Body Cameras Help Monitor Police but Can Invade People’s Privacy
Body-worn cameras and freedom of information laws do enable oversight and accountability of the police, but they also hold the potential to force sensitive data and stressful episodes in private citizens’ lives into public view that’s easily accessible online.
May 30, 2021 •
Bryce C. Newell, Assistant Professor of Media Law and Policy, University of Oregon
In the course of their work, police officers encounter people who are intoxicated, distressed, injured or abused. The officers routinely ask for key identifying information like addresses, dates of birth and driver’s license numbers, and they frequently enter people’s homes and other private spaces.
With the advent of police body cameras, this information is often captured in police video recordings – which some states’ open-records laws make available to the public.
Starting in the summer of 2014, as part of research on police adoption of body-worn cameras within two agencies in Washington state, I spent hours riding in patrol vehicles, hanging out at police stations, interviewing officers, observing police officers while they worked and administering surveys.
One of the most striking findings of my study was about the unintended effects of these cameras and associated laws. Body-worn cameras and freedom of information laws do enable oversight and accountability of the police. But, as I outline in my new book, “Police Visibility: Privacy, Surveillance, and the False Promise of Body-Worn Cameras,” they also hold the potential to force sensitive data and stressful episodes in private citizens’ lives into public view, easily accessible online.
I found that within weeks of adopting body-worn cameras, the police agencies I studied began receiving requests under local and state public records laws, seeking all of the footage recorded. In response, the departments began to release the videos, under the provisions of state public records laws with few – if any – redactions to protect citizens’ sensitive personal information. The primary instigator of these initial requests posted the disclosed video to a publicly accessible YouTube channel.
One patrol officer told me, “I personally would never provide my personal information to an officer with a camera. It all ends up on the internet. That is wrong and unsafe.”