The Los Angeles Police Department is trying to do something about its
notoriously bad human rights record: it has equipped officers with
belt-worn voice-recorders that feed tamper-evident uploading stations in
their cruisers. Unfortunately for anyone who advocates for the basic
honesty of the LAPD, these have been widely sabotaged by officers,
with more than half of the receiver antennas being vandalized or
removed, which sharply reduces the recorders’ range. Boston cops reacted
the same way when logging GPSes were added to their cars. As Washington
University law prof Neil Richards notes, it’s a pretty ironic turn, in
that the cops apparently feel like being surveilled while going about
their normal business is an unreasonable impingement on their freedom.
LAPD officers sabotage their own voice-recorders: nothing to hide, nothing to fear? [2014]
Published
Escapes from Apathy 