5 ms·

Schneier on Security: Recording the Police

126 points by m3mb3r 16y ago

steveklabnik 16y ago
If this is something of interest to you, join your local CopWatch organization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copwatch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copwatch Bruce is absolutely right: if nobody watches the watchmen, you can only expect trouble... filming police prevents things like this: http://www.gifbin.com/bin/112009/1258398254_police-brutality.gif http://www.gifbin.com/bin/112009/1258398254_police-brutality... and this: http://www.gifbin.com/bin/1238065175_cop-pushes-biker.gif http://www.gifbin.com/bin/1238065175_cop-pushes-biker.gif
- ronnier 16y ago
  A lot is discussed about cops using racial profiling and targeting certain neighborhoods. I have a theory that there's another form of profiling that targets more affluent areas for traffic citations to bring in revenue. Is this a concern for anybody?
  - viraptor 16y ago
    What do you mean by "targets"? If people are fined for something they did, then it's not a problem. If they're going to be fined even though they're not guilty, they should be able to challenge it and go to court. Or is it a different situation?
    - ronnier 16y ago
      Aggressively patrol certain areas. (Yes I'm bitter and somewhat ranting)
    - matwood 16y ago
      I think I understand what the poster was talking about. I live in a decent neighborhood where it's mostly on street parking. The way my street sets up, even though it is a 2-way street it's mostly one way traffic. This leads to people parallel parking on both sides of the street while facing the same way (it's a fine to parallel park facing opposite of traffic). When I moved in over 18 months ago everyone was parked incorrectly. I parked incorrectly for 13 months before one night on the last day of the month we all received $30 parking fines at 3am. I talked to a few of my neighbors and this was the first time they had seen fines given. I along with others parked the wrong direction for at least 13 months without a fine. So, either police never patrolled our neighborhood during that time or they decided to apply the law only when they feel like it, i.e. to meet their quota. Revenue generation at its finest!
      - pmichaud 16y ago
        This identical thing happened to me.
      - stcredzero 16y ago
        A friend of mine in college challenged his "wrong wheels to curb" ticket and got it summarily dismissed because the officer didn't want to bother.
      - viraptor 16y ago
        That is something I don't really agree with. Maybe they didn't patrol that area, maybe they didn't have enough people, maybe for some other reason... Anyways, you know you can get a fine for parking the wrong way, yet you did it. If you said you don't agree with that rule, I might concur. What exactly did they do wrong? I hope that since then everyone is parking correctly. Isn't that the whole point of fining people?
        matwood 16y ago
        If you're right about not patrolling then that means they NEVER drove through my rather small townhouse community in almost 13 months. So much for police doing routine patrols. What bothered me about the whole thing was inconsistent enforcement. It's okay to park that way for over a year and then one day it's not. Enforcing an ordinance or law only when it's convenient (to hit a quota) for the officer makes me think the particular law isn't about safety but about revenue generation. If it was truly about safety it would be enforced all of the time.
    - Anechoic 16y ago
      What do you mean by "targets"? If people are fined for something they did, then it's not a problem. A lot of it has to with "equal enforcement" - take a look at mj enforcement in CA as described in http://reason.com/blog/2010/07/01/california-naacp-backs-marijua http://reason.com/blog/2010/07/01/california-naacp-backs-mar... (leave aside for a moment the wisdom/necessity of the drug war) - I'm sure most of the people arrested for mj broke the law and deserved the consequences. but it as a negative effect on the targeted segment and not the population aa a whole. That puts one segment at a disadvantage in other aspects of life (getting a job, getting housing, etc). BTW, don't know why you got downvoted, you simply asked a question.
      - tbrownaw 16y ago
        > broke the law and deserved the consequences Not much connection there, even for reasonable laws the sentences are often a bit on the extreme side.
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
      I got a fine once. Yeah, I was speeding: a 4 lane road with no turns and actual curbs, 35 mph. I was going at the speed of the rest of the traffic, 45mph. They keep the speed limit like that and set up traps all the time. Laws != morals, and when the police are treated as a revenue center, it's bad.
    - dkarl 16y ago
      I live in a city where speed limits are sensibly enforced. Lazy cops don't randomly set up shop and start ticketing people for normal, safe behavior. Officers here are known to sit beside the freeway letting hundreds of people drive by at 70-75 mph and then go lights flashing after the one guy weaving in and out of traffic at 90 mph. That kind of sanity is impressive to me, who never expected professionalism and intelligence (of all things!) out of police officers. The reason people complain about speeding tickets is that speed limits are inconsistently enforced. Speed limits are usually about 10 mph too low for normal conditions, and enforcement reflects that. Yet in some places, enforcement is strict, and it's impossible to predict where without local knowledge. For instance, on a major road near my apartment that goes out to some major suburbs, there is a little stretch going through a separate municipality where the speed limit drops inexplicably and is very strictly enforced, practically 24/7. All the locals know it, but woe to the out-of-towner who fails to heed the locals' example and hit the brakes. But at least that's consistent. Where I grew up, inconsistency was the key. You never saw them set up twice in the same place, unless the speed limit was especially unreasonable at that place. Enforcement was so random that everybody ignored it, and everybody had paranoid theories. (It's the end of the month; they're just filling their quotas. My ex-wife's brother is a cop, I bet he asked his buddy to go after me. Goddamn white cops don't like seeing a Mexican with a pretty white girl. Goddamn Mexican cops don't like seeing a white guy with a pretty Mexican girl.) There was no pragmatic benefit to ticketing people for driving safe, normal speeds, so naturally everybody came up with unflattering theories and nobody changed their driving behavior. So yeah, traffic citations can be bullshit even if the driver is guilty.
  - philwelch 16y ago
    Any kind of oppression you can avoid by wearing your seatbelt and driving the speed limit is not true oppression.
    - Confusion 16y ago
      However, being oppressed because of those may be the most easily visible sign of a more total form of oppression.
Anechoic 16y ago
I've always believed that it should be legal to audio and/or video record any government employee/contractor during the performance of their official duties (and I say that as a govt contractor). If we can't be accountable to the public, how can we expect to serve the public?
- stcredzero 16y ago
  The Houston city government could probably save 30 or 40% on construction costs if someone could videotape the building sites and analyse the amount of work done.
- hugh3 16y ago
  OK, please send me your address so I can set up a camera in your office.
  - Anechoic 16y ago
    Most of my government work is field work (sound & vibration measurements). My next definitive government project will be sometime in winter/spring 2011: http://www.ntionline.com/CourseInfo.asp?CourseNumber=TPE16 http://www.ntionline.com/CourseInfo.asp?CourseNumber=TPE16 . You'll probably have to check with NTI, but I'm fine if you want to record it (although NTI won't probably won't let you put it up on YouTube since they charge admission to the course).
  - jdp 16y ago
    In the cases of some public servants, like police officers, that is not a direct parallel as they are not spending a lot of time in the office. Public servants performing their duty in public should be subject to the scrutiny of the public. Even if you are a government employee working at a desk in a public building you should be subject to the same. I admit it is just not feasible to allow any and all private citizens access to buildings, or to mount cameras as they desire, but there is a perhaps a better solution? Surveillance tapes available upon request?
    - Anechoic 16y ago
bootload 16y ago
"... This is all important. Being able to record the police is one of the best ways to ensure that the police are held accountable for their actions. ..." It's not only Police. In the local news today it's "ticket inspectors" using unreasonable force: "Brouwer says too much force not the ticket" [0] ~ http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/brouwer-says-too-much-force-not-the-ticket-20101221-194ij.html http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/brouwer-says-too-much-forc... [0] The Age, Nick McKenzie 2010DEC22
- hugh3 16y ago
  Shrug. It's the job of ticket inspectors to make sure people aren't travelling without tickets. If you're travelling without a ticket, it's their job to give you a fine. They need to have certain powers if they're gonna do their job properly, which includes the power to apprehend people who try to run away from them. So reasonable force from a ticket inspector is perfectly justified. And of course anyone on the receiving end of force will usually wind up complaining that it was unreasonable. Don't wanna get tackled by a ticket inspector? Buy a ticket. Or if you don't buy a ticket, fess up and accept your fine.
  - Anechoic 16y ago
    which includes the power to apprehend people who try to run away from them Do we know that for sure? In the US at least, generally workers in those positions specifically do not have the power to apprehend people - if there is a problem, you call the police or the designated security personnel. It's really easy for a person without the proper martial training to unnecessarily hurt someone, or get hurt themselves.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      Wikipedia says it only indirectly, but yes: "In New South Wales, revenue protection on its rail network is primarily the responsibility of Transit Officers. Like their Victorian counterparts, these transit officers also carry out security patrols on trains and railway stations, with the power of issuing on-the-spot fines for minor offences, and even to use "reasonable force" to make arrests." Which I read as saying that ticket officers in both NSW and Victoria (where this story takes place) are allowed to use reasonable force. (In America, of course, things are different. For instance the BART has its own police force, which 999,999 times out of every million can be guaranteed not to shoot you in the back while you're lying on the ground.)
brown9-2 16y ago
Can anyone explain the argument against the legality/morality of videotaping a police officer performing their official duties?
- hugh3 16y ago
  Under certain circumstances I can see it as legitimate to protect officers from retaliation for doing their jobs. Example: Police officers raid a [whatever] belonging to an organized crime syndicate. Some dude is standing by with a video camera as the officers carry the evidence to their cars. Two weeks later, every officer involved finds that his house has burned to the ground.
  - pmorici 16y ago
    You don't need to video tape for that to happen.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      No, but it makes it a lot easier.
      - mindcrime 16y ago
        Well, those guys/gals chose to become cops; knowing it was a risky career. That is all completely orthogonal to the point that public servants must be held accountable to their employer - the public. Police even more so, since "society" gives them something that - in essence - NO one else is given... a monopoly on the "legal" use of force. If you're going to send guys with guns around - assuming that they have the authority to use violence to conduct their jobs - and they're being paid out of my tax dollars, and claiming to be part of an organization that represents me; I damn sure expect to be able to monitor them.
  - isleyaardvark 16y ago
    I was under the impression that this sort of information is already publicly available. Cops are already uniformed, they have badge numbers, their names are on the police reports, and their names show up if it goes to court since the accused has a right to confront witnesses under the 6th amendment.
nodata 16y ago
Bruce! Please get a new portrait photo!
dannyb 16y ago
Hey Mr. Policeman, if you're not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.
zaphar 16y ago
In the case of recording police can they really have any expectation of privacy when anything they do in the course of their duties may be examined in a court of law? I should think that would remove any expectation they had legally speaking. IANAL so if any lawyers feel like answering I would be curious to hear their opinion.
bootload 16y ago
"... The lawyer leading the class action said some people who watched footage of the incidents dubbed the city watchhouse ''Canberra's Abu Ghraib'', in reference to the Baghdad prison where US military personnel abused Iraqi prisoners. ..." In todays news. "Ex-police officers accused of torture" (The Age, Jenna Hand, 2010DEC24) ~ http://www.theage.com.au/national/expolice-officers-accused-of-torture-20101223-196l6.html http://www.theage.com.au/national/expolice-officers-accused-...

126 points by m3mb3r 16y ago

If this is something of interest to you, join your local CopWatch organization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copwatch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copwatch Bruce is absolutely right: if nobody watches the watchmen, you can only expect trouble... filming police prevents things like this: http://www.gifbin.com/bin/112009/1258398254_police-brutality.gif http://www.gifbin.com/bin/112009/1258398254_police-brutality... and this: http://www.gifbin.com/bin/1238065175_cop-pushes-biker.gif http://www.gifbin.com/bin/1238065175_cop-pushes-biker.gif

ronnier 16y ago
A lot is discussed about cops using racial profiling and targeting certain neighborhoods. I have a theory that there's another form of profiling that targets more affluent areas for traffic citations to bring in revenue. Is this a concern for anybody?
- viraptor 16y ago
  What do you mean by "targets"? If people are fined for something they did, then it's not a problem. If they're going to be fined even though they're not guilty, they should be able to challenge it and go to court. Or is it a different situation?
  - ronnier 16y ago
    Aggressively patrol certain areas. (Yes I'm bitter and somewhat ranting)
  - matwood 16y ago
    I think I understand what the poster was talking about. I live in a decent neighborhood where it's mostly on street parking. The way my street sets up, even though it is a 2-way street it's mostly one way traffic. This leads to people parallel parking on both sides of the street while facing the same way (it's a fine to parallel park facing opposite of traffic). When I moved in over 18 months ago everyone was parked incorrectly. I parked incorrectly for 13 months before one night on the last day of the month we all received $30 parking fines at 3am. I talked to a few of my neighbors and this was the first time they had seen fines given. I along with others parked the wrong direction for at least 13 months without a fine. So, either police never patrolled our neighborhood during that time or they decided to apply the law only when they feel like it, i.e. to meet their quota. Revenue generation at its finest!
    - pmichaud 16y ago
      This identical thing happened to me.
    - stcredzero 16y ago
      A friend of mine in college challenged his "wrong wheels to curb" ticket and got it summarily dismissed because the officer didn't want to bother.
    - viraptor 16y ago
      That is something I don't really agree with. Maybe they didn't patrol that area, maybe they didn't have enough people, maybe for some other reason... Anyways, you know you can get a fine for parking the wrong way, yet you did it. If you said you don't agree with that rule, I might concur. What exactly did they do wrong? I hope that since then everyone is parking correctly. Isn't that the whole point of fining people?
      - matwood 16y ago
        If you're right about not patrolling then that means they NEVER drove through my rather small townhouse community in almost 13 months. So much for police doing routine patrols. What bothered me about the whole thing was inconsistent enforcement. It's okay to park that way for over a year and then one day it's not. Enforcing an ordinance or law only when it's convenient (to hit a quota) for the officer makes me think the particular law isn't about safety but about revenue generation. If it was truly about safety it would be enforced all of the time.
  - Anechoic 16y ago
    What do you mean by "targets"? If people are fined for something they did, then it's not a problem. A lot of it has to with "equal enforcement" - take a look at mj enforcement in CA as described in http://reason.com/blog/2010/07/01/california-naacp-backs-marijua http://reason.com/blog/2010/07/01/california-naacp-backs-mar... (leave aside for a moment the wisdom/necessity of the drug war) - I'm sure most of the people arrested for mj broke the law and deserved the consequences. but it as a negative effect on the targeted segment and not the population aa a whole. That puts one segment at a disadvantage in other aspects of life (getting a job, getting housing, etc). BTW, don't know why you got downvoted, you simply asked a question.
    - tbrownaw 16y ago
      > broke the law and deserved the consequences Not much connection there, even for reasonable laws the sentences are often a bit on the extreme side.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    I got a fine once. Yeah, I was speeding: a 4 lane road with no turns and actual curbs, 35 mph. I was going at the speed of the rest of the traffic, 45mph. They keep the speed limit like that and set up traps all the time. Laws != morals, and when the police are treated as a revenue center, it's bad.
  - dkarl 16y ago
    I live in a city where speed limits are sensibly enforced. Lazy cops don't randomly set up shop and start ticketing people for normal, safe behavior. Officers here are known to sit beside the freeway letting hundreds of people drive by at 70-75 mph and then go lights flashing after the one guy weaving in and out of traffic at 90 mph. That kind of sanity is impressive to me, who never expected professionalism and intelligence (of all things!) out of police officers. The reason people complain about speeding tickets is that speed limits are inconsistently enforced. Speed limits are usually about 10 mph too low for normal conditions, and enforcement reflects that. Yet in some places, enforcement is strict, and it's impossible to predict where without local knowledge. For instance, on a major road near my apartment that goes out to some major suburbs, there is a little stretch going through a separate municipality where the speed limit drops inexplicably and is very strictly enforced, practically 24/7. All the locals know it, but woe to the out-of-towner who fails to heed the locals' example and hit the brakes. But at least that's consistent. Where I grew up, inconsistency was the key. You never saw them set up twice in the same place, unless the speed limit was especially unreasonable at that place. Enforcement was so random that everybody ignored it, and everybody had paranoid theories. (It's the end of the month; they're just filling their quotas. My ex-wife's brother is a cop, I bet he asked his buddy to go after me. Goddamn white cops don't like seeing a Mexican with a pretty white girl. Goddamn Mexican cops don't like seeing a white guy with a pretty Mexican girl.) There was no pragmatic benefit to ticketing people for driving safe, normal speeds, so naturally everybody came up with unflattering theories and nobody changed their driving behavior. So yeah, traffic citations can be bullshit even if the driver is guilty.
- philwelch 16y ago
  Any kind of oppression you can avoid by wearing your seatbelt and driving the speed limit is not true oppression.
  - Confusion 16y ago
    However, being oppressed because of those may be the most easily visible sign of a more total form of oppression.

Anechoic 16y ago

I've always believed that it should be legal to audio and/or video record any government employee/contractor during the performance of their official duties (and I say that as a govt contractor). If we can't be accountable to the public, how can we expect to serve the public?

stcredzero 16y ago
The Houston city government could probably save 30 or 40% on construction costs if someone could videotape the building sites and analyse the amount of work done.
hugh3 16y ago
OK, please send me your address so I can set up a camera in your office.
- Anechoic 16y ago
  Most of my government work is field work (sound & vibration measurements). My next definitive government project will be sometime in winter/spring 2011: http://www.ntionline.com/CourseInfo.asp?CourseNumber=TPE16 http://www.ntionline.com/CourseInfo.asp?CourseNumber=TPE16 . You'll probably have to check with NTI, but I'm fine if you want to record it (although NTI won't probably won't let you put it up on YouTube since they charge admission to the course).
- jdp 16y ago
  In the cases of some public servants, like police officers, that is not a direct parallel as they are not spending a lot of time in the office. Public servants performing their duty in public should be subject to the scrutiny of the public. Even if you are a government employee working at a desk in a public building you should be subject to the same. I admit it is just not feasible to allow any and all private citizens access to buildings, or to mount cameras as they desire, but there is a perhaps a better solution? Surveillance tapes available upon request?
  - Anechoic 16y ago

bootload 16y ago

"... This is all important. Being able to record the police is one of the best ways to ensure that the police are held accountable for their actions. ..." It's not only Police. In the local news today it's "ticket inspectors" using unreasonable force: "Brouwer says too much force not the ticket" [0] ~ http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/brouwer-says-too-much-force-not-the-ticket-20101221-194ij.html http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/brouwer-says-too-much-forc... [0] The Age, Nick McKenzie 2010DEC22

hugh3 16y ago
Shrug. It's the job of ticket inspectors to make sure people aren't travelling without tickets. If you're travelling without a ticket, it's their job to give you a fine. They need to have certain powers if they're gonna do their job properly, which includes the power to apprehend people who try to run away from them. So reasonable force from a ticket inspector is perfectly justified. And of course anyone on the receiving end of force will usually wind up complaining that it was unreasonable. Don't wanna get tackled by a ticket inspector? Buy a ticket. Or if you don't buy a ticket, fess up and accept your fine.
- Anechoic 16y ago
  which includes the power to apprehend people who try to run away from them Do we know that for sure? In the US at least, generally workers in those positions specifically do not have the power to apprehend people - if there is a problem, you call the police or the designated security personnel. It's really easy for a person without the proper martial training to unnecessarily hurt someone, or get hurt themselves.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Wikipedia says it only indirectly, but yes: "In New South Wales, revenue protection on its rail network is primarily the responsibility of Transit Officers. Like their Victorian counterparts, these transit officers also carry out security patrols on trains and railway stations, with the power of issuing on-the-spot fines for minor offences, and even to use "reasonable force" to make arrests." Which I read as saying that ticket officers in both NSW and Victoria (where this story takes place) are allowed to use reasonable force. (In America, of course, things are different. For instance the BART has its own police force, which 999,999 times out of every million can be guaranteed not to shoot you in the back while you're lying on the ground.)

brown9-2 16y ago

Can anyone explain the argument against the legality/morality of videotaping a police officer performing their official duties?

hugh3 16y ago
Under certain circumstances I can see it as legitimate to protect officers from retaliation for doing their jobs. Example: Police officers raid a [whatever] belonging to an organized crime syndicate. Some dude is standing by with a video camera as the officers carry the evidence to their cars. Two weeks later, every officer involved finds that his house has burned to the ground.
- pmorici 16y ago
  You don't need to video tape for that to happen.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    No, but it makes it a lot easier.
    - mindcrime 16y ago
      Well, those guys/gals chose to become cops; knowing it was a risky career. That is all completely orthogonal to the point that public servants must be held accountable to their employer - the public. Police even more so, since "society" gives them something that - in essence - NO one else is given... a monopoly on the "legal" use of force. If you're going to send guys with guns around - assuming that they have the authority to use violence to conduct their jobs - and they're being paid out of my tax dollars, and claiming to be part of an organization that represents me; I damn sure expect to be able to monitor them.
- isleyaardvark 16y ago
  I was under the impression that this sort of information is already publicly available. Cops are already uniformed, they have badge numbers, their names are on the police reports, and their names show up if it goes to court since the accused has a right to confront witnesses under the 6th amendment.

nodata 16y ago

Bruce! Please get a new portrait photo!

dannyb 16y ago

Hey Mr. Policeman, if you're not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.

zaphar 16y ago

In the case of recording police can they really have any expectation of privacy when anything they do in the course of their duties may be examined in a court of law? I should think that would remove any expectation they had legally speaking. IANAL so if any lawyers feel like answering I would be curious to hear their opinion.

bootload 16y ago

"... The lawyer leading the class action said some people who watched footage of the incidents dubbed the city watchhouse ''Canberra's Abu Ghraib'', in reference to the Baghdad prison where US military personnel abused Iraqi prisoners. ..." In todays news. "Ex-police officers accused of torture" (The Age, Jenna Hand, 2010DEC24) ~ http://www.theage.com.au/national/expolice-officers-accused-of-torture-20101223-196l6.html http://www.theage.com.au/national/expolice-officers-accused-...