Criminal Justice Research Journal

Beyond Surveillance: Data Control and Body Cameras Joh, Elizabeth E . Surveillance & Society ; Kingston  Vol. 14, Iss. 1,  (2016): 133-137.

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ABSTRACT (ENGLISH) At a critical moment in American policing, we have embraced body-worn cameras as a tool of police reform and

accountability. After the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, as well as other controversial

deaths of African-Americans at the hands of officers, American police have drawn intense public scrutiny (Lauter

and Pearce 2015). While some proposed police reforms in response to these deaths have been controversial,

lawmakers, police chiefs, and activists alike have supported police adoption of body-worn cameras (Elinson 2015).

Yet a February 2016 study found that only nine states had any explicit guidelines on how body-worn cameras

should be used (Urban Institute 2016). Body-worn cameras collect video data -- lots of it -- and as a result, civil

liberties groups and scholars have raised questions about increased government surveillance. But the potential

use of these cameras as surveillance tools, while an important concern, ignores an equally pressing problem. FULL TEXT  

Introduction

At a critical moment in American policing, we have embraced body-worn cameras as a tool of police reform and

accountability. After the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, as well as other controversial

deaths of African-Americans at the hands of officers, American police have drawn intense public scrutiny (Lauter

and Pearce 2015). While some proposed police reforms in response to these deaths have been controversial,

lawmakers, police chiefs, and activists alike have supported police adoption of body-worn cameras (Elinson 2015).

Of seventy large U.S. police departments recently surveyed, ninety-five per cent responded that they had or were in

the process of adopting body-worn cameras (Maciag 2016). In May 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice

announced the availability of $20 million for local police departments to adopt these cameras (Berman 2015).

Without a doubt, police body cameras "are here to stay" (Hermann and Weiner 2014).

But this rapid adoption has come with a cost. Before 2015, only four states had passed any laws regarding police

body-worn cameras; by 2015, a majority of them had done so (NCSL 2015). Yet a February 2016 study found that

only nine states had any explicit guidelines on how body-worn cameras should be used (Urban Institute 2016).

Body-worn cameras collect video data-lots of it-and as a result, civil liberties groups and scholars have raised

questions about increased government surveillance. But the potential use of these cameras as surveillance tools,

while an important concern, ignores an equally pressing problem.

In our big data age, "seeing, monitoring, and recording the digital footprints is quite different from sharing,

releasing, revealing or publicizing the data" (Harcourt 2015). Police body camera policies must address not only

concerns about surveillance, but also data control. The absence of clear data control policies will result in

confusion, both for the police and the public, about who has access to see, share, and delete data produced from

body-worn cameras. And without strong presumptions in favor of sharing the data with the public, the reform,

accountability, and legitimacy potential of body worn cameras will go unfulfilled.

Who controls the data?

The regulation of new police surveillance technologies-of which body-worn cameras are only one example-must

address data control: the conditions of its production, analysis, storage, and access. Pervasive data collection of

personal information, whether by government agencies or private companies, is already a reality for most

Americans. Third parties use that data, once collected, to make decisions about our consumption, health,

employability, and creditworthiness. Even the police rely on data collected in private databases. In this way, the

information produced by police body cameras joins the data trails already surrounding us. And body-worn camera

adoption by the police will likely only be a precursor to other public officials (e.g. teachers) and private actors

(insurance adjustors) following suit (Maciag 2015; Mims 2015). Matters of responsibility, innocence, and liability

will depend on who controls the data that can answer these questions. Thus the "data fate" (Marx 2012) of the

information produced by these cameras will influence the use of this technology well beyond policing.

What are the conditions of data production?

The very design of a police body-worn camera can influence the resulting data (Kaste 2015). Seemingly mundane

questions of equipment design and cost can shape the information produced. These important questions,

however, are dictated by private companies, not public agencies. In the case of surveillance technologies, the

police are purchasers and consumers of third party products (Joh 2016: 38). Two manufacturers, Taser and VieVu,

dominate the police-worn body camera market (Mearian 2015). As a result, only two companies wield

disproportionate influence over the design of police body-worn camera data collection and control.

Start with the recording decision. If a camera is only subject to manual control, key discretionary decisions about

when and why to record are left up to the individual officer. A failure to record may be the result of accident, stress,

or deliberate misconduct. An affirmative decision to record might be a legitimate attempt to enhance

accountability or, worse, to humiliate or invade privacy felt in an intimate setting like a home. Any of these

outcomes are possible when the recording decision is left to the individual officer. We could remove that

uncertainty through design (Stroud 2015). A different type of camera could take the recording decision away from

the officer altogether, by livestreaming the video images to the agency datacenter (Li 2014).

Next, a body-worn camera that records secretly does little to foster trust in the police and may increase public

suspicion. A requirement that police provide a verbal warning leaves notice up to officer discretion. A better

alternative or supplement would be "visceral notice" by design (Calo 2012), such as a blinking red light, when a

camera is recording. Eliminating secret recording may increase notice, but with other mixed results. Knowledge of

a police body camera in operation may discourage some people from coming forward or inhibit how they speak to

the police. Yet a camera that can operate in "stealth mode" may also foster public mistrust. These design details

affect the ultimate production of the data, and yet few have recognized their significance. Moreover, if these

design elements influence data production, the input should come from the public, and not only corporate interests

and the police.

How will the data be stored?

Those police departments that have already adopted body-worn cameras report that vast amounts of data result

from even limited amounts of camera use. By one estimate, some large police departments are producing more

than 10,000 hours of video data a week (Sanburn 2016). This amount of data created is often beyond the capacity

of most conventional police departments to store themselves.

To meet these needs, private companies offer data storage services-sometimes the very same companies that

supply the cameras. This third party storage is costly: in fact, it is often the most expensive part of police body-

worn camera programs. Profit margins are much higher for video storage than they are for the cameras

themselves (Mearian 2015). Indeed, data storage costs are sometimes cited as a reason why police departments

may be reluctant to adopt body-worn cameras at all (Ryan 2016). Thus data storage costs may be an unrecognized

factor that influences decisions about which kinds of incidents officers will record in the first place.

No matter where police body-worn camera data is stored, there remain questions of when data should be deleted.

Here the values of privacy and accountability may lie in tension. The few states that have addressed body-worn

camera video storage limits have generally erred on the side of limiting video storage unless it is involved in a

criminal investigation (Urban Institute 2016). Shorter storage times means there is less data (of the innocent as

well as the guilty) available for inspection and analysis. Yet longer data storage periods may enhance public

accountability if it means that the public-citizens, journalists, and researchers-can access video that can illuminate

individual cases as well as general policing practices.

How will the data be processed?

In the age of big data, digital information once collected may be endlessly analyzed, sifted, and sorted for different

purposes (Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier 2013: 122). Facebook sends targeted advertising to its users based on

their posts. Tinder, the dating app, now matches its users to presidential candidates (Opam 2016). The data

captured by police body-worn cameras will likewise be subject to the same analysis and reuse.

The data collected by body-worn cameras could be subjected to various software applications that would further

law enforcement interests, not accountability concerns. Body-worn cameras could incorporate license plate reader

or facial recognition technology. Adoption of these technologies raises distinct questions of police discretion and

policy. To what ends should a body-worn camera equipped with facial recognition technology be used? Most

people will probably agree that the police should be able to identify those suspected of "serious" crimes, but is

there a lower limit? Should police be able to use these cameras to identify, for instance, those persons delinquent

on property taxes (Clift 2015)?

How will the data be shared?

Body-worn cameras have been touted as tools of police reform, but if the resulting data is secret, reform is

impossible. Consider the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, shot 16 times by Chicago Police in 2014.

Even after journalists raised repeated questions about the circumstances of the shooting, the city refused to

release the video of the shooting for 13 months, until forced to by a judge's order. Cook County State's Attorney

Anita Alvarez had taken no action in the case until, on the day of the video's release, she announced first degree

murder charges against Officer Jason Van Dyke for his role in McDonald's death (Glenza 2016). Within days, Mayor

Rahm Emanuel fired Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. Heavily criticized for her inaction until the release of

the video, Alvarez lost a primary challenge shortly thereafter (Davey 2016). As the McDonald case shows, it is data

control as much as collection that will matter in the use of police body-worn cameras.

Yet departments around the U.S. have not yet developed clear policies about data sharing. Some departments

have adopted internal policies restricting public access to body-worn camera video, while some state and local

governments are considering legislative measures to do the same (Hermann and Davis 2015). Nearly every state

has law enforcement exemptions to public records requests; these may be invoked to bar most public access to

data created by police body cameras (Urban Institute 2016). At the other end of the spectrum, the Seattle Police

Department has posted videos taken during its body-worn camera pilot project on YouTube, with sensitive images

blurred (Kravets 2015).

National questions, local responses

Most of the wide variation in data control policies can be explained by the highly decentralized nature of American

policing. Instead of a national police force, American policing is represented by the approximately 18,000 state and

local agencies that assume responsibility for policing (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2011). Consequently, it is nearly

impossible for uniform policies to be imposed upon such a large number of distinct police departments. And for

some, that variation is desirable. The President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, for instance, emphasizes

that the implementation of new technologies, including body-worn cameras, "should remain a local decision to

address the needs and resources of the community" (President's Task Force 2015: 35).

Will the surveillance and privacy implications of police body-worn cameras be worth any increase in

accountability? The answer, as I have suggested here, depends greatly on questions of data control. While

systematic monitoring alone can affect one's behavior, equally important are unresolved questions of how any

resulting data is stored, analyzed, and shared. Collected data presents the danger of an endless surveillance loop:

monitoring that results in data that justifies even more monitoring. And as this response has suggested, these

questions will apply with equal force to every new technology the police adopt to collect information.

Who has power over "controlling the data flows" is the ultimate political question that attends body-worn camera

adoption by the police (Harcourt 2015). Yet in the rush to respond to calls for greater police accountability, many

American police departments lack consistent, clear, or-in some cases-any, formal policies regarding how to control

that data. Without clear limits, body-worn cameras may become just another tool for law enforcement rather than

a mechanism for police accountability.

References

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AuthorAffiliation

Elizabeth E. Joh

University of California, Davis School of Law, US.

[email protected]

DETAILS

Subject: Surveillance; Activism; Black Americans; Reform; Police; Civil rights; Police

community relations; Accountability; Law enforcement; Privacy; Public access; Data

collection; Camcorders

Location: United States--US

People: Brown, Michael

Classification: 1653: social control; police, penology, &correctional problems

Publication title: Surveillance &Society; Kingston

Volume: 14

Issue: 1

Pages: 133-137

Number of pages: 5

Publication year: 2016

Publication date: 2016

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Section: Debate

Publisher: Surveillance Studies Network

Place of publication: Kingston

Country of publication: United Kingdom, Kingston

Publication subject: Social Sciences: Comprehensive Works

ISSN: 14777487

Source type: Scholarly Journals

Language of publication: English

Document type: Journal Article

Document feature: References

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24908/ss.v14i1.6286

ProQuest document ID: 1802200640

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Copyright: Copyright Surveillance Studies Network 2016

Last updated: 2018-09-06

Database: Criminal Justice Database