How Police Body Cameras Work

this one out. Thought, well, I don't know if there's a whole lot there, but it ended up being a little more interesting than I thought to be. Yeah, there's a lot there, at least culturally too. Totally. So, um, we're talking body cameras, and they're pretty straightforward at their base. Um, but once you kind of start looking at like the cultural baggage associated with them, why they're being used, it

is a pretty mushrooming topic for sure. And apparently back in two thou five the Brits started using them and they ran some Yeah, because I mean, like the city of London, I don't think there's a square inch that isn't under surveillance, you know. Yeah, they're just pretty uh technologically, um forward, I think sure, Like the first cell phone I ever saw was in London. Really yeah, obviously of

like Japan and Korea for that kind of stuff. Well maybe there too, but I didn't go to either one of those places in the early nineties, I got you, So you're like, London's in your head for that. So um with with I guess the UK in particular, once they started using body cameras, they started using them more and more and more. And that's definitely the case with

the United States more recently. Um And apparently there's a there's a pilot program that really started the whole thing off back in two thousand and twelve in a little town called Rialto, California, which is about fifty miles east of Los Angeles. Yeah, and in Rialto, I'm not sure what the impetus was, but the police chief and a

criminologist got together and said, let's let's try this. They gave half of the police force body cameras to wear, and then switched and gave the other half I guess the second half of the year, throughout all of two thousand twelve, Yeah, and what they were mainly tracking were two different things. Uh, incidences police force and then civilian complaints against officers. UM, generally after use the police force, but just complaints period. Yeah, basically, and the results are

pretty surprising. I think. Yeah, they the officers who wore the cameras used force half as often just generally would use I get well, not less force. That's a little misleading. They would use force less of the of the time. Um. And then the complaints filed, they said they couldn't really Um, there were so few complaints that couldn't really draw a good statistical conclusion. But there was a nine reduction compared with two thousand eleven of complaints. And they found out

other stuff too. I looked into the study. UM, and this is just the commentary from the research team. These aren't like facts and figures. But you know, you do a study like this and then they analyze it, then they say, well, this is what I think. Um. They say that their research shows that people tend to adhere to social norms and change your conduct once they're aware that their behavior is being observed. Um. And the body

worn cameras can bey a straightforward, pragmatic message. You were being watched a videotape and expected to follow the rules. And apparently this uh, what they call a self awareness effect is a neutral third eye that works on both sides. They said it suspect tend to cool down their aggressive actions more and it deters officers from reacting excessively or unnecessarily with force. So it kind of works both ways.

And uh, the final thing I thought was really interesting was had what they called a spillover effect, which was even officers that weren't using the cameras because they did, like you said, with half the force at a time,

they had fewer incidences of force used. And they speculate that they just think there's a conscious effort than going on to make uh, to improve their behavior, so that the the officers that had the cameras being watched didn't like have an advantage or a disadvantage, Like they sort of normalize the whole thing, even if they weren't wearing a camera at all. Yeah, I mean it's a speculation,

but it sort of makes sense. Well, so this the rialto study is really um often I died because it was the first of its kind in the United States and because the results were so surprising, and then so we also the city immediately was like, Okay, all officers now have body cameras. After the results came in, and it just so happened that this took place. The study took place um right before a couple of very high profile police involved deaths, Eric Garner UM and then Michael Brown.

And Michael Brown's death in particular raised the issue of body warren cameras, which is in the general term for the cameras police are wearing UM. Because Darren Wilson, who shot Michael Brown, the police officer who shot him six times UM what gave one account of the story and

witnesses gave another account of the story. And so when Michael Brown's death kind of became part of a national conversation, and especially with Eric Garner's death to which immediately proceeded I think like a month before, back in two thousand fourteen, UM.

Eric Garner's death was full on video taped by a guy who was standing there recording it on a cell phone, and it got out and it was released to the public, and it started this national conversation about police brutality UM and but it also had this other real aspect to it that this conversation might not be happening were it not for video documentation of these of Eric Garner's death. So the fact that this is happening at a time right after rialto has had this study, people are looking

around saying this. There's entire swaths these communities, UM have had this what was called a simmering distrust of the police, and they've had it forever. But now all of a sudden, the rest of the nation's paying attention to this very important issue. UM and this, these body cameras work so well for this little town in east of Los Angeles,

maybe we should start to institute those. And all of a sudden, the Department of Justice starts showing out forty three million dollars in grants for local law enforcement to buy body cameras. And there was this this idea that good,

the problem solved. But to a lot of people, and at least impart myself included, it kind of seems like this could just be a bandied Does it actually solve anything or does it actually just underscore the distrust on both sides, Like I don't trust that you're not gonna file a false report about me being brutal on you, so I'm recording you and I have to wear this because the federal government knows that you don't trust me,

and I might beat you up extra judiciously. So if if neither side trusts one another and you just have a video camera observing the whole thing, does that actually solve anything or does it just underscore the trust. That's that's probably the biggest question to me that came out of researching this episode. Yeah, I think for me, it's it's not a magic pill by any means, but it's another tool that can help. But but what I think that then the issue to me then is you can't

just overly rely on that one tool. I think it kind of has a tendency to lull people into complacency, like, Okay, we've got this tool out there now, we don't have to worry about the actual underlying issues. Yeah, and we'll get into I mean, there's a bunch of reasons why it's not a magic pill. We'll get into all those later.

But um, as of right now, it was hard to get statistics, but I got one from about a year ago that said forty three of the sixty eight major cities now, have you know that what they call the major police forces in the US now use body cameras. However, U say that they will begin to use them, and are you know, taking steps to do so. Um. But however they here and this is one of the issues

of why it's not a magic pill. Um. Only three percent of these and this is a survey, only three percent of the officers reported recording seven plus hours per day. And that's in a in a typical I think, what do they work generally twelve hours at a time? Yeah, I might, I understand. So only three percent recording seven of those hours recorded? Uh, less than recorded three or

fewer hours per day. UM. So that's one of the big issues is some departments, well, I mean, and it varies from department in locality to locality on what the rules are. Some of them say, all right, well, here's your body camera, but you don't have to use it. Um. Some of them say use it during any um, confrontation

with a citizen, any call you have to make. Some say, well, you gotta turn them off when you go into a private residence because, as we'll talk about a little later, the a c l U. You know, it's a privacy issue when you're filming people without their consent. That could potentially be released, but surprisingly a little bit the a c l U eventually kind of said, no, we will. We would rather have the officers where these even though it's a privacy issue for citizens. It's a tricky, tricky thing.

Oh man, it is a can of worms like no other. Um. But we I mean, I think everyone knows what these are. We haven't even said yet. These are cameras that police officers wear on their body. Um. The ones I've mostly seen, they were sort of on their chest, yeah, like where there CB used to be. Yeah. Some of them though, are on the shoulder, on the helmet, um or on the collar. But mostly I've seen the one that it kind of actually looks like a little C, B H

whatever you call it. Not a CB handle because that's rubber Ducky in the in the truck. What you know, the CB handle is what your name is. And rubber Ducky was from Convoy. I think when was it? I think so the movie or the song the movie, well the songs from them, Oh man, those guys are great. So what the receiver? But you're talking to it the mouthpiece? Okay,

I just call it the walkie talkie part. The walkie talkie part anyway, it's generally mounted on the chest and uh, there are many manufacturers that make these now, um, some of them or wire wireless. Some of them have high death, some of them have one touch activation and ultra wide angle. Because that's one of the issues why it's not a magic pill. Like the view that they get if it's not a wide angle, is a chest high view of whatever the officer's body is pointed at, not necessarily what

their faces looking at, where their eyes are looking. Um, it's it's okay, but you know it's not. It's not solve for everything in all issues. No, it's not, because we'll get into later. You know, if if something happens off camera that hasn't captured, like a suspect reaching for a gun and but on camera, all of a sudden, the cops just standing there and then the next thing you know, he pulls his gun out and shoots the guy, it's like, well that that cop just went berserk because

the camera didn't capture that thing. Most of them have a time and date stamp. Some of them have the badge number of the cop. Some of them have GPS coordinates. Some of them take still photos some stream to remote devices. Very few of them can you actually is it like a iPhone where you can as a screen that you can watch it, But some of them can hook up to an app to your phone where you can watch it. Yeah, advanced. I read this article about the one that Taser's putting out.

It was largely about that was by It was a Motherboard article by Alex Pasternak, and he um talks about how one of the big concerns is in the addition of facial recognition, like computer facial recognition, because supposedly, I didn't know this, half of Americans have their face in

a facial recognition database already. So if you're just somebody walking past one of these cameras and it has facial recognition attached to it, it will say, oh, well there when Josh Clark, he was here on this date at this time and he's wanted for murder, right, Well, that was part of the point. It's like, well, you know, the camera can pick it up and then the database can,

let you know, go get that guy he's wanted for murder. Um. But also, if you're as a private citizen, as you're the you're right against unlawful search and seizure being UM violated by that kind of thing, and apparently that is definitely a direction that that UM these cameras are starting to go now, like facial recognition will soon be the next step as they're deployed further and further, it's going to be like a common UM feature on them. Yeah.

Another feature that uh, most of these cameras have now, and this is a very interesting one because it's kind of played out recently to be significant, is a buffering pre record. So if this cameras on, it's recording, but it records in thirty second or sixty second intervals with no audio most of the time. So what's happening is even if the cop has not pressed record, it's recording and a racing over itself constantly, um if it's turned on.

So what happens when the cop hits record is it's gonna have that thirty or sixty seconds tagged onto it and that gets saved, which can be a big asset if the cop. Uh you know a lot of times a cop will see something and turn it on, but they have just missed what's happened, but it'll grab that thirty seconds, which can be a big help, or in the case of Baltimore, it can bust a cop planning evidence. Yeah, I saw that too, So that to me was more

like interpretation of video. What is your what was your take on it? Well, no, there were two of them. The most recent one was interpretation of video. I think there was one previous to that where it actually caught the cop planning evidence because he didn't know that the thirty second buffer was happening. Oh really, I didn't see that one. Uh. And then that may have been I'm not sure in this case, but sometimes it's uploaded to

a cloud and it's there right. The second one I think was what it looks like is that the cops took a made a concerted effort to organize and deploy their cameras at specific times to get away with planning evidence. So that's the speculation. This is all very brand new in the news. But you know, their cops saying like,

do you have yours on? You're not supposed to have yours on yet, saying things like that, and of course the a c, L, EU and and the prosecutors are saying this is clearly the cops trying to coordinate this thing with their cameras staging with reality. Yeah, and that's something that is going to start happening more and more. I mean, ideally all all cops are doing really good work, uh,

and you don't have to worry about that. But you know, there's been plenty of cases over the years of bad cops doing bad things, and now these body cameras, they're gonna have to find a way to get around it. Yeah,

and I want to can I just say something real quick? So, so the the whole issue to me is this, right, Like, um, I think I've probably come off as distrustful of cops sometimes and to me, um, so, as society, we give cops like a tremendous amount of power over us, right, and we give it to them in exchange for them up, you know, upholding the law and protecting us right. Right.

But the problem is is if that trust is broken, then that's a huge issue because as you go suddenly from because you can't do anything about it, and you go from being a protected citizen to being a hostage

of the state. Right. So that means to me that police have to be like above reproach, that they they have to be as angelic as possible right, and that if they're there, um, if they're that, if they're called into question for something, there shouldn't even be the slightest hint that they're being protected or it's being covered up or anything like that, and government needs to step in and do something about it. And that has not been

the case. Government has broken down in its role of overseeing police when the question of trust is brought up, and what you're left with then is a citizenry that it says I don't trust the cops any longer, and just as bad as that, I don't trust the governments to root out back cops. Um when the trust is broken, but the power structure is still there. That doesn't exactly exactly, So we're all hostages now to the cops. That's it's

clearer than ever. Now. That's that's my problem. I'm not saying that that is necessarily the case, or that even if it is the case, it's the case across the board. I think there are plenty of plenty and plenty of good cops out there who really do hold themselves to

a very high stenator. But the fact is there are bad cops out there too, And I don't believe that bad cops are rooted out and prosecuted like they should be, and that the trust between the citizens and the police has eroded as a result, and the government has totally dropped the ball in in repairing that. Yeah, and especially tough too when like every uh, every bad cop documentary you've ever seen of them, the first thing you hear cops saying as well, the first rule is you gotta

cover for your buddy cops. Like, even if you don't agree with them, you don't ride out a cop. And so then you're like, I think cops also subscribe almost across the board to what's right is right though, you know what I mean, and that they do kind of tend to to to go toward that. I like to think that I want to think that. Um, and I hope I'm not being naive and thinking that you wanna take a break. Yeah, all right, let's do it. We'll

talk a little more about body cameras. All right, we're back with a little more of the mundane, which is the cost of these things. Uh. They can go up to about nine bucks or as low as the low hundreds. UM, let's such just say an average of four bucks for a system. UM, and if you have a large police force of six cops, that's a lot of dough, Um

it is. But Uncle Sam is offsetting a lot of that. Yeah. Sure, And and I think everyone is in favor of these And I think our article points out in a very astute way, like ideally these things can provide clarity, but at the very least it's just another measure in place to help protect citizens and police. Yes, but there's a group who say, no, these are kind of a bad idea.

And I find it's suspicious that the government is um supporting this so so wholeheartedly, that it's just um advancing the surveillance state that much more normalizing the idea of people being recorded everywhere they go all the time, even in interacting with other people. Yeah, so I think there are some people who just don't even like the idea

of of body war and cameras at all. Well, citizens and cops probably, right, Um, So another big problem or not, Well, I guess it is sort of a problem or challenge at least, is is how to store this information, um, depending on where you are, Like they use Oakland as

a as an example in this article. Six hundred cops, six hundred body cameras generates about seven terabytes of video every month and UM Storing the stuff is a big challenge because depending on where you are, you have a lot of rules in place because this is evidence potentially and it's you know, you can't just store it anyway you like in Oakland they have to keep it for two years of anything that's involved in an investigation. It's

longer than that. Uh. Duluth Minnesota they point out thirty days. Laurel, Maryland has six six months. Like that's a lot of data. And the security standards are really uh strict, and they gotta figure out how to store this stuff, how to do it safely. And because people that know how to make money are are behind this. There are companies that's very smartly are coming up with complete systems that will offer a police department and say hey, we got you covered.

We will take care of your storage, we will comply with all your rules and regulations, will train your people because you gotta hire in house people just to keep track of the data. Uh, and we'll do it all for you, exactly like Taser apparently has one heck of a system where when the when the UM officer puts there embody warrn camera on the dock to charge it simultaneously starts uploading um all of the all of the day's recording, right, So yeah, and it goes to the

cloud um and multiple people have access to it. But it's any interaction with the video is logged automatically by the system. If somebody goes to delete it, like only certain people have access to delete file aisles, but again multiple people do, and so if somebody goes to delete it, they they're the other people who have the ability ability to delete it are notified. So it's spreads Yeah, it spreads out accountability. So it's like, well, wait a minute,

I'm going down to for letting you delete it. If so, what are you deleting this for kind of thing? Um, it's a pretty smart system. Like from what I read from Pastor Neck in particular his article, it was like Taser's got it going on. But if you if you take the software away from it and the you know, the LED light attached to it and all that stuff, it's really what you have is basically a GoPro camera.

It's the it's the highly encrypted and protected software that goes along with it that really makes it like law enforcement specific. Yeah. I think in a lot of these places the d A even has access remotely to this footage, which is pretty interesting. The thing that that worries me a little bit is the the situations where the local police department has their own employees who are responsible for keeping and maintaining and storing the video. It should be

it should be larger than that. You know, that's too localized. Yeah, I mean this, it's sort of like it makes me think of all the movies I've seen where the the evidence locker is guarded by like a dude, and someone comes down there and they're like, uh, you know her in the movie. It's you know her jacked up my hand, man, I can't sign in today. Just let me in. I

gotta look at look at something for my gaze. And then they they're in there, you know, taking a part of gun and putting it in their pants to take out. What movie was that pounds of cocaine? That's every movie? Yeah, that's every movie ever made. And yeah, absolutely that Frog's movie you're talking about that had it in there. Yeah, it was right. Apparently I added a superfluous exclamation point. Yeah, what's it called? Just frogs, not frogs. It's just frogs?

Was it? Frogs? Frogs? So um. One of the criticisms I've seen though, is it's like, well, wait a minute, why why don't you trust us? Surely we can police our own video, be trusted to police our own video. It's like, no, the very fact that the video exists means that you aren't trusted. So no, you shouldn't have

full jurisdiction over it. Because if this video is meant to if it's meant because we don't trust you the citizens, and we don't trust you the cops, but you, the cops are the ones who are actually in control of this video. That's lopsided. That's not a good solution. It's not a full solution, I should say, right, because they wouldn't turn that over to the citizens. So why don't you keep track of this? No, that's a big issue too,

is who gets to see it? Yeah, well, a lot of a lot of cities have have law in the books where if you like a like a TV station can ask for it and they have to give it to him. Yeah, through uh, not FOIA, but local state um disclosure lass, which is another big can of worms. It is because you got to give the other side as well too, right, So like if a if a police officer dies in the line of duty and their body cameras recording it, which happened in Arizona, I did.

It was his head anxiety the whole time watching it. It was an officer named Tyler Stewart. Yeah, very sad. It was extremely sad to see he was murdered by some guy named Robert Smith who just drew a gun after like three minutes of questioning. Yeah, and I didn't. I don't know about you, but I didn't see that coming. I didn't either. It was just like everything's normal, normal. Yeah,

it looks like super shady. Uh. And then of course you find out afterwards that like he had been kind of plating suicide and he you know, like the reason he was there is because he trashed his girlfriend's apartment and he had a lot of problems going on. But yeah, I mean I was putting myself in the cop shoes, and I'm like, I would have not suspected anything out

of this guy. Now, he was disarming, for sure, but the but Tyler officer Stewart recorded his own death at the hands of this guy and the local media was like, well, we want to see it, and apparently Arizona has um foil laws that are um that'd say, okay, well the media gets it. You have to you have to release that, which is apparently pretty rare. But in this case, it's like it doesn't. Doesn't the doesn't the family of the

of the officer have any rights to be spared? This being out there on the internet for any anybody who wants to see this guy's death, you know, forever? Yeah, I mean, of course they cut it, but still, you know, like if anyone can look this up on YouTube, that's just three I don't know. It's shameful. So the the issue cuts both ways, especially privacy, like you do you protect the citizen? Since privacy? Do you protect the cops?

Privacy do you protect no? What? Do you take the wiki leaks approach and protect nobody's privacy like it happened? Just keep it raw and and and if it's open new interpretation, then settle it in court kind of thing, you know, who knows? All right, you wanna take another break, man, I keep working to send a breakes man. I'm sorry, you know you're doing great. All right, We'll take another break and talk a little bit about how these things

work and um, why they're not magic pills. Right after this. Okay, Chuck, we're back. You know, I'll tell you one thing. I looked up Taser's stock. Yeah, if you bought in two ells and I think ten, you're doing pretty good. Yeah, because of their body warn camera program. Yeah, it was like five dollars and before this, I think they just only made like tasers and non lethal weapons. But when they got into the body camera market, their stock went from like five bucks. I think it peaked at like

thirty five or forty. Yeah. Not bad, not bad at all. Good for them. Yeah, but and again I can't remember the name of it, but if you read that as Alec pass your nach article, it's it's really sharp system. And I own zero stock and Taser, Like, I'm just a fan. I'm not a fan even if their non lethal weapons, but their their body warrn camera systems is pretty smart. It seems like, Yeah, I mean, I'm a

fan of smart things. Sure, if you're going to design a system, it should be full proof and work well and story everything you needed to not break down. It seems like they got it going on Um. So one of the other reasons that uh, like I said earlier, this is it's not a magic pill, because you're only getting this one. It's not. Our article points out very

astute lee that it's not an unbiased view. Still, Um, if you had six or eight, like if you were in London, you had six or eight cameras and different angles on different light posts, and you could coordinate this thing and fully see everything that happened, it may be unbiased, truly, but just a single shot from a body camera sing that single angle is not unbiased by any means. And that's about it. Did you see the nurse wobbles arrest m h The Utah nurse who refused to draw the

blood of the suspect was unconscious. So if you just watched um, the arresting officers Jeff Paine's body camera, yeah, I mean, like because it's up close and personal, it goes like suddenly just basically goes dark when it's pressed up against her act and it shows like very little of anything. It was because of the other officer that

was with him his body camera. Um, that you get like, oh wow, that really was a lot of force, unnecessary force that this guy was using on this lady that you wouldn't have gotten just from the footage from his body camera, and that having supporting video evidence definitely expands

the the context one way or the other. It's interesting, though, we're getting to a point where you're gonna have, um, I say, a crime on a on a officer stop of a car with a car camera, dashboard camera, let's say two officers, body cameras, the people inside the car filming with their iPhones, let's say two, So you've got five different points of view going on that people courts and juries are gonna have to sift through. D a's defendants are gonna have to look at all this stuff

and try and piece together what happened. And this is all new like previously you did this from testimony only exactly So, like, are we opening ourselves up to a time when d A s are are less willing to bring up charges unless there is footage? You know? Yeah, I wonder, but I mean it doesn't sound like there's going to be much a lack of it. There's a company called um Wolf Com who makes body warrant cameras

for police, is also releasing one for civilians. It's basically the same thing without their police software that like just somebody just wears it all times. Yeah, basically to film the police while the police are filming them. And they say it's perfect for protests, improving legality, and there's like, um, there's like a button, the power button or stop or the record button has to be pressed a certain way, so even if like somebody bumping into your beating you up,

your camera won't stop recording. It's like, good lord, Like the act that this is the climate that that's like a selling point is really unsettling and sad, you know. It is like, hey, everybody, come get your body warn cameras because you need to film the people who are filming you, because you can't trust the even this measure that's being used to supposedly protect your rights. It's crazy that it's crazy that we're in the state in this country.

That raised another point to me to chuck the idea of having all these different points of view or video documentation. This is also coming at a time when we are starting to see editing software where you can kick video and make it do anything. You can make it say anything, you can make it, you can do anything with video.

The moon landing. How is that going to affect you know, the use of video and in documentation for court cases too well, and we've already seen just with Baltimore, you know, what can happen and cops now have to wear these and where they're trying to coordinate who's got who's camera on? Did you have your camera on? What about that thirty second buffer? Um? Geez. It's all just sad that we're at that state now to where but you know, it's also a good thing that, like, for how many years

were bad things happening without any uh citizen? Uh? I mean there was no recourse, you know, for so long and there still isn't to a large degree. This is just a little small thing. No, it's true, But I mean that has to be a certain level of at least gratification among people who have lived with distrust of the police or have been abused as a whole by police, um for decades that people are now finally starting to be like, oh man, this is crazy. You how long

has this been going on? You know, because there's a light being shined on it, um. And so in that sense, yes, it's crazy that we're at this state right now. In our our country, but you know, maybe it's just a growing pain towards moving to a better place. Yeah, you

know that rialto study too. And their summation, they also said something about, um, I can't remember exactly only put it, but something about how they found that it They think that it also requires police to take to take more verbal abuse from people, um, which you know isn't fun, but sort of like the days are over where if you're smart off to a cop, they can't just throw your face on the ground and put their knees through your cheekbone because you've smarted off to them. Um, So

they did. I don't think they weighed in either way on what that means. They just said, what, you know, it looks like cops are going to have to start enduring a little more talk back from the drunk guy at the bar without diving right into excessive force because

they were piste off. Now drunk kind of bar, notwithstandard What are the big things that that these body cameras are touted for, and I think you said it early on, um, is that people behave differently when they know they're being recorded, so that officers won't have to take verbal lashings from people as often, and so that might that that the very presence of the cameras supposedly um can keep situations from escalating, or it can actually de escalate a situation.

Just if if the officers like need you to know you're being recorded right now, people supposedly straighten up. I don't know if they have to or not. Well, we're in such the early nascent days of this, it's um. Yeah, this is sort of an early podcast to see what ramifications are gonna happen later on, you know who knows. Yeah, And one of the things that I saw was that

this is a situation. This is a technology that's gotten a lot of press, but it's still very early on in actual academic study of it, supposedly, and including the rialto study. Most studies are not published in journals and aren't peer reviewed. They're just you know, studies largely carried out by like criminologists or scientists, but also by the local police departments carrying the studies out on their own department.

Right There's supposedly only been two peer reviewed journal studies published on body warrant cameras so far, UM, and one of them was on the effect of giving an officer

leeway on wind to press record. How how does that impact things like, um, the use of violence and this This two thousand and sixteen study in the Journal of Experimental Criminology found that, compared to the control group, UM, if the officer had very little leeway and deciding wing to record, meaning they had to record all the time, UM that physical the use of physical violence decreased by

thirty seven. But in situations where officers had a lot of leeway in deciding when to press record or not, UM it was higher than the control group. Yeah, that this whole win. Is it recording and when is it not? Is the seems like the biggest sticking point right now? And are we going to move to a future where they are absolutely required to record any interaction with a citizen or they get suspended or something like who knows

what we're headed towards. Yeah, Like it's a big deal if they're not recording, not like a you know, you gotta you're supposed to be recording kind of thing. I mean, I guess it from a good cops point of view, they should say, like, man, I want to record this thing because this is what's gonna exonerate me in this atmosphere we have today. Yeah, but I think it right. I think cops are also scared that that that footage that it could also be in like footage can be

used against them, even if it doesn't show anything. Yeah, you know what I mean. I think Yeah, I think it's a it's a man, it's just so fraught as a technology to be to be used like this, you know. And again the fact that we're using it says, hey, you guys don't trust you guys, So we're gonna keep these cameras here so everybody be cool. Like that solves anything. I wonder when cars are gonna come equipped with built in cameras that, you know, record all around the car.

Let's say, I mean the camera's already there with you know a lot of these uh safety features. All that's lacking as a record button. Well, the cops have those for um, running license plates while they're driving down the street. Their cameras are are just looking at license plates over the cars they're driving past to to run them. And there was one other thing I saw in that um

fast Co Motherboard pastor Knack article. Um he just kind of casually made mention that department stores, how spittles airports, they're already using video facial recognition systems. So if you walk into like Macy's or something, I don't know this specifically, but I'm just picking on Macy's that when you're on camera, your face is being run against the database to see if you're somebody that they should be worried about, or maybe even call the cops about to say that somebody

that likes neckties. And they may have that too. It depends on whether they got their software from Taser or from Marcus. Yeah, I did not know that, and that that just takes profiling to a higher level. Huh. Yeah, well, or maybe not if they're getting good information. I mean, that's not profiling, is it. It's ultra tailored profiling. If someone walks in and they're like, well, this guy committed three acts of of shoplifting in the past year, they

might want to watch him. Is that profiling? No, because it's specific to you, not say your race or something like so, yeah, it's it's difficult to argue that that at that point of it. It's more just like the man you know that being surveiled everywhere. So this is a good one. Yeah, you got anything else. No, I'm interested to see where this goes. Plenty of follow up stories over the years. I'm sure ye will happen. Yes,

I'm sure as well. Um, if you want to know more about body Warren cameras, police cameras, just look up police body cameras. They'll bring up this really good article by Julia Layton on how stuff works. Since I said that it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this, well, I'm gonna call it a very cute email from a little kid. Maybe I shouldn't read that one on this one, right, He's got a slog through this and be like, this is the future I have ahead of me? All right?

So this was from Noah. He is five years old and is Scottish. Um and his mom sort of supplemented the email with some little thing here and there, and then at the end she said, you know, he really I wanted to write into you guys personally, so I let him use my email account and otherwise it is just his words. And then a PS from mom, Dear Josh C h O s H. Very cute. I like listening to your podcast. I listened to it in the

car and before I fall asleep. My favorite facts is about an iceberg as big as Jamaica and what to do in a tornado, And then mom says in parentheses, he reminds me frequently to not go in a tunnel during a tornado. We live in Scotland, where there are no tornadoes. You're funny and I like learning about disasters as long as they're not too scary. And my mama says, I'm too little. Can you do an episode about the

different kinds of bridges and engineers? I listened to that one you did, but I'd like another because I'm going to be a structural engineer and build bridges. Love Noah parentheses. I'm five and I live in Scotland, which is in Europe. Thanks thanks for the tip. Noah, Noah, that is great. You're wonderful. We appreciate you. The mom adds this, ps, I'm afraid there's one in the family who's not a fan.

Every time Stuff you Should Know comes on in the car, my three year old daughter cries, no, not Stuff you should Know. I can't sing to that. Oh that's cute, and she says, sorry, guys, you can't compete with Disney and me personally Uh, Mom, if you can record your daughter screaming about how she doesn't like stuff you should know, and then record Noah talking about how he does love stuff you should know in that lovely Scottish accent, I for one would like to hear that. Yeah, same here

and we'll even play it. Um. Yeah, thanks a lot. No, you're the bomb buddy in America. That means you're terrific. Uh and thanks to mom too for fostering the email. Yes, wait, wait to go? Mom is great. You're all great. If you're a cute kid who wants to tell us high, we love hearing from you. Um. You can tweet to us at josh um Clark or at s y s K podcast. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know or slash Charles W.

Chuck Bryant. You can take the traditional route and send us an email at stuff Podcast. How stuff Works dot com has always join us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com