Body Cameras for the Buffalo Police: Best Practices for Policy Creation

This policy brief was drafted by Sarah Wooton, policy analyst at Partnership for the Public Good. It recommends that the Buffalo Police Department adopt policies governing the use of body cameras with a focus on six areas: activation, pre-report viewing, footage retention, footage protection, public disclosure of footage, and public input. Research suggests that simply adding body cameras may not improve policing without strong policies in each of these six areas

How Has the Implementation of Body Worn Cameras Affected Law Enforcement in Texas?

Since 2011, when the first body worn camera program for police officers in the United States was introduced in Rialto, California, researchers have been interested in how such programs might influence U.S. law enforcement. Studies in the past several years have examined various aspects of the effects of body worn cameras, including their impact on public relations, police morale, and law enforcement budgets. Also of note is the importance of police compliance with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and the unique challenges presented by body worn camera records with regard to FOIA. This article seeks to determine the effect of body worn camera programs on law enforcement, focusing on the programs’ effects on Texas law enforcement specifically. The author consulted the findings of government officials as well as those of professionals within the fields of justice and law enforcement. Each law enforcement agency is unique and must individually weigh the costs and benefits of body worn camera programs. Although several concerns are reported to have arisen within the law enforcement ranks of those affected by the cameras, such as additional supervisor and program costs, for example, the overall results of body worn camera implementation have been positive. In the face of the recently strained relationship between the public and law enforcement, utilizing technological innovations such as body worn cameras could restore a sense of accountability, trust, and peace of mind to both the citizens of the United States and those charged with their protection

Body Cameras and the Path to Redeem Privacy Law

From a privacy perspective, the movement towards police body cameras seems ominous. The prospect of a surveillance device capturing massive amounts of data concerning people’s most vulnerable moments is daunting. These concerns are compounded by the fact that there is little consensus and few hard rules on how and for whom these systems should be built and used. But in many ways, this blank slate is a gift. Law and policy makers are not burdened by the weight of rules and technologies created in a different time for a different purpose. These surveillance and data technologies will be modern. Many of the risks posed by the systems will be novel as well. Our privacy rules must keep up. In this Article, I argue that police body cameras are an opportunity to chart a path past privacy law’s most vexing missteps and omissions. Specifically, lawmakers should avoid falling back on the “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard. Instead, they should use body cameras to embrace more nuanced theories of privacy, such as trust and obscurity. Trust-based relationships can be used to counter the harshness of the third party doctrine. The value of obscurity reveals the misguided nature of the argument that there is “no privacy in public.” Law and policy makers can also better protect privacy by creating rules that address how body cameras and data technologies are designed in addition to how they are used. Since body-camera systems implicate every stage of the modern data life cycle from collection to disclosure, they can serve as a useful model across industry and government. But if law and policy makers hope to show how privacy rules can be improved, they must act quickly. The path to privacy law’s redemption will stay clear for only so long

Recording Victim Video Statements as Evidence to Advance Legal Outcomes in Family Violence Cases (ReVEAL)

This Implementation Guide provides an overview of the video-recording practices currently in place across several Texas jurisdictions. It provides guidance and considerations for jurisdictions in the collection and use of video evidence in family violence cases. This guide is divided into seven sections, including this Background and Overview. The second section includes information for law enforcement on the purpose of video statements, how to develop and implement a video program, and considerations for sustaining a program. The third section focuses on prosecutorial practices for the use of video statements including legal considerations, coordination with partners, and victim engagement around the video statement. The fourth section provides specific information for victim advocates and includes considerations for victim privacy and confidentiality. The fifth section focuses on technology and equipment, with information on type of equipment, technology infrastructure, and efficient transfer of evidence between agencies. The sixth section is the Summary Report of the ReVEAL project. The Summary Report is a technical overview of the evaluation that includes major findings and links to the ReVEAL reports that were previously released. The seventh and final section is comprised of the appendices and provides sample protocols, site overviews, equipment charts, and additional resources that may be helpful to users of this guide. Throughout this guide, there are several examples of cases and practices that illustrate the specific issues that may present themselves when launching a video-recording program. These examples highlight the complexities of the practice while using real world examples of how video impacts family violence cases, victim safety, and privacy.IC2 Institut

WEARABLE PRIVACY PROTECTION WITH VISUAL BUBBLE

Wearable cameras are increasingly used in many different applications such as entertainment, security, law enforcement and healthcare. In this thesis, we focus on the application of the police worn body camera and behavioral recording using a wearable camera for one-on-one therapy with a child in a classroom or clinic. To protect the privacy of other individuals in the same environment, we introduce a new visual privacy protection technique called visual bubble. Visual bubble is a virtual zone centered around the camera for observation whereas the rest of the environment and people are obfuscated. In contrast to most existing visual privacy protection systems that rely on visual classifiers, visual bubble is based on depth estimation to determine the extent of privacy protection. To demonstrate this concept, we construct a wearable stereo camera for depth estimation on the Raspberry Pi platform. We also propose a novel framework to quantify the uncertainty in depth measurements so as to minimize a statistical privacy risk in constructing the depth-based privacy bubble. To evaluate our system, we have collected three datasets. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is demonstrated with experimental results

ICTs and Human Rights Practice: A Report Prepared for the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions

The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is creating a wealth of new opportunities as well as a variety of new risks for human rights practice. Given the pace of innovation in the development and use of ICTs, our understanding of their impact on human rights lags. This report provides a crucial and in depth look at ICT initiatives and trends across the key human rights practices of prevention, fact-finding, and advocacy, identifying both risks and opportunities. In prevention, ICTs can be harnessed to protect human rights defenders, to prevent violations in police-civilian interactions, and in data-driven early warning systems and communication-based conflict prevention. That said, ICTs also create new security risks for human rights defenders and can violate the right to privacy. In fact-finding, ICTs afford the spontaneous and solicited participation of civilian witnesses in the production of human rights evidence. Of course, a greater volume and variety of information from unknown and untrained sources creates problems of misinformation and verification, which technology only goes so far to mitigate. In advocacy, ICTs provide new channels for quickly and visibly mobilizing publics, for directly engaging with advocacy targets, and for spreading awareness of human rights. That said, the effects of these new advocacy channels are unclear, and they may imperil categories of human rights and the reputations of human rights organizations. The report also considers how digital divides and the political economy of ICTs influence the nature, extent, and distribution of these opportunities and risks. In doing so, it outlines a research framework for understanding ICTs and human rights practice to underpin academics’ and practitioners’ assessment, development, and deployment of ICTs for and in the spirit of human rights. An earlier version of this report, prepared for an expert meeting ahead of the June 2015 session of the UN Human Rights Council, informed the thematic report on ICTs and the right to life presented at that session by the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions. As such, the projects profiled represent a snapshot of that timeframe; this report is therefore accompanied by a regularly updated, student-run Tumblr blog, ictandhr.tumblr.com, which welcomes submissions on new initiatives

A report prepared for the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions

Since 2011, CGHR has collaborated with the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, providing research support to his mandate. In 2012, a team of researchers produced a ‘Research Pack’ on the threats to the right to life of journalists for an Expert Meeting held in Cambridge, ultimately contributing to the Special Rapporteur’s report that year to the Human Rights Council. In 2013, work began on a broader collaboration studying violations of the right to life across the African continent, culminating in a report, ‘Unlawful Killings in Africa,’ to guide the Special Rapporteur’s future activity. In 2014, a CGHR research team began a study of how the use of information and communication technologies affects the right to life, resulting in this report and the ICTs and Human Rights blog. This report was originally a discussion document prepared by CGHR Research Associate Dr Ella McPherson in collaboration with the mandate of the Special Rapporteur and ahead of a meeting of experts held in Cambridge in February 2015. The discussion document, as well as the discussion at the expert meeting, contributed to the Special Rapporteur’s thematic report on the use of information and communications technologies to secureThe use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is creating a wealth of new opportunities as well as a variety of new risks for human rights practice. Given the pace of innovation in the development and use of ICTs, our understanding of their impact on human rights lags. This report provides a crucial and in depth look at ICT initiatives and trends across the key human rights practices of prevention, fact-finding, and advocacy, identifying both risks and opportunities. In prevention, ICTs can be harnessed to protect human rights defenders, to prevent violations in police-civilian interactions, and in data-driven early warning systems and communication-based conflict prevention. That said, ICTs also create new security risks for human rights defenders and can violate the right to privacy. In fact-finding, ICTs afford the spontaneous and solicited participation of civilian witnesses in the production of human rights evidence. Of course, a greater volume and variety of information from unknown and untrained sources creates problems of misinformation and verification, which technology only goes so far to mitigate. In advocacy, ICTs provide new channels for quickly and visibly mobilizing publics, for directly engaging with advocacy targets, and for spreading awareness of human rights. That said, the effects of these new advocacy channels are unclear, and they may imperil categories of human rights and the reputations of human rights organizations. The report also considers how digital divides and the political economy of ICTs influence the nature, extent, and distribution of these opportunities and risks. In doing so, it outlines a research framework for understanding ICTs and human rights practice to underpin academics’ and practitioners’ assessment, development, and deployment of ICTs for and in the spirit of human rights. An earlier version of this report, prepared for an expert meeting ahead of the June 2015 session of the UN Human Rights Council, informed the thematic report on ICTs and the right to life presented at that session by the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions. As such, the projects profiled represent a snapshot of that timeframe; this report is therefore accompanied by a regularly updated, student-run Tumblr blog, ictandhr.tumblr.com, which welcomes submissions on new initiatives