cases, and so on. But, the article continues: the national rollout will tighten Britain's web of video surveillance, already the most extensive in the world. The country is watched over by a network of some 4 million closed-circuit cameras, and privacy advocates complain the average Briton is recorded as many as 300 times a day. and The Home Office said it was exploring other uses for the devices, including fitting them with the ability to send video live to a command centre, or special license-plate recognition software which would enable police to identify stolen or suspicious vehicles just by looking at them. The future is not going to be like the past. We can rush unthinking towards that future, or we can make conscious choices about what kind of future we want. There are trends too strong for any of us to stop, in which case we must think hard about how best to adapt. There are others where a small intervention at the right time can make all the difference. We can also set in place guidelines to mitigate harm. For example, in the case of the police headcams, "police were instructed to inform members of the public they were being recorded and that the footage not being used in an investigation had to be erased within a month of its creation" and The Home Office said the cameras — which have enough memory to hold 24 hours of video — were not intended to record continuously. Officers would turn the devices on and off at their discretion, speaking into the camera after turning it on to explain where, when and why they were starting it. A second explanation was required before turning the device off. How do you feel about a future in which you might always be on camera in any public space? What kinds of safeguards would you expect?
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Comments: 17
turph [14 July 2007 12:32 PM]
If we all agree to "the state" filming us, then "the state" must agree to us filming them.
If one day I can wear my personal head cam to document crappy airline service, ridiculous airport screening, and being stuck on a tarmac for 2 hours - then I might feel comfortable about being "observed" so pervasively.
Joe Wikert [14 July 2007 02:21 PM]
I love this idea and I hope we start doing the same thing here in the U.S. The more cameras and other tracking devices out there, the better. Yes, I'm sure this would be an outrage to all those "invasion of privacy" freaks, but it's a natural part of technology's evolution and an important weapon in the war on terror; do you suppose their great-grandparents lobbied against the development of better fingerprint detection techniques many, many years ago? ;-)
Will it truly be a deterrent and prevent someone from committing a crime? Who knows, but it's highly likely to reduce the number of repeat offenders; after all, tools like this will result in their lock-up before they can go back and commit their next crime.
Oh, one final point for those concerned about invasion of privacy... Nobody's going to sit around watching your every move. Your life is far too boring for that, and so is mine!
David Sterry [14 July 2007 04:47 PM]
A recent post on Slashdot mentioned retorts by Schnier and others to the "Nothing to hide" anti-privacy argument.
I'm concerned here about misuse of the videos...how long before a particularly juicy video gets leaked?
I do like the policy that videos will be erased after 30 days if not used in an investigation but how is that to be audited and by whom?
Karl Fogel [14 July 2007 08:26 PM]
I wonder if we aren't living in a brief interregnum, one that started with the invention of photography in the 1820's and ending Real Soon Now, as digital image manipulation techniques become so widely available as to make photographs unreliable as documents of reality, like paintings or memories.
It'll be a messy transition, though. Innocent people will be convicted on the basis of concocted photographic evidence... Politicians will be hounded out of office as doctored digital images circulate on the Internet showing them in various compromising positions... Who knows? Maybe it's already happening!
Eventually there will be some outrageous court case or something, in which convincing photographic evidence is demonstrated false beyond any doubt, by image-independent means, and photographs will lose their sacrosanct status.
Or maybe the primacy of images is built into the human brain, and even against our better judgement we will continue to lend them credence, even after everyone has the tools to do sophisticated digital image fabrication whenever they want.
rodot [14 July 2007 09:49 PM]
Lee Majors - The Bionic Man
Lindsay Wagner - The Bionic Woman
7 of 9 - The Borg
The iPhone
Technology is progressing by leaps and bounds. Before long single cpu chips will have exceeded the processing thoroughput of the human brain.
Should we be worried, maybe.
So, we have to roll with technology and adapt. But I DO have an issue with personal privacy. And public webcams whether stationary or personnel mounted does make me uncomfortable.
Just my two cents...
rodot
Security [14 July 2007 10:12 PM]
Remember the Rodney King riots across the nation in the 90's. Perhaps helmet cameras would prevent use of unnecessary force or even brutality
Ross Stapleton-Gray [14 July 2007 10:33 PM]
Re provenance of digital images, I wrote a piece for C4ISR Journal on digital camera fingerprinting, where images can be tied to the cameras that took them, in light of minor perturbations in the hardware introduced in the manufacturing process... lots of implications for assumed anonymity. But even that's amenable to spoofing, e.g., developing tools to "defingerprint" one's photos, or, worse, imprinting any image with the (false) fingerprints of someone else's camera. "But Senator Vitter, these photos of nekkid kids seem to be from your camera..."
dima [15 July 2007 05:53 AM]
I saw these cameras in Chicago already.
cdog [15 July 2007 12:13 PM]
@turph: what's stopping you? sounds like a good idea to me!
Mike [15 July 2007 12:15 PM]
This could be OK, if missing video footage is taken as prima facie evidence of police misconduct.
Anonymous [15 July 2007 03:06 PM]
What about filming police sponsored gangstalking and state sponsored gangstalking?
Anonymous [15 July 2007 03:10 PM]
Right on! And film the Navy buildings on Coronado Island in San Diego that are shaped like swastikas that you can find by searching Navy swastika.
anon [15 July 2007 03:54 PM]
I'd suggest reading the work of Steve Mann, a social critic and "cyborg", for a more nuanced view of surveillance and the implications of wearable cameras.
silentium [16 July 2007 03:19 AM]
The question is how much liberty and privacy are we willing to sacrifice for security ?
Glenn [16 July 2007 10:19 AM]
"How do you feel about a future in which you might always be on camera in any public space?"
Why not ask how we've felt about it for the past several years?
Really, how much privacy can you expect in a public place?
Dominique Verdejo [17 July 2007 03:11 AM]
How many times did I regret not having this kind of device turned on when messy drivers endanger others people lives on the highway ?
What You See Is What You Get as evidences, in many cases it will help.
Another tool for better police services.
Chris Wong [27 December 2007 09:22 PM]
Given that the officers can turn off the cam at their discretion, the cam won't work all the time as it was supposed to be. Again, I won't be surprised if anyone is going to abuse the system for their only needs....