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video hash transmission of police video evidence

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cameras mounted on all cops will be a thing in the near future. This is a good thing in preventing cops from getting wrongfully sued. But what if they record an event that doesn't serve their interest?

There is a possibility that video evidence from cameras like "dash cams" or heads up cameras, being 'lost' when the corresponding victim ask for the footage. In an ideal world, all videos from police would be broadcasted onto all pro-accountability organizations that listens for it. However it won't happen due to the police concerns for the privacy of the 'victims' in public spaces.

What is needed instead, is a system where the footage's hash is broadcasted from moment of recording onto any organization that ask for the 'hash' (e.g. police accountability organization).

This hash will have a corresponding 'status update' with GPS coordinates (encrypted if sensitive) when it has been uploaded to the police department, and then to the long term data storage facility (which idealy should be three different data storage servers. The owners also should be unrelated to each other).

While this doesn't prevent footages from being 'lost', what it does allow for, is to provide an idea of 'where the buck' stops if a 'footage' gets lost. e.g. Technical glitch, cop not uploading, police department corruption, up to goverment wide corruption.). Also it allows for the verification that the footage shown in court, matches the location and time of the event.

mofosyne, Feb 08 2014

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       What triggered this? Have you been watching those Russian(assumed) road accident videos? They are obviously cherry picked from hours and hours of boring police car surveillance tapes.
popbottle, Feb 08 2014
  

       If they're going to broadcast the hash, they could just as easily broadcast an encrypted video stream, encoded with a preset key. That way it's impossible to lose or destroy the video, but nobody can access it without the key.   

       Then you just have the problem of who exactly is going to receive and store the tens of thousands of streams of encrypted video.
ytk, Feb 08 2014
  

       Or you could just put a tamper resistant seal on the camera, and make any damage to the seal a de jure admission of guilt.   

       With storage as cheap and dense as it is these days, you can put weeks of continuous video into something the size of a dash-cam. Maybe months. Make it so the video can be downloaded, but not erased from a data port. You'd still have to put in your request some period of time before the camera cycled, but it should be available.
MechE, Feb 09 2014
  

       That's not fair though, dash cams would be okay, but something like a head mounted camera could easily be dropped by accident.
erenjay, Feb 09 2014
  

       //Or you could just put a tamper resistant seal on the camera, and make any damage to the seal a de jure admission of guilt.//   

       You mean prima facie, not de jure. De jure implies an irrebuttable presumption, which wouldn't really be reasonable. What if the plaintiff or prosecutor tampered with the seal? Or what if an arrestee somehow managed to gain access the the camera and broke the seal? You'd have to allow the officer some opportunity to rebut the claim of tampering for the law to have any hope of surviving a constitutional challenge.
ytk, Feb 09 2014
  

       I did mean de jure, at least to the level of a tampered seal being a crime in and of itself, but you do make some valid points.
MechE, Feb 09 2014
  
      
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