Hands Up, Don't Film: Body Worn Cameras and Protests

This weekend, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to gather in front of the Capitol to mark the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March. For the 2015 rally, the organizers have recast their mission in the language of the Black Lives Matter movement, renamed it “Justice or Else,” and updated the call of solidarity to an array of underrepresented groups. In advance of the event, police-protester tensions have already been raised. The DC Metro Police Department has issued traffic advisories and arranged for special police monitoring teams to be present on the Mall. But will police officers present this weekend be wearing body cameras? And if they do, will civil rights and civil liberties be protected or put at risk?

Amid the national debate on police violence and heightened scrutiny of policing tactics, body worn cameras (BWCs) have been pushed forward as a high-tech solution for old problems of police accountability. But as departments all across the country have started to buy cameras and pin them onto their uniforms, including in Washington, D.C. and nearby Baltimore, many policy concerns remain about how next generation law enforcement technologies are being implemented. Several civil society organizations have put together excellent policy primers examining body cameras, providing recommendations about when cameras should be turned on and off, what the data retention should policies be, and who should be able to access the footage. But in some situations there are no clear cut answers, even among civil rights activists, law enforcement agencies, and technology experts deeply engaged with the issues. One such situation is during a public demonstration like the one taking place this weekend.

A public protest, like the Justice or Else march, exemplifies some of the challenges posed by BWCs. In recent years, high profile demonstrations have shown both the public value of recording law enforcement interactions with protesters as well as the risk of heightened government surveillance of demonstrations and their organizers.

Protests are just the kind of high-stakes public situations that would benefit from increased police accountability and reduced use of force, and body cameras have the potential to help with both goals. However, there is also an obvious value to preserving anonymity in protests. With this in mind, in some cities, including Houston, police are proceeding with a policy to turn off cameras when interacting with protesters. While this decision may be motivated by a desire to promote free speech, it creates strong concerns that body cameras will be taken out of the equation when they could reveal misconduct, suppression, and disparate treatment towards demonstrators, scenarios where concerns over government clampdown against free speech are at their heights.

Conversely, one might imagine a scenario where a network of police cameras generates continuous footage of a protest. Without appropriate restrictions on use of that video, biometric facial recognition software could subsequently be used to crunch through the video, cataloging individual protestors by matching their faces to stored government files or social media–harvested databases. Police computers could then feed on this data to identify where protesters live in surrounding areas or even catalog lists of local “agitators.” Earlier this year, emails obtained by VICE magazine revealed that this is already part reality—the Department of Homeland Security monitored the activities of prominent Black Lives Matter organizers, and “constructed a geospatial map to follow the protests,” motivated by concern “about potential ‘anarchist violence.’” As surveillance technologies become increasingly powerful, their use for gratuitous data collection at protests presents a real threat that government could suppress demonstrations, target organizers, and chill First Amendment activities. This is a particularly sensitive issue for communities of color already wary of heightened government surveillance.

Policies for police body cameras that incorporate principles to protect civil rights—such as the civil rights principles advanced by OTI and a number of other advocates—will be a crucial prerequisite to ensure that police body cameras work in the public interest, both at protests and elsewhere. For example, for issues such as pre-report review by officers and use as biometrics, rules are clearly needed to ensure that body cameras are tools to empower civilians rather than improperly enhance police power.

For the complex issue of BWCs at protests, further discussion is needed to effectively protect civil liberties. Protesters, civil rights and civil liberties advocates, and law enforcement agencies must work together to determine what restrictions should exist on body camera filming during public protests and demonstrations. Communities and civil society should demand such deliberations, and work to ensure that as body worn cameras are deployed across the country, effective policies are put into place alongside them.

Cover image ("BerkeleyDay2-3593") is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 by Annette Bernhardt.