A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations • Hacker News Board

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#301

Post by e12e » Sat, Oct 21, 2017, 2:46 PM UTC

RHSeeger wrote: post #238

stretchwithme wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess citizens will have to be the ones wearing body cameras.

I hear about people recording the police with their phones now and again, and it always makes me think of the balance between 1. If I have my phone on and recording, the police can seize it (ie, grab it from me). At best, I'd be able to turn it off, but it's been shown multiple times that they can force me to provide my fingerprint to unlock it. 2. If I turn my phone off (so they need my pin, which they can't force f…

At least on my Sony/Android phone it's possible to access a subset of the camera app from the lock screen (phone locked). No fingerprint reader, and the "pin" is a passphrase.

The phone is encrypted - but the battery isn't removable, and I assume there's more than one way to get at the data as long as the phone stays on (usb/pin header access, some form of cold boot attack, kernel 0day).

I seem to recall the iPhone used to be similar wrt using the camera on a locked device - you can disable the touch id and enable a more secure pin? (although, if it's still possible to brute force the hsm, going to a "secure" number of digits isn't really practical. But six digits with three attempts before actually hardware enforced cool down should help a bit. But even at just 1 guesses / 3 seconds on average, it'd at worst take a month (15 days on average) to get into such a device, assuming an automated/robot brute force toolkit - especially with faulty tamper resistant hw).

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#302

Post by stult » Sat, Oct 21, 2017, 2:46 PM UTC

KGIII wrote: post #98

will_brown wrote: post #60

I was recently the victim of an armed kidnapping, escaping only by jumping out of my own car from the driver seat while in gear with the gunman in the passenger seat. By the time the police arrived, my attacker escaped in my car and the first words out of the sergeants mouth was “cut the crap, quit jerking us around, what really happened?” Sure enough I was in a jurisdiction that only two months prior was equipped wi…

> As an officer of the court myself ... Could you elaborate on that? I have some thoughts but want to know if my thoughts are really valid. What type of court officer are you? Is it in the same jurisdiction? Things like that. I don't want to prejudice your responses. (I should also mention that my thoughts aren't going to put any blame on you.)

In practical terms in the US, nearly any time someone uses that phrase, they are an attorney. From context, OP is probably neither a prosecutor nor a criminal defense attorney, because they would likely mention that given its relevance.

Technically though, officer of the court is a pretty broad term that includes judges, magistrates, medical examiners and coroners, process servers, interpreters, and even bail bondsman. Anyone who plays a role in the functioning of the court and has duties to ensure justice is carried out. But really in practice you never hear anyone except lawyers refer to themselves as such.

It's usually a phrase we use to indicate that messing with us means messing with the judicial system, which tends to invite harsh punishment from judges, who are after all themselves attorneys.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#303

Post by mistermann » Sat, Oct 21, 2017, 2:50 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #124

JamesBarney wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An enormous amount of evil that has occurred in this world has involved peer pressure. And all evil has extenuating circumstances. I understand that to prevent evil we should understand the reasoning behind why people do bad things. But this doesn't make the people or acts less evil. Peer pressure or not, protesting accountability for your group after a member committed manslaughter is a bad act.

>Peer pressure or not, protesting accountability for your group after a member committed manslaughter is a bad act. I believe they were protesting the generalizations he insinuated about the entire police department. I found it distasteful, but the good cops had a reason to be pissed.

I don't know about everyone else, but until they start to step up and turn in the bad apples, I will personally continue to make generalizations. These people are police officers, it's their job to uphold the law.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#304

Post by mistermann » Sat, Oct 21, 2017, 2:54 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #125

rhizome wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should sprinkle some more "I think" and "I believe" and "I'm under the impression" when stating your opinions, because none of what you say is anything more than speculation and just-so stories.

When writing an opinion piece, at least in formal writing which has higher standards, writers are trained not to do that. At least in the writing classes I took ages ago. Here's why: https://preciseedit.wordpress.com/2009/06/19/in-my-opinion-i...

I don't know, if you ask me when in the field of public policy, this approach is a bad idea. When I encounter someone making proposals who is stating opinion as fact, I assume the person doesn't know the difference so I discount their opinion fairly strongly, because a lot if not most people in my experience genuinely don't know the difference.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#305

Post by mistermann » Sat, Oct 21, 2017, 2:56 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #34

mistermann wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Police officers are almost entirely decent people should perhaps be > Police officers are almost entirely almost decent people The fact that the "few" (so we're told) bad apples aren't rooted out by their fellow honest, law-abiding officers suggests they're not as squeaky clean as some might think.

I can't claim to be more than an almost decent person myself. If you require the police to be angels, well, those are in short supply down here... Note well: I am not saying that we should lower the standard of behavior that we expect police to abide by. I am merely saying that, in the real world, almost decent is probably the best we can actually find.

It doesn't require an angel to turn in a coworker who executes a black man in cold blood.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#306

Post by libertyEQ » Sat, Oct 21, 2017, 2:57 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #300

bobbinsbob wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I say I can't comment on the US system regards it's policing practices, from the outside looking in it all seems open to abuse. Where I come from the government funds the police, they don't make any profit from the likes of tickets etc. Currently the police are savagely being under funded as are all public sectors and crime is on the rise but the difference between the police and other public services is that pe…

Crime is not on the rise and the police are not underfunded(0). Where did you get this information? (0) Their pension plans are underfunded, but those plans are rediculous compared to private sector plans.

The person you are responding to stated that they are not in the US.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#307

Post by Instructor » Sat, Oct 21, 2017, 3:00 PM UTC

When the police are trained and accustomed to believe that abuses of power are legitimate behavior, why would they change that behavior with body cams? Regardless, the benefits of body cams go far beyond deterrent. They provide the population with the ability to produce evidence of police abuse and effect institutional change long term via legal action.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#308

Post by raisedbyninjas » Sat, Oct 21, 2017, 3:14 PM UTC

CJefferson wrote: post #268

RHSeeger wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear about people recording the police with their phones now and again, and it always makes me think of the balance between 1. If I have my phone on and recording, the police can seize it (ie, grab it from me). At best, I'd be able to turn it off, but it's been shown multiple times that they can force me to provide my fingerprint to unlock it. 2. If I turn my phone off (so they need my pin, which they can't force f…

I would love an app which started recording, while making best effort to get the video off my phone and into the cloud ASAP, perhaps sending only sound and a low quality image if bandwidth is low.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuser.b...

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#309

Post by raisedbyninjas » Sat, Oct 21, 2017, 3:16 PM UTC

Bromskloss wrote: post #293

will_brown wrote: post #60

I was recently the victim of an armed kidnapping, escaping only by jumping out of my own car from the driver seat while in gear with the gunman in the passenger seat. By the time the police arrived, my attacker escaped in my car and the first words out of the sergeants mouth was “cut the crap, quit jerking us around, what really happened?” Sure enough I was in a jurisdiction that only two months prior was equipped wi…

What is the redaction supposed to be used for?

It's supposed to protect the privacy of people in the video, e.g. recordings in bathrooms, bystanders, etc.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#310

Post by linsomniac » Sat, Oct 21, 2017, 3:17 PM UTC

I'm curious how the new study involved 40x more officers than the Rialto study, but only collected 5x more hours of video. Were the Washington officers using the cameras a tenth as much? The article goes on to say that in Washington they collect about 1,000 hours of footage a day, but previously they say the study involves over 2,000 officers, so this sounds like fairly low usage. It says researchers checked to make sure they were turning on the cameras "when they were supposed to" and "found a high level of compliance". Curious.