
Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina - badatusernames
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/police-camera-footage-will-no-longer-be-made-public-in-north-carolina/ar-BBug3AV?ocid=ansmsnnews11
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kbenson
Half 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.

Current state law establishes that dashcam footage is in the public record,
and it doesn’t address body camera footage. But police departments usually
consider body camera footage to be part of an officer’s personnel file and
thus private. The new law will make body camera footage accessible under the
same stringent new conditions that dashcam footage will be._

So, you have to request the footage (Acceptable IMO), but they can choose to
deny the request based on safety (okay), reputation (troubling and confusing.
I see no reason to protect someone's reputation from themselves. Blur a public
version if needed), or if it's part of an investigation (makes sense to me).
Making sure departments don't use a loophole to keep officer camera data
hidden is a plus.

The only case that comes to mind with regard to safety is if officers enter my
residence illegally (e.g. by accident) and catch me in a compromised position.
If you couldn't legally be in my house anyway, you sure as hell better not
release footage of me to the public while you were there.

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cdubzzz
> 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?

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sp332
Yes, you get access to evidence if it's going to be used against _you_. That's
a whole separate thing.

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jrs235
What if it isn't going to be used against but could be exculpatory?

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sp332
Of course, it's illegal for them to withhold _any_ exculpatory evidence.

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dragonwriter
If its not public, you have minimal chance of discovering it if it isn't
provided, so while it is illegal for them to withhold it, you'll never know it
existed and was withheld unless someone who does know of it -- almost
certainly the police themselves, or the person shown in it (quite possibly,
the real criminal, who would be revealing their own identity by coming
forward) -- actively reveals it. So, illegal or not, it makes it much easier
for them to get away with concealing exculpatory evidence.

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shove
I'm an NC native. The governor and most of the NC legislature are an
embarrassment to our great state.

The history is complex, but basically, the Democrats controlled NC state
politics for decades (weird, I know) and lost both the governorship and the
legislature in the wake of backlash from Obama carrying NC in his first term.
Big-money Republicans poured money into the state to ensure that a) Obama
didn't carry NC in 2008 and b) Republicans would control the state during the
key years following the US census, during time which they would gerrymander
the ever living fuck out of our districts. Expect to hear lots of stories
about our state's laws getting slammed by SCOTUS. There are several cases
already in flight.

Don't try to make sense of it all -- it's about power and pandering and the
worst most regressive parts of "conservatism".

Police are employed by the public. That footage, taken by public employees, in
(mostly) public spaces, ought to belong to the public. I'm very concerned
about privacy, the police / surveillance state, but I'd rather strap cameras
to all officers than continue to allow them to _literally_ get away with
murder.

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koolba
On 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 the tech world. The stream should be stored off site,
cryptographically signed (public sig), in the control of a third party (though
still a government entity, not a private corporation). Otherwise you'd be
asking the criminals[1] to hold onto the evidence.

[1]: Not that all or even most police are criminals, but in the case where a
police officer does commit a crime they are de facto criminals.

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abstractbeliefs
Not even de facto, if they genuinely broke the law, they are de jure
criminals!

~~~
hx87
Exactly. They're just de facto protected by overly police-friendly prosecutors
and juries.

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wheaties
Phew, 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.

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michaelbuddy
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 necessarily rough sometimes) to keep society
civil.

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Broken_Hippo
Part of the issue, however, is that police aren't civil to the public in the
first place.

We expect folks in call centers to take all sorts of abuse. Folks working at
the local pharmacy are supposed to keep a smiling face and professional
demeanor, even if folks are yelling obscenities and insults in their
direction. Folks tell retail workers that if they can't do that, or if they
can't handle that, or don't like it, they need to find another job.

I don't see why we shouldn't expect that from police in most situations. I
understand the need to be firm at times with some folks, but it isn't
something that needs to be done at a traffic stop. Even if the person being
pulled over is grouchy. Works both ways.

And yes, some folks will be harassed for their behavior, but I think it'll be
a minimum.

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guelo
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.

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jMyles
> 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.

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TeMPOraL
Wait, wait. So it's a right to record, but if I go out and start recording
stuff I get called out as privacy violator? So which way is it?

(I'm pro-recording here btw.)

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jMyles
The former, and strictly so. This version of "privacy" can't survive in a free
society I don't think.

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hx87
That's why I think the European concept of "right to be forgotten" is deeply
flawed. I understand that they're trying to protect people from being
negatively judged using outdated information, but the problem lies in the
judgement, not the information. A better alternative would be "right to be not
given a damn about".

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RealGeek
They realized that they can only claim the camera fell off so many times.

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basseq
This is tough. I see the intent and logic in this bill. At its core, _this is
a win for citizen privacy and data protection_. It protects the integrity of
criminal investigations, and limits public outrage without context. (E.g., a
30-second clip of a cop tackling someone presented as police brutality,
omitting the previous 30 seconds of the individual resisting arrest or being a
hazard to the health of himself or others.)

The _downside_ , of course, is transparency at a time when public trust in
police and proper oversight is at an all-time low. And the "oversight" piece
of this is critical. We simply _don 't believe_ answers like, "Our internal
investigation shows that the officer acted correctly."

So I do think this is the right move, but this needs to be coupled with real
reform in independent police oversight and investigation.

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wccrawford
The way I see it, this footage is there to safeguard both the public and
police from lies about each other. It's not there for general perusal, and
making it public will expose a lot of private situations that shouldn't be,
especially for the civilians in the videos.

So long as the video is available for related court cases, now and in the
future, that's fine. There does need to be a way to safe-guard it from
destruction when someone wants to hide something, but I think that's a
different matter than making the videos non-public.

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st3v3r
Thus showing that nobody in the North Carolina government cares about
minorities once again.

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mason240
This is massive win for privacy.

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shove
As long as you're the right _kind_ of person.

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banku_brougham
FOIA

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emeraldd
"... makes police dashboard camera and body camera footage exempt from the
public record."

I may be wrong but wouldn't this make the footage exempt from FOIA? (Unless
the people involved filed the FOIA request ...)

