The millions being spent on police cameras only serve as a gift to Tazer and the other paramilitary industrial complex companies. True reform will only come from the continued release of uncensored citizen video. The right to record must be protected at all cost.
Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
21–30 of 42 posts
Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#22On it's surface making the footage not immediately public isn't a bad idea. The classic example would be a swat team showing up at the wrong house, busting down the door, and having video footage of John Q Citizen in his birthday suit. As long as there is a process for getting access to the footage that's impartial, that's fine. What's really needed though is a way to escrow the footage. This is a solved problem in t…
Not even de facto, if they genuinely broke the law, they are de jure criminals!
Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#23On it's surface making the footage not immediately public isn't a bad idea. The classic example would be a swat team showing up at the wrong house, busting down the door, and having video footage of John Q Citizen in his birthday suit. As long as there is a process for getting access to the footage that's impartial, that's fine. What's really needed though is a way to escrow the footage. This is a solved problem in t…
Why not just host it publicly but encrypted (Effectively doing what's being done now). Then release the key when a request is made.
Have the keys be a subkey of a DA, Judge or other high ranking individual. Then when the police 'lose' the key, the video can still be recovered.
Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#24Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#25Half good, half bad: House Bill 972 does make such video accessible to people who can be seen or heard in it, along with their personal representatives ― but they must file a request to obtain the footage. If the request is denied, the petitioners must go before the state’s superior court. Requests can be denied to protect a person’s safety or reputation, or if the recording is part of an active investigation. Curren…
> Requests can be denied to protect a person’s safety or reputation, or if the recording is part of an active investigation.
As soon as there's a single subjective criteria by which footage can be denied, virtually all footage will be, period, the end. The "reputation" and "active investigation" parts make any concessions to the public completely and utterly worthless.
Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if it's part of an investigation (makes sense to me) This part seems curious to me. Isn't that exactly when a person "who can be seen or heard in it, along with their personal representatives" (e.g. accused person and lawyer) would need access to such footage? Perhaps there is some nuance here about what constitutes an active investigation?
"Active investigation" means a the pre-arrest phase of investigation. E.g., they send a cop by a suspected trap house but don't want to tip off the residents that they are under suspicion. Otherwise, a criminal organization would just request all the body cam footage each week to make sure they aren't being investigated (or change their tactics in response to the police movements). If there's an actual arrest and tri…
"active investigation" means anything the police want it to mean. Don't pretend it's a legally binding term.
What you're talking about is evidence in a trial, which can still remain sealed, and has nothing to do with the public being able to view the footage.
Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#27Phew, for a second there I thought we might have some transparency in our government. Glad to know that in the wake of historic video footage of public abuses, this is being taken away. Our leaders have listened and what they heard horrifies them! So now they don't have to listen, unless you come with a court order, that is.
If dash and body cam footage was available easily, you're not gonna like what you see. And people will then be up in arms because they are being harassed for their own bad behavior on camera given to public. I personally want body cam footage to be seen because I know it will cause that backlash and it will show the public how terrible their neighbors are and they'll understand why the police are so necessary (and ne…
But it is in other jurisdictions, and none of what you posit is true. I agree you may not like what you see, but that's the point.
Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#28Half good, half bad: House Bill 972 does make such video accessible to people who can be seen or heard in it, along with their personal representatives ― but they must file a request to obtain the footage. If the request is denied, the petitioners must go before the state’s superior court. Requests can be denied to protect a person’s safety or reputation, or if the recording is part of an active investigation. Curren…
> Requests can be denied to protect a person’s safety or reputation, or if the recording is part of an active investigation. As soon as there's a single subjective criteria by which footage can be denied, virtually all footage will be, period, the end. The "reputation" and "active investigation" parts make any concessions to the public completely and utterly worthless.
That's a strong statement, mostly because there's things implied in what you said that are not necessary to held true. For example, there's no reason we can't have a distinction between public release of a video, and allowing charged/affected parties (or their next of kin!) and their counsel to view the video privately at the police station for free (but restricted from recording). I think that would clear up the vast majority of problems, as the police could no longer falsely claim the footage needed to be preserved for some reason. If it was requested to be made public after that, and they refused, at least you then know what you're fighting for if you need to take it to court.
Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#29The millions being spent on police cameras only serve as a gift to Tazer and the other paramilitary industrial complex companies. True reform will only come from the continued release of uncensored citizen video. The right to record must be protected at all cost.
> The right to record
It's hard to contort the First Amendment in such a way not to protect this.
I agree that this is one of the core rights of information age society.
Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#30This is massive win for privacy.