Before the Los Angeles City Council approves more than $57 million to pay for the police department’s body camera program, councilmembers should take a hard look at what they’re getting for our money.
Many councilmembers and other leaders have touted body cameras as boons for increased transparency, accountability and improved public trust.

Learn more about ACLU SoCal's work on body cameras in policing

 

But the L.A. Police Department’s body camera program, governed by the policy currently in place, will not achieve those goals. At the end of the day the cameras are only tools, and the way that LAPD plans to use them would, sadly, undercut the values of transparency, accountability and public trust they are meant to promote.
If the public never gets to see the video, the cameras cannot hope to further transparency. Much of the broad public support for body cameras is based on the assumption that the video will be released and the people will be able to see for themselves what the footage captured.

But LAPD’s policy completely fails to provide for any public access to body camera video, and LAPD has made clear that it will not release the videos unless required to do so in court—or unless the chief, in his discretion, believes it would be “beneficial.”

And the department has publicly said that it will not release in most cases of shootings or alleged misconduct and has refused to produce body camera footage in high-profile shootings.

Equally disturbing is that the department requires officers involved in critical incidents or accused of grave misconduct to review video before providing initial statements. That requirement taints evidence and undermines the integrity of investigations.

As many other agencies and law enforcement professionals have recognized, giving officers a chance to tailor their story to the video evidence undermines their credibility even when they tell the truth—and the cognitive effects of reviewing video actually changes the memory officers are asked to recount.

That effect on officers’ memory inevitably hurts rather than helps accountability and public trust. It also significantly undermines whatever marginal improvement in internal accountability may come from the police commission having access to videos in such incidents.

Another great concern is that the policy provides no clear limits on LAPD using body camera footage for general surveillance, or using analytical tools such as facial recognition technology on footage. Nor does it provide guidelines for whether the cameras should be activated during peaceful protests, or how any resulting footage could be used. Body-worn cameras are supposed to help provide accountability and transparency for policing, not to expand surveillance of the public.

The LAPD’s body camera plan has been referred to subcommittees and won’t come before the full council until next year. The estimate of more than $57 million includes $31.2 million for a contract with Taser International Inc. for over 6,000 body cameras, storage and other services relating to the cameras and other equipment. By any standard, this program represents a tremendous investment of taxpayer money.

The LAPD and the police commission have refused to hold the full and meaningful public hearings that the department’s body cam proposal deserves. But the city council can and should hold those hearings now before they commit to spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars.

Councilmembers should take this opportunity to hear from independent experts, members of the community and other stakeholders on the policies necessary for body cameras to achieve what we all hope they will and use their authority to bring LAPD’s policies in line with those goals. Anything less will amount to a waste not only of public funds but of an invaluable opportunity for improving policing in Los Angeles.

Read our letter to the L.A. City Council

Catherine Wagner is staff attorney/fellow at the ACLU of Southern California.

By Matt Cagle

We just got a pile of public records from the police department in Fresno, California. They show that in the last two years, Fresno police have been using several different brands of social media surveillance software – all without the public’s consent.

What’s worse, the ACLU has discovered that Fresno police have been using an especially offensive piece of software called MediaSonar, which encourages the police to identify “threats to public safety” by tracking #BlackLivesMatter-related hashtags.

Social media surveillance software comes in many forms, but it generally works by automatically scanning huge batches of publicly available posts on networks like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. This kind of surveillance can place people under suspicion simply for speaking their mind online.

Earlier this year, activists from the ACLU chapter in Fresno sounded the alarm and brought our attention to Fresno’s use of social media surveillance software called Beware. According to news reports, Beware’s mysterious algorithm was assigning “threat levels” to residents. Local advocates wanted to learn more. So we sent a Public Records Act request to find out how Fresno police were tracking social media, and what they did with the information they gathered.

In response, the police department sent us 88 pages of documents about its experiments with social media surveillance software. The documents raise a number of unanswered questions about social media surveillance at the local level. How many people are being surveilled? How long is their data being stored? How do these intrusive programs gather and interpret information?

Although we still don’t know exactly how the Beware algorithm works – and neither does the Fresno Police Department, apparently – we do know that it gathers information on a person’s publicly available social media activity, and assigns them a threat level of green, yellow, or red. Marketed as a source of insight for officers on the ground, this mysterious software can label people as threats based on inaccurate information. For instance, a Fresno city council member was recently incensed to learn that Beware lists his residence at threat level yellow.

Social media monitoring is part of a pattern of unchecked surveillance. It’s yet another surveillance tool being used without transparency or accountability. And it risks targeting communities that are already vulnerable to police misconduct – especially communities of color.

Which brings us to MediaSonar. Promotional materials from MediaSonar encourage the surveillance of hashtags like #blacklivesmatter, #dontshoot, and #imunarmed. In an email to Fresno Police, the company’s co-founder announced that these “keywords” could “help identify illegal activity and threats to public safety.” During the same time period that Fresno tested MediaSonar software, Black Lives Matter activists took to Fresno’s streets to call for reform.

The idea that people could be labeled as “threats to public safety” simply for objecting to police violence is chilling. But it’s not the first time – recently, the Department of Homeland Security and the Oregon Department of Justicewere caught secretly monitoring Black Lives Matter activists’ online activities.

Protestors shouldn’t have to wonder whether what they write online or post on social media will brand them as a threat in the eyes of law enforcement. The government shouldn’t be collecting a digital record of people’s lives. And police surveillance plans shouldn’t be rushed forward with the public left out of the loop.

As police departments across the country consider using intrusive new surveillance tools, here’s the thing to remember – we don’t have to stand for it. We have a right to determine how law enforcement acts in our communities.

And Fresno residents are right to demand reform, including the adoption of an ordinance that ensures the public has a meaningful chance to weigh in before decisions about this or any other surveillance technology are made.

Technology is changing the way we communicate and organize around powerful ideas. At the forefront of these innovations are movements like #BlackLivesMatter. While the way in which our society expresses itself is shifting, the principles of the First Amendment remain unchanged. Advances in technology are not an excuse for new forms of unaccountable surveillance.

Matt Cagle is technology and civil liberties attorney at the ACLU of Northern California.​