March 12, 2015 Testimony to the Maryland House Judiciary Committee

in SUPPORT, WITH AMENDMENTS, of HB627, "An Act concerning

Public Safety - Law Enforcement Officers - Body-Worn Cameras"
Thomas Nephew, Member, Montgomery County Civil Rights Coalition
[contact info withheld]
Speaking for the activist group "Montgomery County Civil Rights Coalition"
and for myself, I support many aspects of HB627, but with reservations we
would like to see addressed in amendments to this legislation.
Our group is proud to be part of a statewide coalition advocating a number of
legislative reforms being considered during this legislative session: law
enforcement officer Bill of Rights reform, state prosecutors for policeinvolved deaths, anti-racial profiling legislation.
This bill is different, because if police accountability is the goal, this is about
a tool that literally points in the wrong direction: police-worn body cameras.
We're aware of the claims that this technology reduces police-related
violence, e.g., in Rialto, California, but in our own researchi we've found so
many counterexamples and caveats -- from Albuquerque to Salt Lake City -that it's clear to us that the real story is more complex.
Were hardly alone in being unpersuaded theres hard proof of body camera
benefits; in a December 2014 workgroup report on body cameras,
Marylands own Governors Office of Crime Control & Prevention cites a
Department of Justice sponsored study to the effect that design flaws in the
studies make it difficult to conclude whether all the potential benefits can be
realized, and that agencies considering body camera programs should be
aware that conclusive research has not yet been conducted.ii, iii
Given the uncertain benefits of body cameras, their potential costs
especially to civil liberties and civil rights must be held to an absolute
minimum with rigorous safeguards. We dont yet see enough of those
safeguards in this bill.
To be sure, we very much welcome that this bill ensures that police cant pick
and choose when to activate body cameras, and that they cant use them to
conduct surveillance of constitutionally protected activities (i.e.,
demonstrations or meetings). But we're deeply troubled by the possibility
that this legislature would condone the retrospective browsing of body

camera footage on no stronger a basis than the 'reasonable suspicion' of law

enforcement. This is a back door to surveillance by body camera, and it's
swinging wide open. The standard for retrospective surveillance using body
camera footage should be much stronger than it is in this bill. Perhaps none
should be permitted at all. After all, body cameras are touted as tools to
increase police accountability not as a Trojan Horse for a new kind of police
surveillance network.
Just as importantly, the bill doesnt appear to set storage time limits as
recommendediv by the national ACLU. We disagree that this is a moot point
because of alleged law enforcement budget constraints. If there are two
technical constants in 21st century technology, they are decreasing costs of
computing power and decreasing costs of data storage. And if there's a
political constant in this respect, it's the appetite of Congress to lavish funds
and surplus military technology on local police forces. Data storage won't be
a constraint -- it will be a highly profitable boondoggle, unless storage limits
are set in advance.
Its also not clear to us how or whether this bill prevents local law
enforcement sharing body cam video with federal agencies or hybrid localstate-federal task forces beyond the reach of this state law. In a possibly
related issue, a narrow view of this bill's language might also suggest that
while stored data may not be compared against biometric or other data
sets, live, streaming real-time data could be. This is not a fictional concern;
many body camera vendors advertise streaming, wifi, and/or remote
connectionsv; we see nothing in the bill that addresses this issue.
Thus, while regulations about the retrieval and inspection of stored data are
necessary, they're not enough if not combined with restrictions on how the
data could be shared in real time. It's all too easy to envision body camera
video data being simultaneously compared to biometric databases in real
time, copied over to federal or joint task forces, and stored in data storage
facilities like those being built for the NSA in Utah -- and that all being
perfectly legal under this law. Something very much like this is already
happening with license plate scans.vi Again, it would be a disservice to
communities mobilizing against local police abuses for this legislature to
unnecessarily enable new abuses by other law enforcement agencies.
We think better solutions for police accountability lie elsewhere: with rigorous
record-keeping and transparent reporting of all police-citizen interactions,

and with truly independent civilian review boards with investigative and
subpoena powers. We therefore urge this committee to consider the racial
profiling and "encounter form" provisions of the Local Civil Rights Restoration
Act, developed by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee,vii and to consider
citizen review board legislation such as that in draft legislation developed by
North Carolina General Assembly representative R. Moore .viii
While we welcome and support the many positive aspects of this bill, and
applaud the work that went into drafting it, we urge that it be amended to
address the concerns outlined above.

i "Police body cameras: eyes on us, not on them?" Thomas Nephew. February 2, 2015.
Montgomery County Civil Rights Coalition. Retrieved 2/26/2015 at
https://mococivilrights.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/police-body-cameras-eyes-on-us-noton-them/
ii Workgroup on the Implementation & Use of Body Worn Cameras by Law Enforcement:
Final Report. December 2014. Maryland Governors Office of Crime Control Prevention.
Retrieved 3/11/2015 at http://www.goccp.maryland.gov/documents/body-worn-cameras20141215.pdf
iii White, Michael D. 2014. Police Officer Body-Worn Cameras: Assessing the Evidence.
Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Appendix to GOCCP
Workgroup Final Report.
iv "Police Body-Mounted Cameras: With Right Policies in Place, a Win For All." Jay Stanley.
October 9, 2013. Retrieved 2/26/2015 at https://www.aclu.org/technology-andliberty/police-body-mounted-cameras-right-policies-place-win-all
v See, e.g.,http://www.vievu.com/vievu-products/hardware/ (Viewvu.coms VIEVU2 with
built in Wi-Fi for live streaming.);
http://www.wolfcomusa.com/wolfcom_vision_body_camera_specs.html (WolfcomUSA Body
Camera specifications including optional real time remote view.) Both URLs retrieved
3/11/2015.
vi FOIA Documents Reveal Massive DEA Program to Record Americans Whereabouts
With License Plate Readers. January 26, 2015. Stein, Bennett, and Stanley, J. ACLU
Speech, Privacy & Technology Project. Retrieved 3/12/2015 at
https://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-criminal-law-reform/foia-documentsreveal-massive-dea-program-record-ame
vii Model Ordinance: Local Civil Rights Restoration Act. Bill of Rights Defense Committee.
2010. Retrieved 2/26/2015 at
http://www.constitutioncampaign.org/ordinances/lawenforcement.pdf
viii General Assembly of North Carolina Session 2015 Bill Draft 2015-ML-5, Prohibit
Discriminatory Profiling. Retrieved 2/26/2015 at http://tinyurl.com/ofu4svz