Blog Post,
Week 5
Video surveillance is becoming more
and more ubiquitous in both public and private spaces. Police departments, in response to various
high profile incidents involving the use of deadly force against citizens, have
begun deploying body cameras on officers. The Salt Lake City Police Department
currently uses the technology and the West Valley Police Department is
considering using body cams mounted on glasses worn by officers. Such use
raises a host of privacy issues.
Identify and discuss the potential privacy concerns with police use of
body cameras and specifically address whether such cameras should be equipped
with facial recognition technology.
Introduction
Public awareness and perception over
the use of excessive force
by Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) around the country—particularly
among African American youth—have lead to calls for implementing body
cameras for police officers including strong
support from the Obama administration.
Whereas the Bureau of Justice Statistics provides statistics on arrest-related deaths,
there is a dearth of information on police
shootings, and the Director of the FBI lamented, “[i]t is unacceptable that
The Washington
Post and the Guardian
newspaper from the U.K. are becoming the lead source of information about
violent encounters between police and civilians.” A key assumption behind the
recommendation to use body cameras is that it leads to a reduction
in crime as seen in the Rialto study although the increased interest in
this approach raised
privacy concerns by the public
as well as by the police. Some of these concerns include excessive control
by the police over the footage recorded, increased profiling of suspects and
former convicts, public access to the footage, proper use and preventing
misuse, etc.
Privacy Concerns
There is broad
consensus on the privacy implications of body camera use by LEAs amongst
civil rights advocates, who outlined civil rights principles for such use. In addition to concerns by private citizens,
other studies have also addressed privacy
concerns among police officers. Federal
law blocks the warrantless
capturing of photo or video images of people where they have an expectation
of privacy, and most states have similar laws.
Additionally, obtaining consent can be problematic
in states with two-party consent, and less of an issue in states with
single party consent. For example, in
Washington, the Seattle Police Council determined that because audio recording
without all parties’ consent was forbidden under state law, body cameras were
in violation
of state law which carved out exceptions for dashboard cameras on police
cars, but not body cameras. Body cameras
could also capture innocent bystanders who are not
suspects in the stop, and this risk could be further elevated by the use of
facial recognition technology. Body cameras could also exacerbate
the traumatic experiences of victims of crime, those in medical
emergencies, etc. when they realize that the experience was captured on
video.
Facial Recognition
Technology
We have discussed the use
of biometrics and facial recognition technology at length in previous weeks
in this class, as it pertains to private businesses. The use
of this technology, particularly in combination with body cameras by police
officers raises even more
important privacy concerns. Such technology has already been used in Europe
and Canada, where it has already raised
privacy concerns. However, privacy
concerns in those countries may be alleviated to a certain extent due to the
presence of robust federal privacy
laws, which protect
private citizens. The U.S. does not currently
have such protections at the federal level, and we have previously discussed
the merits of adopting a federal
right to be forgotten. Due to the inherent
differences between the U.S. and Europe, however, implementing similar
legislation here may not be easy, which leaves us with state laws and the
possibility of states adopting model
recommendations to address privacy concerns over facial recognition
technology in body cameras.
In its revised recommendations
regarding the use of body cameras by LEAs, the ACLU specifically recommends
against using facial recognition or other types of analytics on videos recorded
by officers during public interaction. The
potential problems as well as the public policy benefits of facial recognition technology
used by police officers as opposed to that used by private businesses are very
different than the ones we have discussed
previously. Consent to identify (separate
from consent to record discussed above) remains a common thread in private as
police use of facial recognition, and is inherently difficult to obtain consent
before
the technology identifies a person due to its very nature. The dangers posed by automated facial
recognition coupled with police body cameras are similar
to those of Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs), which we have also discussed
previously. Facial recognition on
body cameras—because of the “always on” recommendations that help make those strategies
effective—could constantly check every face it encounters in public against a state
or national criminal databases in real-time, or at a later time using batch
processing.
Recommendations
In order to address these concerns,
LEAs need to define a comprehensive set of policies surrounding the use of
BC. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) addressed these concerns in a whitepaper
that provides recommendations
on the use of body cameras by police officers. The whitepaper covers two main areas: control
over recordings, and limiting the threat to privacy. The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) has also published a comprehensive
whitepaper
that describes the lessons learned from body camera use by police
departments around the country, and develops several key recommendations. In addition
to these policies, LEAs would also want to develop concrete policies like the Metropolitan Police
Department informing police officers regarding camera
use by by private citizens, members of the press, etc. during the
performance of their duties.
Conclusion
In the absence of proper local oversight
and strong federal and state privacy protections the combination of always-on body
cameras and facial recognition technologies may pose a danger to society and
lead to the creation of a police state. However,
if police departments were to adopt robust policies like the ones above proposed
by the ACLU, the PERF and others, then concerns related to data retention, analytics
techniques, use unrelated to the actual crime or police misconduct incident,
etc. could be mitigated.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Vik's position above, and he thorough outlined the privacy implications surrounding body cameras. The one privacy concern that is often over-looked is the privacy rights of the officers themselves. Many officers now fear for their jobs. They worry about a disparaging comment about their supervisors being captured and reviewed. If not turned off properly, the cameras would record the officer's bathroom and locker room activities. The cameras are intended to increase the accountability of officers. Dashboard cams turned out to be a valuable asset to law enforcement in exonerating them in many cases. Perhaps law enforcement will ultimately find body cameras to be similarly useful and won't mind the infringement on their privacy. The larger picture is likely that the officers have waived their privacy right by terms of their employment. Holding law enforcement accountable for their actions is of such large social value that we, as a society, are willing to infringe upon the privacy rights of law enforcement to achieve that goal.
ReplyDeleteI thought the ACLU’s White Paper 2.0 contained several proposals that would help mitigate privacy concerns. The one area that still concerns me is the area of public disclosure, especially in the context of any member of the public being able to request the body cam footage. Several of the articles identified the privacy concerns of victims and witnesses should the body cam footage become public. The white paper proposes getting the consent of “subjects” in the video before that footage will be released. This seems somewhat problematic. If subjects are limited to the suspect, arrestee, or victim, this approach would work, as the police would know their identity. However, police would not necessarily know the identity of others who might be captured by the footage. It seems as though just obscuring their images/ voices would be the easiest remedy. However, there still exists the issue of what if a “subject” does not consent to the video being released. Perhaps they were never arrested or convicted and they would prefer that the public not have access to that interaction. The issue might also arise that LE is the one making the determination of whether to release the footage so there may also be allegations of “the fox guarding the henhouse” type of scenarios.
ReplyDeleteAlthough recording is advantageous in many respects, one must question the immense risk of hindsight bias when it comes to incidents from recordings. The public many times will see what they want to see out of an event where there is not the full recording (even when there is the full recording) perhaps one solution would be to only allow such recordings be utilized in the court room. Hindsight bias is especially troublesome where videos would be flagged for certain incidents. In addition, in order for the technology to be effective police would have to constantly wear it even on their breaks and thus the question remains if those conversations will be of public interest. Even if such recording were private, it would not prevent the immense privacy concerns for the average citizen. For instance, consensual police encounters coupled with facial recognition technology could potentially turn every policy encounter into a “stop.” The Supreme Court in Hiibel held that Stop and Identify laws should be left up to the states. In some states if an officer has reasonable suspicion he/she can require a person to give them their name. In regards to wearable cameras one must ask if police would need reasonable suspicion to then go up and speak casually to someone—or is this essentially circumventing the need for probable cause? If such recording is equipped with more than just mere recording—facial recognition technology—then the answer would have to be a profound yes in that wearable cameras necessarily violate the 4th Amendment.
ReplyDeleteThe benefits of these body cameras seems irrefutable. Even the ACLU concedes that they are great mechanism for police oversight. It seems that the social benefits of the combined use of facial recognition technology with these body cameras in real time do not outweigh society'd interests to not be indiscriminately identified with body cameras. For instance, if law enforcement needs body camera footage for a criminal investigation, then it would strike an appropriate balance for law enforcement to scan this footage after the fact rather than in real time. In this way, law enforcement may be able to obtain the proper search warrants or critical pieces of evidence without simultaneously identifying individuals in real time. As Vik points out, given these body cameras are "always on," there does not seem to be a way to combine facial recognition with body cameras without creating the ubiquitous surveillance the ACLU and others fear. Unless there is a practical manner to constantly use body cameras while only using facial recognition at the proper times, then facial recognition combined with body cameras cannot be used in such way that satisfies the traditional Fourth Amendment balancing used for other warrantless and suspicionless searches.
ReplyDeleteThere seem to be so many interesting privacy concerns related to the use of police body cameras, and Vik certainly did a great job of identifying and discussing these concerns. It would seem to me that there is a great threat to our privacy if police were given the technology to identify every person that happened to pass in front of their body cameras. It seem that most sides agree that body cameras are a good thing either to hold police accountable for their actions or as a useful tool for law enforcement. However, both sides also see privacy concerns that could be at stake, thus striking the right balance seems to be a daunting yet very important task. I think that body cameras armed with real-time facial recognition capabilities push the line too far, how much farther must the boundaries be pushed before the public realizes that we have, little by little, given up too much of our privacy. When that day comes will it be too late to get it back?
ReplyDelete