6 ms·

Seattle Police hackathon to redact video streams recorded by police cams

67 points by theoutlander 12y ago

smtddr 12y ago
>>However, Seattle Police officials also admitted that about 90 percent of the video officers create probably needs no redaction at all. That’s because members of the public have no right to expect privacy in their interactions with police, unless they are juveniles or a witness or victim whose safety might be at risk if their identity is known. Even assuming this hackathon(first-ever apparently) meant well, in the context of recent events and the main purpose of these cameras being introduced, this hackathon has horrible optics. Also, this quote implies a separation of "members of the public" and "police" which is a very big part of the problems we see today. The police are(or at least should be) considered part of the public(more specifically, the community they work in) and they themselves should not expect any privacy while on duty. This separation is a catalyst to apathy.
- indlebe 12y ago
  ^^ Anyone care to provide comment on why this is getting down voted?
  - calvin 12y ago
    Tone. Sarcasm. Structure of the argument.
    - TallGuyShort 12y ago
      I disagree with that. I find it serious (as in, not sarcastic), reasonable (he acknowledge the good intentions and did present a one-side, extremist view-point), and made a unique, helpful point: that police ought not to view themselves as separate from the public they protect and serve.
- techsupporter 12y ago
  I think you're conflating the semantics of English with what was actually trying to be accomplished. This isn't about protecting the officer's privacy; it is established in Seattle, King County, and Washington that officers can be photographed and recorded while undertaking their official duties. The opposite, however, is not true. Individuals--the set of humans who are not police officers undertaking duties--do have an expectation of privacy except when the law or common practice says otherwise. For example, I have no expectation of privacy when walking down a public street. I, unlike a police officer, do have an expectation of privacy when I am at work, except from my employer. The Seattle Police Department has a bad reputation inside Seattle. (King County's Sheriff isn't too far behind, sadly.) As a voting resident of Seattle, I am thrilled both that the police department is working on it and that the City Council is holding them to reforms.
orasis 12y ago
Ah, cool, so geekwire.com is an Onion subsidiary, I hope?
- tomschlick 12y ago
  Why? There is a real need to protect sensitive information from being released. Minors, Confidential Informants, video of the inside of someone's house... all things that shouldn't be released except under special circumstances.
  - yarrel 12y ago
    That's totally the only things this will ever be used for.
JshWright 12y ago
I am far from an apologist for law enforcement, but this is a completely reasonable effort that I would fully support. As an example, cops show up on most EMS calls around here. I must admit, I find it a bit disquieting when a cop wearing a camera walks in while I'm providing care... Especially since HIPAA does not cover cops, so there is no legal protection for the information that ends up on the camera, only department policy. I would feel much better if I at least knew it was going to be automatically redacted, with the original video only available under a subpoena.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  After all that's been happening, your first thought is still how to protect the cops from looking bad on camera? Then we'll just get to a point where the situation with the camera recording is actually worse than what we have now, because the cops we'll get only recording that benefits the cops, and none of the recording that doesn't. It seems the government can "swing the pendulum" as much as it wants against the People, but it seems nobody wants to swing the pendulum against the government too much. God forbid the People get "too much power".
  - mafuyu 12y ago
    He is talking about the privacy of the patients, not of the cops.
  - JshWright 12y ago
    I don't follow how you interpreted what I said as wanting to "protect the cops from looking bad on camera". I am a paramedic. I take care of people in very compromising positions (most people don't worry about getting dressed if they're having a heart attack at 2am). I worry that _their_ privacy needs to be protected. This also isn't simply about 'modesty'. There are many ways medical information could be used against someone (denied a job, denied housing, denied various forms of insurance, etc...). There are many reasons personal medical information needs to be protected.
    - Chronic30 12y ago
jsprogrammer 12y ago
There needs to be a focus on the architecture of the entire system. What should be redacted and why? How do we ensure that only copies are redacted and that the original is always available? The code used should be free and open source. The hardware it's running on needs to be known, inspectable, and tamper-proof. It's probably a good idea to get these questions answered first/soon. Proprietary and secretive code can stay entrenched for a long time and I'm not sure we want that.
rday 12y ago
I know there are two sides to every story. I know that more positive public interaction with the police is a Good Thing. I just wonder why, as developers, we build tools that are used to oppress and capable of supporting oppression. Unlike people who built large infrastructure in the past, we aren't slaves. We aren't starving indentured servants. So we have other options. Why do we develop Prism. We do we develop tools to erode net neutrality. Why do we start hacking at the tools to erase police action before we understand the how and why behind the use of those tools. Maybe its just been a long Sunday.
- krapp 12y ago
  The people who built PRISM, no doubt, believed that what they were doing was necessary for the good of the country, and probably still do. As you say - two sides to every story.
  - alexqgb 12y ago
    It's also entirely possible that the people who built the system did not do so thinking or believing that it would end up being used in the way it has been, and that their good faith was taken advantage of by incapable or self-serving managers unworthy of the trust that their positions require. The human links tend to be the weakest ones.
    - krapp 12y ago
      That, too. It's entirely likely that someone who would be involved in a project like that would have faith in the government's intentions to begin with.
    - rday 12y ago
      This touches on the rest of my half baked idea which I didn't write out. My original post isn't intended to be inflammatory, I'm genuinely interested. If somebody comes to you and says: "Your code will, in the literal sense of the word 'literally', save people's lives." How do you pass that opportunity up? On the flip side, when have tools of power ever been given up voluntarily? [ I don't know how to say this. I mean this stuff is all a Pandora's Box. Once it's here, it's here. ] It's kind of like land mines. When you put them down you may have a very noble and legitimate goal to save the lives of your troops. In 20 years, the mines are still lying around for anyone to find. But does that necessarily invalidate the immediate needs of the time? It would be tempting to simply think "In 20 years we'll have the land mine problem solved, let's try to save our lives today". I really think I could argue it both ways. [Update: Maybe a better way to express my thought(and stay on topic) is relating to security vulnerabilities. You don't just pass around exploits to people. Some of the people are genuinely interested, but others will do harm. People who take the time to learn and solve problems themselves have a greater respect for the tools they've built. People who inherit things don't necessarily respect them the same way. Seattle PD is trying to solve a tough problem, and I would trust them. I don't necessarily trust them in 15 years though, when all these tools just kind of "exist"]
aswanson 12y ago
There should be a hackathon/kickstarter to get these cams to a low enough price where every officer in the country is wearing one, with no redaction. Seriously, a beagle board black costs $45; a camera and associated housing, battery, and software should not run the price over $1500-$2000, as Taser et. al. are charging.
- jrochkind1 12y ago
  The 'problem' they are trying to solve in this article, where open records requests mean that all such video is public -- makes it clear that what you are asking for is basically universal surveillance of everyone, available to everyone. Which, of course, is where we seem to be headed anyway, and I think a significant portion of the audience on HN has no problem with it or is in favor of it. I think it's distressing.
  - cinquemb 12y ago
    What we have in our world today is closer to universal surveillance of everyone, available to the few. The few, of which we know to due to the declining information asymmetry over our collective human history, are just as susceptible to all the things that make us human. The reasons those on here give is along the lines of: because HIPAA, because it may be embarrassing for me if I get caught on video in some compromising way, because I might not get that job/promotion/etc (which seem to not be the ones we hear parroted in the news i.e. terrorism, to justify current asymmetries, not to mention no questioning of the utility of a job done by people which people seem to implicitly equate to be the only way resources can be allocated to people in any system). I have yet to see those then go on to acknowledge in their plausible theoretical scenarios (that probably already happen to some degree without [sous]surveillance available to all easily) that because I may think I was wrongly looked over/scrutinized, what would stop me from then doing the same to those who would wield such over me in those same situations or anyone else? I can see why it can be distressing if one is convinced that the way one grows up, is normalized to, generally reinforced by their society at large (and maybe less so as time goes by as society…changes) and finds solace in such way of being, figures that is the way the world must be. The unswaddled babies and young children uploaded to internet by their parents (and their parents friends and relatives) without any say, will probably wonder why all the old folks of their time care much when all they have known will be what is so foreign us today.
williamstein 12y ago
The guy (Timothy Clemens) who started this used to work with me on Sage and in particular, the Sage Notebook (http://sagenb.org/ http://sagenb.org/), a few years ago. Anyway, he was very into volunteering to help with open source software.
- sargun 12y ago
  What's the status of Sage these days?
bsder 12y ago
A nice idea, but the problem is that any of the video is going to be problematic. The fact that I know that Video X at Specific date/time/place identifies someone means I can now correlate other records with it. In the case of witnesses, that's probably an issue. They would be better having a discussion about controls on who can view such videos. For example, lawyers and juries see things under seal all the time. Also, it would be good for there to be a destruction date or a lockdown date at which point it requires more paperwork to get at the video. So, the general public can request within a year, legal requests to 3 years, judicial requests to 5, and destruction after that unless involved in a case. Yes, I want the cops on video to be required to release to the press. But I also don't want to be front and center just because some cop walks by.
remarkEon 12y ago
"Li stated that hundreds of video files – including the 350+ terabytes already archived by SPD – could be uploaded and audio-indexed." I live in Seattle and have interacted with SPD a few times. Never have seen a camera on anyone. That's a lot of data. Dashboard cams, I suppose?

67 points by theoutlander 12y ago

>>However, Seattle Police officials also admitted that about 90 percent of the video officers create probably needs no redaction at all. That’s because members of the public have no right to expect privacy in their interactions with police, unless they are juveniles or a witness or victim whose safety might be at risk if their identity is known. Even assuming this hackathon(first-ever apparently) meant well, in the context of recent events and the main purpose of these cameras being introduced, this hackathon has horrible optics. Also, this quote implies a separation of "members of the public" and "police" which is a very big part of the problems we see today. The police are(or at least should be) considered part of the public(more specifically, the community they work in) and they themselves should not expect any privacy while on duty. This separation is a catalyst to apathy.

indlebe 12y ago
^^ Anyone care to provide comment on why this is getting down voted?
- calvin 12y ago
  Tone. Sarcasm. Structure of the argument.
  - TallGuyShort 12y ago
    I disagree with that. I find it serious (as in, not sarcastic), reasonable (he acknowledge the good intentions and did present a one-side, extremist view-point), and made a unique, helpful point: that police ought not to view themselves as separate from the public they protect and serve.
techsupporter 12y ago
I think you're conflating the semantics of English with what was actually trying to be accomplished. This isn't about protecting the officer's privacy; it is established in Seattle, King County, and Washington that officers can be photographed and recorded while undertaking their official duties. The opposite, however, is not true. Individuals--the set of humans who are not police officers undertaking duties--do have an expectation of privacy except when the law or common practice says otherwise. For example, I have no expectation of privacy when walking down a public street. I, unlike a police officer, do have an expectation of privacy when I am at work, except from my employer. The Seattle Police Department has a bad reputation inside Seattle. (King County's Sheriff isn't too far behind, sadly.) As a voting resident of Seattle, I am thrilled both that the police department is working on it and that the City Council is holding them to reforms.

orasis 12y ago

Ah, cool, so geekwire.com is an Onion subsidiary, I hope?

tomschlick 12y ago
Why? There is a real need to protect sensitive information from being released. Minors, Confidential Informants, video of the inside of someone's house... all things that shouldn't be released except under special circumstances.
- yarrel 12y ago
  That's totally the only things this will ever be used for.

JshWright 12y ago

I am far from an apologist for law enforcement, but this is a completely reasonable effort that I would fully support. As an example, cops show up on most EMS calls around here. I must admit, I find it a bit disquieting when a cop wearing a camera walks in while I'm providing care... Especially since HIPAA does not cover cops, so there is no legal protection for the information that ends up on the camera, only department policy. I would feel much better if I at least knew it was going to be automatically redacted, with the original video only available under a subpoena.

higherpurpose 12y ago
After all that's been happening, your first thought is still how to protect the cops from looking bad on camera? Then we'll just get to a point where the situation with the camera recording is actually worse than what we have now, because the cops we'll get only recording that benefits the cops, and none of the recording that doesn't. It seems the government can "swing the pendulum" as much as it wants against the People, but it seems nobody wants to swing the pendulum against the government too much. God forbid the People get "too much power".
- mafuyu 12y ago
  He is talking about the privacy of the patients, not of the cops.
- JshWright 12y ago
  I don't follow how you interpreted what I said as wanting to "protect the cops from looking bad on camera". I am a paramedic. I take care of people in very compromising positions (most people don't worry about getting dressed if they're having a heart attack at 2am). I worry that _their_ privacy needs to be protected. This also isn't simply about 'modesty'. There are many ways medical information could be used against someone (denied a job, denied housing, denied various forms of insurance, etc...). There are many reasons personal medical information needs to be protected.
  - Chronic30 12y ago

jsprogrammer 12y ago

There needs to be a focus on the architecture of the entire system. What should be redacted and why? How do we ensure that only copies are redacted and that the original is always available? The code used should be free and open source. The hardware it's running on needs to be known, inspectable, and tamper-proof. It's probably a good idea to get these questions answered first/soon. Proprietary and secretive code can stay entrenched for a long time and I'm not sure we want that.

rday 12y ago

I know there are two sides to every story. I know that more positive public interaction with the police is a Good Thing. I just wonder why, as developers, we build tools that are used to oppress and capable of supporting oppression. Unlike people who built large infrastructure in the past, we aren't slaves. We aren't starving indentured servants. So we have other options. Why do we develop Prism. We do we develop tools to erode net neutrality. Why do we start hacking at the tools to erase police action before we understand the how and why behind the use of those tools. Maybe its just been a long Sunday.

krapp 12y ago
The people who built PRISM, no doubt, believed that what they were doing was necessary for the good of the country, and probably still do. As you say - two sides to every story.
- alexqgb 12y ago
  It's also entirely possible that the people who built the system did not do so thinking or believing that it would end up being used in the way it has been, and that their good faith was taken advantage of by incapable or self-serving managers unworthy of the trust that their positions require. The human links tend to be the weakest ones.
  - krapp 12y ago
    That, too. It's entirely likely that someone who would be involved in a project like that would have faith in the government's intentions to begin with.
  - rday 12y ago
    This touches on the rest of my half baked idea which I didn't write out. My original post isn't intended to be inflammatory, I'm genuinely interested. If somebody comes to you and says: "Your code will, in the literal sense of the word 'literally', save people's lives." How do you pass that opportunity up? On the flip side, when have tools of power ever been given up voluntarily? [ I don't know how to say this. I mean this stuff is all a Pandora's Box. Once it's here, it's here. ] It's kind of like land mines. When you put them down you may have a very noble and legitimate goal to save the lives of your troops. In 20 years, the mines are still lying around for anyone to find. But does that necessarily invalidate the immediate needs of the time? It would be tempting to simply think "In 20 years we'll have the land mine problem solved, let's try to save our lives today". I really think I could argue it both ways. [Update: Maybe a better way to express my thought(and stay on topic) is relating to security vulnerabilities. You don't just pass around exploits to people. Some of the people are genuinely interested, but others will do harm. People who take the time to learn and solve problems themselves have a greater respect for the tools they've built. People who inherit things don't necessarily respect them the same way. Seattle PD is trying to solve a tough problem, and I would trust them. I don't necessarily trust them in 15 years though, when all these tools just kind of "exist"]

aswanson 12y ago

There should be a hackathon/kickstarter to get these cams to a low enough price where every officer in the country is wearing one, with no redaction. Seriously, a beagle board black costs $45; a camera and associated housing, battery, and software should not run the price over $1500-$2000, as Taser et. al. are charging.

jrochkind1 12y ago
The 'problem' they are trying to solve in this article, where open records requests mean that all such video is public -- makes it clear that what you are asking for is basically universal surveillance of everyone, available to everyone. Which, of course, is where we seem to be headed anyway, and I think a significant portion of the audience on HN has no problem with it or is in favor of it. I think it's distressing.
- cinquemb 12y ago
  What we have in our world today is closer to universal surveillance of everyone, available to the few. The few, of which we know to due to the declining information asymmetry over our collective human history, are just as susceptible to all the things that make us human. The reasons those on here give is along the lines of: because HIPAA, because it may be embarrassing for me if I get caught on video in some compromising way, because I might not get that job/promotion/etc (which seem to not be the ones we hear parroted in the news i.e. terrorism, to justify current asymmetries, not to mention no questioning of the utility of a job done by people which people seem to implicitly equate to be the only way resources can be allocated to people in any system). I have yet to see those then go on to acknowledge in their plausible theoretical scenarios (that probably already happen to some degree without [sous]surveillance available to all easily) that because I may think I was wrongly looked over/scrutinized, what would stop me from then doing the same to those who would wield such over me in those same situations or anyone else? I can see why it can be distressing if one is convinced that the way one grows up, is normalized to, generally reinforced by their society at large (and maybe less so as time goes by as society…changes) and finds solace in such way of being, figures that is the way the world must be. The unswaddled babies and young children uploaded to internet by their parents (and their parents friends and relatives) without any say, will probably wonder why all the old folks of their time care much when all they have known will be what is so foreign us today.

williamstein 12y ago

The guy (Timothy Clemens) who started this used to work with me on Sage and in particular, the Sage Notebook (http://sagenb.org/ http://sagenb.org/), a few years ago. Anyway, he was very into volunteering to help with open source software.

sargun 12y ago
What's the status of Sage these days?

bsder 12y ago

A nice idea, but the problem is that any of the video is going to be problematic. The fact that I know that Video X at Specific date/time/place identifies someone means I can now correlate other records with it. In the case of witnesses, that's probably an issue. They would be better having a discussion about controls on who can view such videos. For example, lawyers and juries see things under seal all the time. Also, it would be good for there to be a destruction date or a lockdown date at which point it requires more paperwork to get at the video. So, the general public can request within a year, legal requests to 3 years, judicial requests to 5, and destruction after that unless involved in a case. Yes, I want the cops on video to be required to release to the press. But I also don't want to be front and center just because some cop walks by.

remarkEon 12y ago

"Li stated that hundreds of video files – including the 350+ terabytes already archived by SPD – could be uploaded and audio-indexed." I live in Seattle and have interacted with SPD a few times. Never have seen a camera on anyone. That's a lot of data. Dashboard cams, I suppose?