
Phone Cameras and Apps Help Speed Calls for Police Reform - carlchenet
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/technology/phone-cameras-and-apps-help-speed-calls-for-police-reform.html
======
nl
I was always doubtful about David Brin's views on privacy and surveillance[1],
mostly because I didn't want it to be true.

But I'm increasingly coming around to think that it might make sense to
explore his model more.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society)

~~~
MichaelCrawford
This wouldn't work for me at all. Actually it would put me right into a
psychiatric hospital - repeatedly.

I expect it would do that for lots of other folks.

The last little while I've been thinking of buying a car or maybe a
motorcycle. For quite a long time I've enjoyed the fine public transit we
enjoy here in Vancouver and Portland, but I'd like to go camping in the
desert.

The reason I haven't already done so, is that I know from experience that when
you drive a car, the police find all manner of reasons to pull you over. The
cops don't always have evil intent in doing so; consider that Timothy McVeigh
was pulled over for expired registration a few days ago after he bombed the
Oklahoma City Federal Building. I expect everyone was getting pulled over back
then.

I was appalled just a couple days ago to learn that the Feds have - or maybe
they are working on - a nationwide license plate reader database.

Even were I completely law-abiding, drove my car legally, my physical location
would be in that database. No matter where I travelled in my car or on my
motorbike, my entire path would be in a computer file.

I've thought about that quite a lot; I am simply unable to tolerate such a
thing, even today.

By contrast, one does not need a license plate to ride a bicycle. I'm rather
out of shape but back in the day I used to ride my bike fifty miles on a
regular basis.

I'm not dead certain but I might ride my bike from Portland to Burning Man
this year. That's mostly desert, much of it mountainous. To do that wrong
could be life-threatening but to do it right would be quite cool.

~~~
nl
The point of Brin's ideas is that the police and the government can (and
should) be surveilled by ordinary every day citizens.

We have seen how keeping cameras on police moderates their behaviour. I wonder
if that "reverse surveillance" could also moderate things like unjustified
stops when one is driving?

~~~
at-fates-hands
>> We have seen how keeping cameras on police moderates their behaviour.

Apparently not in the most recent case in South Carolina where the officer's
dash cam was running and didn't stop him from shooting a man eight times in
the back, did it?

Also, the camera's are there for the cops sake, not for ours. I welcome having
body camera's, but I think you'd be surprised at how many times a cop has
justifiable means to use lethal force, and doesn't.

Sure, it helps us keep tabs on them, but I'm pretty sure the actual reality of
what they put up with compared to how these situations are portrayed in the
media, are going to be eye opening to a lot of people.

~~~
nl
_Apparently not in the most recent case in South Carolina where the officer 's
dash cam was running and didn't stop him from shooting a man eight times in
the back, did it?_

Sure, it's no panacea.

But in San Diego:

 _Complaints have fallen 40.5% and use of "personal body" force by officers
has been reduced by 46.5% and use of pepper spray by 30.5%, according to the
report developed by the Police Department for the City Council's Public Safety
and Livable Neighborhoods Committee._[1]

And the ACLU tends to think they are on the balance, positive[2].

I think Brin's argument would be that we've tried policing without cameras,
maybe it is worth trying it with lots more cameras.

It's worth noting in that case you mentioned above it was mobile phone footage
that led to him being charged, not a dash cam[3]. That's an argument for
_more_ cameras, controlled by civilians.

[1] [http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-body-
cameras-201...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-body-
cameras-20150318-story.html)

[2] [https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/police-body-
moun...](https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/police-body-mounted-
cameras-right-policies-place-win-all)

[3] "the video, which was taken by a bystander"
[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/us/south-carolina-
officer-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/us/south-carolina-officer-is-
charged-with-murder-in-black-mans-death.html?_r=0)

~~~
at-fates-hands
>>It's worth noting in that case you mentioned above it was mobile phone
footage that led to him being charged, not a dash cam[3].

I do agree on your points, which are all well made.

Do you think he would have been charged had it not been for the civilian
video? Or do you think it simply would've taken _longer_ to charge him since
they would have to get the video off his dash cam, review it, and then decide
whether to take action.

------
MichaelCrawford
I've been puzzling over a Killer App for a little while, but just don't have
the headspace to deal with it. Take The Money And Run:

Write a mobile app - or maybe crowdfund a gadget - that would be an always on
video camera, or perhaps just an audio recorder with a sometimes- but not
always-on camera.

This would be done in such a way that it is simply not possible to erase the
recording, not even if law enforcement confiscates your device. The most-
straightforward way would be to upload it to a server however law enforcement
could take your entire server, or block access to it &c.

Worse who ever operated the server could be subject to prosecution, say for
enabling wiretapping. Yes, I know. :-/

However a solution would be for that server to be a Tor Hidden Service. That
would make it difficult, maybe impossible to physically locate the server or
its admins; it would also make it more difficult to block the communication
between the recorder and the server.

Commonly overlooked is that it's not enough simply to operate a hidden
service; if someone does grab the actual box, then they've got your
filesystem. For this to really work you need a fully-encrypted disk. But then
you have the problem that the OS as well as the hidden service require private
keys. If you store them right on the box then you lose.

Possibly Trusted Computing would help somewhat. However another way would be
for, when the OS boots, it cries out for help in some surreptitious way, say
by posting a racy JPEG on imgur. When an admit sees that JPEG show up on
Reddit, then he transmits the secret keys to the server.

There is also the problem that, were these recorders always on, then they
would record things that anyone would want to be private. Typically we would
want whoever possessed the device to choose which recordings to release to the
public; however if they were required to do so under a subpeona, again we
lose.

So there should be more than one person making the decision. Whoever has a
legimate reason to want privacy, as well as someone who can deny a subpeona
with complete safety, in principle the server admin.

This outline doesn't scale at all well. I've been puzzling over it for a
little while and I can see that it could be made to scale.

But this is the very first time I've written down any of these ideas.

If you can make something of this, More Power To You.

~~~
halviti
A device that costs money, that you have to carry with you at all times, that
you have to have connected to the internet, and you're likely to never use...
I get your goal, but I don't think it's practical in the way you're thinking.

There are phone apps which do some of what your suggesting, but leaving them
on all the time would mean that you would have to have an unlimited data
package and lots of spare batteries.

~~~
MichaelCrawford
That's a good point.

I did consider that one cannot always get on the Internet, but I didn't
mention it in my writeup. The device could upload the recording whenever the
Internet was available.

That would leave the problem that the cops know you've got such a gadget, so
they prevent you from going to a wifi spot. For this we use the kind of mesh
network as was used in the Hong Kong protests a few months ago. I think they
didn't write that app themselves, it was already available from the App Store
or Google Play.

Most phones have wifi, bluetooth and 4G. If any one of those can connect -
somehow - to the Internet then we can upload.

The problem with battery life would be hard to solve on an actual phone but
not hard at all to solve on dedicated hardware. A very, very large chunk of
your power consumption goes into managing hardware security and virtual
memory.

If you had no security at all, and no virtual memory, then you use quite a lot
less power. That's quite common with embedded applications, such as TI DPSs
running SYSBIOS (previous DSP/BIOS). I have some experience with DSP/BIOS it
would not be hard at all to make a device the size of an iPhone that could run
for a week or two between recharges.

The device would be a lot more acceptable to most people if it were not
plainly visible. Suppose the camera lens could be clipped to your shirt, but
the rest of the device is in your pants pocket or your purse, with a bluetooth
connection between the two.

I fully understand there are many problems with this concept, but solving
these kinds of problems is what engineers actually do to feed their hungry
children. :-D

~~~
logfromblammo
The problem to be solved here, as I understand it, is accessing the recording
after someone takes the recording device away from you, and possibly also
attempts to delete your recordings.

You don't need to upload to the cloud here. You just need to upload to a
storage device that cannot be easily recognized as the upload target for the
recorder, and would not typically have probable cause for a search.

These could be attached to the recorder using a wide variety of short-range
wireless communications technologies. Maybe your pinky ring has a microSD card
under the gaudy cabochon, and connects using IEEE 802.15.6. Maybe you get a
parylene-coated implant in your beer belly. Maybe your eyeglasses can store
256 GB. Perhaps the label on your underwear can store more data than just your
name. Or one of the keys on your key ring does not actually open any lock.

Maybe the "delete" function in your device's UI also activates a piercing
audible alarm that screams " _SPOLIATION! SPOLIATION! SOMEONE IS TRYING TO
DESTROY MY EVIDENCE!_ " and the real data-destruction function requires a pre-
authorized device to activate.

The device itself would, of course, need a decoy SD card in it somewhere.
People tend not to stop looking for something until they find it.

As for the recorder portion, it would have to be plainly visible to be legal
in all US jurisdictions. Also, you need something obvious for the bad actor to
take, so that he can believe that he has confiscated both your recorder and
your recent recordings.

The data are the important parts, if you can give your attorney a recording of
the cop illegally seizing your camera, it is a lot easier to get it back.

------
MichaelCrawford
I have a different take on the police.

I can't go into a whole lot of detail as it is late, I am tired and I have
lots of work to do.

But more or less I point out to every cop I come across, that while I do know
that there are some bad cops, there are bad people everywhere. It is wrong to
hate the police despite that there have been lots of officers who have
murdered innocent, defenseless people.

I don't judge individuals by the behaviors of other people. Recall what MLK
said about "the content of our character". For me, I don't judge someone by
the color of their clothes or whether they have a shiny badge affixed to them.

I then point out that I have quite a profoundly serious illness: Bipolar-Type
Schizoaffective Disorder, and that it is much like being Manic-Depressive and
Schizophrenic at the same time.

Being crazy gives me lots of real-world experience with law enforcement.
Consider that I was once hospitalized involuntarily for ten solid days because
I told some shrink that I planned to "go camping in the desert". See, I was
completely unaware that in Reno, when one intends to "go camping in the
desert", one intends to commit suicide.

It didn't help to point out that I had the Boy Scout Wilderness Survival Merit
Badge, nor that I had camped in the desert just the night before.

I was once beaten unconscious by two cops by having my skull slammed
repeatedly into concrete. When I regained consciousness three days later,
while I could correctly visualize the spelling of my own name when I thought
about it, I was incapable of spelling it when I attempted to write it on paper
with a pencil.

You'd think that would make me hate all police officers but no, I don't even
hate the two cops who assaulted me with a deadly weapon.

However, I do feel that they should be spending some time behind bars.

On the other hand there have been plenty of times that police officers have
saved my very life. The ONLY time I ever saw a cop so much as set foot on the
Caltech campus was when a Pasadena Police Department officer came to save me
from the Caltech campus security guards who beat the living crap out of me
then hurled me bodily down a flight of stairs.

Finally I write down the URL for "Living with Schizoaffective Disorder" then
point out that "I wrote it in part to help people like you help people like
me".

[http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/schizoaffective-
disorder/](http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/schizoaffective-disorder/)

Finally, I offer to shake their hand. Cops aren't used to members of the
public offering to shake their hand. Quite commonly they are visibly moved by
my simple gesture.

~~~
tormeh
Certainly, but it also seems like some local police departments have
institutionalized misconduct. And I don't think it's totally unreasonable to
to expect cops to be significantly better than average people.

~~~
osi
This a million times.

There's a Illinois State Trooper that lives in my neighborhood. He drives his
work vehicle home and _ALWAYS_ parks it illegally. There's a sign saying "no
parking" with an arrow pointing right at where he put his car.

Of course he's never ticketed. But this grates me every time I walk by. He is
entrusted with enforcing our laws, but can't be arsed to follow them every
single night when he parks.

It is a huge erosion of trust in their institution.

~~~
atom-morgan
_This_ is the problem along with the parent's comments. They literally are a
different class of citizen. Does anybody actually think another cop would see
this and write the state trooper a ticket? That the state trooper would have
to go to his courthouse and pay a fine? It doesn't happen.

At most, he'd be asked to move it. But until then he gets privileges us lower
citizens don't have.

~~~
gknoy
None if this is legal advice, and quite likely not all of of it would work.
It's possiblpe that someone who thinks so little of obeying the law would be
willing to hassle you personally constantly for such behavior.

Most of these ideas would be stupid, ineffective, or perhaps illegal, but my
point is that you might indeed be able to creatively find a way to make sure
that the trooper's illegal actions (off duty!)

\- Gather evidence. Take pictures every day that he does it.

\- Ask him nicely to park legally. Point out that his flagrant disregard for
the law erodes everyone's respect for his profession.

\- Ask your local police to ticket him personally. They might not do it, but
it can't hurt to ask.

\- Write to his boss. Write to the governor, call everyone up his chain of
command. Point out the respect erosion issue, and ask that police be held to
the same laws that they enforce.

\- Sue him on behalf of citizens of the city when you see him doing it. I'm
sure judges would feel really happy about police officers who flaunt the law
for personal benefit.

\- Campaign for a local (city/county) law that allows citizens to enforce
parking laws (citations, towing, car boot) on any government-owned vehicle
that is parked illegally. Make this your public example. (Of course, good luck
actually doing that, but the media publicity might shame him?)

\- If the place he parks is a "no parking" area due to things like fire
hydrants, consider talking to the local fire department.

\- Try to alert an impersonal bureaucracy that will treat his illegal parking
as something tow-able or otherwise something they can escalate as part of
their job.

\- Call or write his boss every time you see him do it. Report it by vehicle
number.

\- Buy two extremely beat up cars and park them on both sides of his vehicle.
(That might not be legal, now that I think about it.)

\- Propose a local ordinance to give you permission to install a concrete or
otherwise similarly heavy / ugly public art work directly next to his car in
such a way that it shames him, or makes it really inconvenient to park there.

0:
[http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=&Sessio...](http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=&SessionId=85&GA=98&DocTypeId=SB&DocNum=1342&GAID=12&LegID=71864&SpecSess=&Session=)

