A security flaw means the location of devices used by police, potentially including undercover officers and those travelling home, is visible to anyone with a phone or laptop.
I disagree with this, at least for the US. When people die and the cops can’t provide footage, people know something is wrong. People are falsely accused and get footage in diacovery. If you ask a defense attorney, you might change your mind. Get rid of Flock, but keep the body cams.
Of all the surveillance we want to be rid of, and it’s body cams… Figures…
I’m not denying the usage of the footage. Like yes, of course that is the exact example of when it should be used. However, many times, even if not releasing footage seems incriminating to the populace, when it is successfully withheld accountability is lost. Even when the footage is released cops often see no consequences for their actions, so the footage ends up just serving to normalize and broadcast police violence resulting in control via fear not peace via collaboration. But that’s all more anecdotal I fear.
In the end the data pretty much says body cams have a negligible impact on policing, at least according to this PBS article (most of the way through the article for that), but you can also cherry pick quotes from this to support pretty much any stance.
The idealized version of body cams would help with police reform, but I don’t believe in reform, I believe in abolition, so in the end they just look to me like giving them more tech to be twisted for oppression rather than accountability. If police thought body cams would hold them accountable they wouldn’t care about citizens filming them, and the fact people are being prosecuted for doing that says everything it needs to about what the police think about footage of their violence and crimes.
Just my thoughts. If you’ve got better info than my lone article from a source I’m slightly partial to I’d love to read it! I took a class on carceral technology, and I’ll try to track down some of the sources we used!
I disagree with this, at least for the US. When people die and the cops can’t provide footage, people know something is wrong. People are falsely accused and get footage in diacovery. If you ask a defense attorney, you might change your mind. Get rid of Flock, but keep the body cams.
Of all the surveillance we want to be rid of, and it’s body cams… Figures…
I’m not denying the usage of the footage. Like yes, of course that is the exact example of when it should be used. However, many times, even if not releasing footage seems incriminating to the populace, when it is successfully withheld accountability is lost. Even when the footage is released cops often see no consequences for their actions, so the footage ends up just serving to normalize and broadcast police violence resulting in control via fear not peace via collaboration. But that’s all more anecdotal I fear.
In the end the data pretty much says body cams have a negligible impact on policing, at least according to this PBS article (most of the way through the article for that), but you can also cherry pick quotes from this to support pretty much any stance.
The idealized version of body cams would help with police reform, but I don’t believe in reform, I believe in abolition, so in the end they just look to me like giving them more tech to be twisted for oppression rather than accountability. If police thought body cams would hold them accountable they wouldn’t care about citizens filming them, and the fact people are being prosecuted for doing that says everything it needs to about what the police think about footage of their violence and crimes.
Just my thoughts. If you’ve got better info than my lone article from a source I’m slightly partial to I’d love to read it! I took a class on carceral technology, and I’ll try to track down some of the sources we used!