Although they have been hailed as a crucial salve needed to heal wounded relations between police and their communities, rules that would force cops to wear body cameras could open up a host of new privacy concerns.
Especially, one senator warned on Tuesday, considering that a major media mogul appears to have allegedly gotten away with overseeing a major conspiracy to illegally access sensitive personal information.
During a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing Tuesday on the issue, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse spoke to the “hackability” of the countless hours of footage that’s sure to be logged each day from officers on the beat.
Noting “what the Rupert Murdoch folks did over in England hacking into telephones,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) raised concerns at a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing, asking witnesses if “it would it be to pay somebody [at a local police department] to hack into these and get some of that very, very personal footage out?” referring to the British publication News of the World—a Murdoch-owned newspaper that was found to have been hacking into the phones of celebrities, politicians, and crime victims between 2005 and 2011.
Jarrod Bruder, the Executive Director of the South Carolina Sheriff’s Association admitted that only “a handful” of departments in his state have advanced IT capabilities that could keep footage secure.
“Police officer see people at their worst,” Whitehouse continued. “They see people at times of real emotion agony. They see them with horrific physical injuries.”
He added that a “video record of a great deal of that would be hugely intrusive” as well as “hugely in demand of our 24/7 news media ‘if it bleeds it leads’ culture.”
Testifying alongside Bruder, Lindsay Miller, a Police Executive Research Forum associate, pointed out that a constant stream of footage takes precedence over individuals’ privacy concerns, in the context of wearable cop-cams.
“We would recommend that the officer continuing recording,” Miller said, claiming that most of the agencies she’s worked with have a policy that stipulates, “as long as the officer has a legal right to be in the home, then that’s when they should be recording.”
“It’s really important to solve the problem of police use of force but we want to make sure we don’t open a whole new array of problems,” Whitehouse responded.
While most of Whitehouse’s committee colleagues saw only the positive side to body cam technology, hailing it as a tool to keep police officers accountable, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) was also wary of the privacy implications.
He pointed to facial recognition technology, which could be integrated into body cam footage in the future. “This raises so many issues,” Sen. Franken told the committee.
Congress is currently considering department spending measures, including a request from the White House to appropriate funding to supply body cameras to local police around the country.
“There are lot of proposals up here on Capitol Hill—and that’s the purpose of this hearing today,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the chair of the subcommittee, said at the onset of Tuesday’s hearing.
While it’s unlikely, thus far, that congressional Republicans will supply the full funding requests for the President to implement his far-reaching body-camera strategy, the Justice Department is moving forward regardless, even if only in small steps. Earlier this month, the department unveiled a $20 million grant program for local law enforcement agencies to purchase body-worn cameras.
