January 26, 2013 Testimony to the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee in OPPOSITION to SB0482, "An Act concerning Public Safety - Law Enforcement Officers - Body-Worn Cameras" Thomas Nephew, Member, Montgomery County Civil Rights Coalition[contact information removed]Speaking for the activist group "Montgomery County Civil Rights Coalition" and for myself, I reluctantly oppose this legislation. Our group is proud to be part of a statewide coalition supporting many of the other initiatives before this committee today: law enforcement officer bill of rights reform, state prosecutors for police-involved 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 Rialta, California, but in our own research[endnoteRef:1] 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. [1: "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-not-on-them/]

Still, with rigorous safeguards, we'd be content to support this bill. But we dont 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. At minimum, such retrospective surveillance should be subject to judicial oversight and a 'probable cause' standard -- and even then, this legislature would be expanding an ever-growing surveillance state yet again.Just as importantly, the bill doesnt appear to set storage time limits as recommended[endnoteRef:2] 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. [2: "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-and-liberty/police-body-mounted-cameras-right-policies-place-win-all]

Its also not clear to us whether this bill prevents local law enforcement sharing body cam video with federal agencies or hybrid local-state-federal task forces. 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; indeed, that seems to be the point of emphasizing limits on stored data use. While those limits are welcome, they're not enough. 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 giant data storage facilities like those being built for the NSA in Utah -- and that all being perfectly legal under this law. 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 the solution for police accountability lies 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,[endnoteRef:3] and to consider citizen review board legislation such as that in draft legislation developed by North Carolina General Assembly representative R. Moore .[endnoteRef:4] [3: 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] [4: General Assembly of North Carolina Session 2015 Bill Draft 2015-ML-5, Prohibit Discriminatory Profiling. Retrieved 2/26/2015 at http://tinyurl.com/ofu4svz]

We urge that this bill, however, be amended to address the concerns outlined above. Until then, we must reluctantly oppose it.