Privacy Concerns with Body Cameras

Our Take

BidPrime's video walks through how agencies are trying to address privacy concerns around officer body cameras — retention rules, redaction, access policies, the usual toolkit. It's a useful primer, and credit to them for keeping the conversation on camera oversight alive at all, since most departments would rather this stuff stay boring and technical.

Here's the thing that jumps out to us: body cameras get this level of public debate — hearings, redaction software, retention schedules — because everyone understands intuitively that a camera worn by a cop is a privacy issue. License plate readers get almost none of that scrutiny, despite scanning every car that passes, tagging it with time and GPS, and archiving it in a database that regularly gets shared across agencies and sometimes federal immigration enforcement. There's no bodycam-style redaction conversation happening for Flock Safety's network because most people don't even know it exists in their town.

If departments can build privacy policy around one camera system, they can do it for the other. The first step is knowing what's actually deployed near you — check our map to see if Flock cameras are logging your street, and if they are, use our resources to push your local council for the same transparency lawmakers are demanding for bodycams.