Seattle Police hackathon to redact video streams recorded by police cams

I am far from an apologist for law enforcement, but this is a completely reasonable effort that I would fully support.<p>As an example, cops show up on most EMS calls around here. I must admit, I find it a bit disquieting when a cop wearing a camera walks in while I&#x27;m providing care... Especially since HIPAA does not cover cops, so there is no legal protection for the information that ends up on the camera, only department policy. I would feel much better if I at least knew it was going to be automatically redacted, with the original video only available under a subpoena.

There needs to be a focus on the architecture of the entire system. What should be redacted and why? How do we ensure that only copies are redacted and that the original is always available?<p>The code used should be free and open source. The hardware it&#x27;s running on needs to be known, inspectable, and tamper-proof.<p>It&#x27;s probably a good idea to get these questions answered first&#x2F;soon. Proprietary and secretive code can stay entrenched for a long time and I&#x27;m not sure we want that.

A nice idea, but the problem is that <i>any</i> of the video is going to be problematic.<p>The fact that I know that Video X at Specific date&#x2F;time&#x2F;place identifies someone means I can now correlate other records with it. In the case of witnesses, that&#x27;s probably an issue.<p>They would be better having a discussion about controls on who can view such videos. For example, lawyers and juries see things under seal all the time. Also, it would be good for there to be a destruction date or a lockdown date at which point it requires more paperwork to get at the video. So, the general public can request within a year, legal requests to 3 years, judicial requests to 5, and destruction after that unless involved in a case.<p>Yes, I want the cops on video to be required to release to the press. But I also don&#x27;t want to be front and center just because some cop walks by.

There should be a hackathon&#x2F;kickstarter to get these cams to a low enough price where every officer in the country is wearing one, with no redaction. Seriously, a beagle board black costs $45; a camera and associated housing, battery, and software should not run the price over $1500-$2000, as Taser et. al. are charging.

The guy (Timothy Clemens) who started this used to work with me on Sage and in particular, the Sage Notebook (<a href="http://sagenb.org/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sagenb.org&#x2F;</a>), a few years ago. Anyway, he was very into volunteering to help with open source software.

I know there are two sides to every story.<p>I know that more positive public interaction with the police is a Good Thing.<p>I just wonder why, as developers, we build tools that are used to oppress and capable of supporting oppression.<p>Unlike people who built large infrastructure in the past, we aren&#x27;t slaves. We aren&#x27;t starving indentured servants. So we have other options.<p>Why do we develop Prism. We do we develop tools to erode net neutrality. Why do we start hacking at the tools to erase police action before we understand the how and why behind the use of those tools.<p>Maybe its just been a long Sunday.

&quot;Li stated that hundreds of video files – including the 350+ terabytes already archived by SPD – could be uploaded and audio-indexed.&quot;<p>I live in Seattle and have interacted with SPD a few times. Never have seen a camera on anyone. That&#x27;s a lot of data. Dashboard cams, I suppose?

<i>&gt;&gt;However, Seattle Police officials also admitted that about 90 percent of the video officers create probably needs no redaction at all. That’s because members of the public have no right to expect privacy in their interactions with police, unless they are juveniles or a witness or victim whose safety might be at risk if their identity is known.</i><p>Even assuming this hackathon<i>(first-ever apparently)</i> meant well, in the context of recent events and the main purpose of these cameras being introduced, this hackathon has horrible optics. Also, this quote implies a separation of &quot;members of the public&quot; and &quot;police&quot; which is a very big part of the problems we see today. The police are<i>(or at least should be)</i> considered part of the public<i>(more specifically, the community they work in)</i> and they themselves should not expect any privacy while on duty. This separation is a catalyst to apathy.

Ah, cool, so geekwire.com is an Onion subsidiary, I hope?