Point Of View
In a discussion with Professor Katina Michael by email on the 26th September 2015 I was struck by a comment Katina made regarding whether it is ethical to implement a lawful system ie. BWC repository irrespective of security or privacy concerns?
Katina’s reply was;
“… Should we have a police force that stores this per say always? Yes - they are abiding however should we be recording everything? Socio-technical sure.....but what are the issues with differing cultures? The recalcitrance of counter surveillance .....generally twisted, influenced, low scale and susceptible to buy-out and it's bias....depending on the point of view.The hypocrisy.....it's ok for photo-borgs to say that this is the way but they don’t practice what they preach.
I had a long and hard reflective think about it all and decided that as a researcher I had at hand 50 interviews which indicated that there are major risks with this storage, data management issues and above all else participants indicate that the privacy issue is at a catastrophic level given the implications that BWC footage might be used against citizens, cultural profiling, lack of consent…
