Phone Cameras and Apps Help Speed Calls for Police Reform

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/technology/phone-cameras-and-apps-help-speed-calls-for-police-reform.html

by carlchenet • 11 years ago

58 48 11 years ago

I have a different take on the police.

I can't go into a whole lot of detail as it is late, I am tired and I have lots of work to do.

But more or less I point out to every cop I come across, that while I do know that there are some bad cops, there are bad people everywhere. It is wrong to hate the police despite that there have been lots of officers who have murdered innocent, defenseless people.

I don't judge individuals by the behaviors of other people. Recall what MLK said about "the content of our character". For me, I don't judge someone by the color of their clothes or whether they have a shiny badge affixed to them.

I then point out that I have quite a profoundly serious illness: Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder, and that it is much like being Manic-Depressive and Schizophrenic at the same time.

Being crazy gives me lots of real-world experience with law enforcement. Consider that I was once hospitalized involuntarily for ten solid days because I told some shrink that I planned to "go camping in the desert". See, I was completely unaware that in Reno, when one intends to "go camping in the desert", one intends to commit suicide.

It didn't help to point out that I had the Boy Scout Wilderness Survival Merit Badge, nor that I had camped in the desert just the night before.

I was once beaten unconscious by two cops by having my skull slammed repeatedly into concrete. When I regained consciousness three days later, while I could correctly visualize the spelling of my own name when I thought about it, I was incapable of spelling it when I attempted to write it on paper with a pencil.

You'd think that would make me hate all police officers but no, I don't even hate the two cops who assaulted me with a deadly weapon.

However, I do feel that they should be spending some time behind bars.

On the other hand there have been plenty of times that police officers have saved my very life. The ONLY time I ever saw a cop so much as set foot on the Caltech campus was when a Pasadena Police Department officer came to save me from the Caltech campus security guards who beat the living crap out of me then hurled me bodily down a flight of stairs.

Finally I write down the URL for "Living with Schizoaffective Disorder" then point out that "I wrote it in part to help people like you help people like me".

http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/schizoaffective-disorder/

Finally, I offer to shake their hand. Cops aren't used to members of the public offering to shake their hand. Quite commonly they are visibly moved by my simple gesture.

tormeh2• 11 years ago

Certainly, but it also seems like some local police departments have institutionalized misconduct. And I don't think it's totally unreasonable to to expect cops to be significantly better than average people.

MichaelCrawford14• 11 years ago

That is quite definitely the case.

In Portland, a total of four PPB officers murdered two mentally ill men in cold blood. They were not prosecuted; the grand jury and PPB internal affairs cleared them.

The family of one of the victims sued and won $2M. I don't clearly recall whether it was a jury verdict or a settlement.

In the other case I don't think there was a lawsuit however the federal government found that the PPB wasn't properly trained to deal with the mentally ill. My own more-recent experience that the PPB is quite good, for example I'd see someone going totally bananas at the Portland Rescue Mission and the cops would show right up, then be completely reasonable, pleasant and polite.

On the other hand, the Santa Cruz Police Department is quite oppressive to the homeless and mentally ill. That led to the Occupy Santa Cruz movement raising quite a lot of Hell, but with the eventual result that things got quite a lot better for the homeless and quite a lot worse for the cops.

   edit: s/better/worse/

I hasten to point out that the vast majority of police officers and sheriff's deputies, I expect FBI agents as well, hate bad cops with a passion. The problem is "The Thin Blue Line"; their culture forbids them criticizing their fellow officers.

But they are quick to criticize bad cops in other jurisdictions. Thus when I told a Reno deputy about the OHSU campus cops who beat me up, he got furiously angry, wanted to help me bring them to justice, but I - politely - refused his offer. He has a lot of work to do, I want to take care of that myself

MichaelCrawford14• 11 years ago

"better than average"

Around here, to get hired as a police officer or a deputy, one has to pass quite a rigorous background check.

I once had a girlfriend who described herself as "a former law enforcement officer". She never called herself a "police officer" or a "sheriff's deputy", however she was quite expert at handling firearms.

I eventually concluded that she had been a Cadet for the Sheriff, that is, a trainee. The Cadets assist with various law enforcement work but they never actually carry out the actual enforcement.

I figure that someone clued in to that she was mentally ill.

I fear my hallucations; she shoots at them!

osi• 11 years ago

This a million times.

There's a Illinois State Trooper that lives in my neighborhood. He drives his work vehicle home and ALWAYS parks it illegally. There's a sign saying "no parking" with an arrow pointing right at where he put his car.

Of course he's never ticketed. But this grates me every time I walk by. He is entrusted with enforcing our laws, but can't be arsed to follow them every single night when he parks.

It is a huge erosion of trust in their institution.

onion2k• 11 years ago

I don't judge individuals by the behaviors of other people.

You try not to, but ultimately it's impossible to enter in to an interaction with another person with a completely blank slate. Our previous interactions with people affect how we perceive the world around us. If a subset of people are found to be murderers then the risk of meeting someone in that set who isn't a murderer decreases - to use an ad absurdum example, if there are 1,000,000 police officers and 999,999 of them are murderers, you wouldn't meet the last one thinking "I really ought to give him the benefit of the doubt."

At the moment, the number of police officers who have killed innocent people is still absolutely tiny, so the risk of being killed by one is also tiny, and to that end we should still see police officers as useful, helpful members of society who aren't going to murder us. But also, rationally speaking, the police should welcome every technology that makes people trust them, and that includes cameras that record them rather than us.

MichaelCrawford14• 11 years ago

While I readily agree, being mentally ill, I have a unique perspective on that.

Some of my very best friends are convicted murderers.

I regard them as nice people and good friends. On the other hand, those folks are never ever going to get out of the state forensic hospital.

marincounty• 11 years ago

"At the moment, the number of police officers who have killed innocent people is still absolutely tiny"

There is no way to verify your claim. In my own antidotal world, I have seen cops ruin people's lives by harassment, and revenue collection!

There are two statements made by Eric Holder's Justice Department that didn't get the traction I felt they needed:

“Local authorities consistently approached law enforcement not as a means for protecting public safety, but as a way of generating revenue,” Holder said

Officers in Ferguson “routinely violate the Fourth Amendment,” Holder said, and stop citizens without reasonable suspicion and then use unreasonable force against them. Incidents often “blatantly cross the line,” he said.

This investigation was specific to Ferguson, Missouri, but I have a feeling they are systemic problems in many towns and cities across America.

I have no way if proving my own personal suspicions about the average Cop, in the average police department, but I don't trust them anymore. I know I have been pulled over for no reason. I have been ticketed for incidents I honestly didn't think I committed. I'm a white dude living in a wealthy community; I often wonder how minorites are treated in other parts of the country?

(I have no answers to the injustices I see, other than arming your vechicle, and person with a video cam. The problem I see now is most cops will be on the lookout for any recording devise.)

nl3• 11 years ago

I was always doubtful about David Brin's views on privacy and surveillance[1], mostly because I didn't want it to be true.

But I'm increasingly coming around to think that it might make sense to explore his model more.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society

TeMPOraL4• 11 years ago

I haven't read the book yet (planning to), but there is this thought I keep thinking about and I've mentioned here a few times, that our choice might be that between privacy and continued progress humanity. There are great benefits to the same technologies that "enable mass surveillance", and I feel this angle is underexplored.

(And yes, every time I mention this I secretly hope someone will argue with me, explaining the reasons to fight for so strong privacy we enjoy now (relatively to all the history of humanity) that are different than just belief in the privacy as a basic human right - an axiom which I don't really recognize).

pyre• 11 years ago

relatively to all the history of humanity

I'm curious how you think that privacy is stronger now than any other time in history?

While the "small town" / "small group" effect was definitely present in the past, if you ran afoul of said group, you could always leave it (and the stigma) behind. Now the Internet allows people to inspect your history wherever you go. It becomes inescapable. This is something that has never existed in the past (aside from becoming so super-infamous that news travels between disparate groups, I guess).

MichaelCrawford14• 11 years ago

This wouldn't work for me at all. Actually it would put me right into a psychiatric hospital - repeatedly.

I expect it would do that for lots of other folks.

The last little while I've been thinking of buying a car or maybe a motorcycle. For quite a long time I've enjoyed the fine public transit we enjoy here in Vancouver and Portland, but I'd like to go camping in the desert.

The reason I haven't already done so, is that I know from experience that when you drive a car, the police find all manner of reasons to pull you over. The cops don't always have evil intent in doing so; consider that Timothy McVeigh was pulled over for expired registration a few days ago after he bombed the Oklahoma City Federal Building. I expect everyone was getting pulled over back then.

I was appalled just a couple days ago to learn that the Feds have - or maybe they are working on - a nationwide license plate reader database.

Even were I completely law-abiding, drove my car legally, my physical location would be in that database. No matter where I travelled in my car or on my motorbike, my entire path would be in a computer file.

I've thought about that quite a lot; I am simply unable to tolerate such a thing, even today.

By contrast, one does not need a license plate to ride a bicycle. I'm rather out of shape but back in the day I used to ride my bike fifty miles on a regular basis.

I'm not dead certain but I might ride my bike from Portland to Burning Man this year. That's mostly desert, much of it mountainous. To do that wrong could be life-threatening but to do it right would be quite cool.

nothrabannosir• 11 years ago

In many countries public transport is now next to impossible with only cash. You need an NFC enabled device. Often, discounts or monthly subscriptions are impossible if you take an anonymous one. Recharging with cash is time consuming at best, and very hard if the machines do not accept bills. I tried, and eventually caved.

Please enjoy your anonymous public transport to the fullest for me. :(

nl3• 11 years ago

The point of Brin's ideas is that the police and the government can (and should) be surveilled by ordinary every day citizens.

We have seen how keeping cameras on police moderates their behaviour. I wonder if that "reverse surveillance" could also moderate things like unjustified stops when one is driving?

japhyr• 11 years ago

I lived on a bicycle for 13 months, and then I rode a motorcycle for a few years. Both are great ways to travel, and they do take you a little farther from mainstream society than a car does.

If you're careful, riding a bicycle through the desert and mountains is pretty safe. The most dangerous part are roads with narrow shoulders and lots of truck traffic. You can almost always find a lightly-traveled road to get you where you want to go. You should carry lots of water in the desert, but you should be fine if you run out and don't panic. I never ran out, but I was pretty confident if I did I could just sit still and wait for a passing motorist to share some water.

Motorcycles still have license plates, and I got pulled over more than once for speeding. But there seems less incentive for an officer to try and search a motorcycle than search a car. So you might deal with fewer overzealous police officers on a motorcycle than in a car.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 11 years ago

"when you drive a car, the police find all manner of reasons to pull you over."

Over the last 20 years, I've put well over 220k miles in on a variety of cars, and have gotten pulled over exactly four times, all of which were for unarguably justified reasons.

(in fairness, I'm a white dude and they're not gonna pull me for 'driving while black')

MichaelCrawford14• 11 years ago

I've been puzzling over a Killer App for a little while, but just don't have the headspace to deal with it. Take The Money And Run:

Write a mobile app - or maybe crowdfund a gadget - that would be an always on video camera, or perhaps just an audio recorder with a sometimes- but not always-on camera.

This would be done in such a way that it is simply not possible to erase the recording, not even if law enforcement confiscates your device. The most-straightforward way would be to upload it to a server however law enforcement could take your entire server, or block access to it &c.

Worse who ever operated the server could be subject to prosecution, say for enabling wiretapping. Yes, I know. :-/

However a solution would be for that server to be a Tor Hidden Service. That would make it difficult, maybe impossible to physically locate the server or its admins; it would also make it more difficult to block the communication between the recorder and the server.

Commonly overlooked is that it's not enough simply to operate a hidden service; if someone does grab the actual box, then they've got your filesystem. For this to really work you need a fully-encrypted disk. But then you have the problem that the OS as well as the hidden service require private keys. If you store them right on the box then you lose.

Possibly Trusted Computing would help somewhat. However another way would be for, when the OS boots, it cries out for help in some surreptitious way, say by posting a racy JPEG on imgur. When an admit sees that JPEG show up on Reddit, then he transmits the secret keys to the server.

There is also the problem that, were these recorders always on, then they would record things that anyone would want to be private. Typically we would want whoever possessed the device to choose which recordings to release to the public; however if they were required to do so under a subpeona, again we lose.

So there should be more than one person making the decision. Whoever has a legimate reason to want privacy, as well as someone who can deny a subpeona with complete safety, in principle the server admin.

This outline doesn't scale at all well. I've been puzzling over it for a little while and I can see that it could be made to scale.

But this is the very first time I've written down any of these ideas.

If you can make something of this, More Power To You.

glomph• 11 years ago

Uploading that much video / audio via tor wouldn't really be feasible with the current infrastructure.

MichaelCrawford14• 11 years ago

I'm hip to that but I expect a solution could be found.

The main problem is that it is risky and expensive to operate an exit node. It's not a big deal to have an internal node.

I expect such an app would be quite popular; if one were able to calculate how much server capacity was required for each recorder, then a retail price could be found that would keep the network within capacity.

Another possibility is that while I assert it would be best to always be recording, sometimes it would be acceptable to do so in low fidelity.

High fidelity audio these days is quite compact.

Had better audio recording been present at JFK's assassination, there would be no doubt as to who fired the shots. Today's Ogg Vorbis or MP3 would be great for that; back then they were using reel-to-reel recorders on police car radios.

Perhaps an accelerometer would help. If nothing bad is happening one wouldn't expect there to be much acceleration. But if you hear a scream or a gunshot, even if you don't aim your phone at it you are startled so that you jump up, look around or maybe even run away. At that point the app would increase its video fidelity - or use less compression.

Most of the time it would use high compression, low resolution or monochrome.

This kind of video doesn't really need to be in color. 8-bit grayscale NTSC video his highly compressible

halviti• 11 years ago

A device that costs money, that you have to carry with you at all times, that you have to have connected to the internet, and you're likely to never use... I get your goal, but I don't think it's practical in the way you're thinking.

There are phone apps which do some of what your suggesting, but leaving them on all the time would mean that you would have to have an unlimited data package and lots of spare batteries.

MichaelCrawford14• 11 years ago

That's a good point.

I did consider that one cannot always get on the Internet, but I didn't mention it in my writeup. The device could upload the recording whenever the Internet was available.

That would leave the problem that the cops know you've got such a gadget, so they prevent you from going to a wifi spot. For this we use the kind of mesh network as was used in the Hong Kong protests a few months ago. I think they didn't write that app themselves, it was already available from the App Store or Google Play.

Most phones have wifi, bluetooth and 4G. If any one of those can connect - somehow - to the Internet then we can upload.

The problem with battery life would be hard to solve on an actual phone but not hard at all to solve on dedicated hardware. A very, very large chunk of your power consumption goes into managing hardware security and virtual memory.

If you had no security at all, and no virtual memory, then you use quite a lot less power. That's quite common with embedded applications, such as TI DPSs running SYSBIOS (previous DSP/BIOS). I have some experience with DSP/BIOS it would not be hard at all to make a device the size of an iPhone that could run for a week or two between recharges.

The device would be a lot more acceptable to most people if it were not plainly visible. Suppose the camera lens could be clipped to your shirt, but the rest of the device is in your pants pocket or your purse, with a bluetooth connection between the two.

I fully understand there are many problems with this concept, but solving these kinds of problems is what engineers actually do to feed their hungry children. :-D

Phone Cameras and Apps Help Speed Calls for Police Reform

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