Dreams of Accountability, Guaranteed Surveillance: The Promises and Costs of Body-Worn Cameras

Even prior to the widespread adoption of police-worn body cameras, video has played a role in illuminating evidence of policing misconduct and fatal shootings, including bystanders’ cell phone cameras, dashboard-mounted cameras, and CCTV surveillance. But among these recording devices, it is body-worn cameras that have garnered national attention as instruments that would facilitate accountability and improve police-community relations as a whole. Proponents claim that body-worn cameras combine features that previous forms of video recording only possessed piece-meal: a high level of mobility, chain-of-custody, and the capacity to capture audio-visual data continuously. Unlike cell phone-produced footage, which relies on the presence of a bystander willing to record the scene of an incident, body-worn cameras would eliminate the need for fortuitous happenstance by recording continuously and approximating the field of view of police officers on the ground in day-to-day activities. But it is this same feature of constant surveillance that has sparked concerns from civil rights groups about how body-worn cameras may violate privacy. The intimacy of body-worn cameras’ presence—which potentially enables the recording of even mundane interpersonal interactions with citizens—can be exploited with the application of technologies like facial recognition; this can exacerbate existing practices that have historically victimized people of color and vulnerable populations. Not only do such technologies increase surveillance, but they also conflate the act of surveilling citizens with the mechanisms by which police conduct is evaluated. Although police accountability is the goal, the camera’s view is pointed outward and away from its wearer, and audio recording captures any sounds within range. As a result, it becomes increasingly difficult to ask whether one can demand greater accountability without increased surveillance at the same time.