I think most people on Voat agree that police bodycams are a positive step. It has been shown that accusations of police wrongdoing go down when police are made to wear cameras. It protects the police in situations where it is one persons word against another, it protects people from the police as they can't make up fictitious conversations you supposedly had with them when you end up in court.
I saw the latest episode of Blindspot (good show) where certain corrupt police were accessing body camera footage to blackmail members of the public. One case was of a gay football star who was caught on police bodycam and was subsequently blackmailed. I thought this brings up a very important issue.
How is police bodycam data currently stored? Who has access to it? How is that access recorded? How long is footage retained for? In the UK we have the freedom of information act, can anyone request to see any police footage or can you only request to see footage that contains you? Is the data stored offline or is it vulnerable to hacking?
Depending on the answers there are so many points of vulnerability where the system can be abused. What would be the best way to manage this data? If these vulnerabilities can't be managed do you think the positives outweigh the negatives?
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[–] RedditDead2005-2015 ago
I have to imagine it's still just a micro SD card. Unlike home security systems which can send wireless data to a security company's server, it would be too hard to avoid losing wireless signals for police on the move. I think police dashcam videos work the same way - via memory cards. Yeah, I'm sure if the police shot someone to death by mistake, they would rather lose the memory card and serve a year for tampering rather than get a 20-year sentence for murder.