Cam Case Collateral

The rapid proliferation of video cameras in the public, and their increasing importance in court room had brought forth a number of important ethical and legal questions for those “caught up in the net” of video surveillance.

Among the questions to be answered: can the cops resist the temptation to "go fishing" for other bad guys when reviewing tape of an incident? What are the ethical ramifications of overlooking minor infractions caught on tape and, most importantly, will the prospect of being filmed actually dissuade ne'er-do-wells from ne'er-do welling?

While we will never be able to completely eliminate these issues of “collateral damage” in surveillance-centric criminal investigations, we can do quite a bit with recent technology advances to minimize them. For instance, the days of needing to troll through days and days of video to track down a particular bad guy are over. Using searchable surveillance and biometric technologies, an investigator can target a video investigation on a particular individual. The video search engine returns only that video that relates to the subject in question.

Sometimes, modern surveillance technologies are viewed exclusively through the lens of ‘big brother,’ but in this case we can also see how those same technologies can be used to protect our privacy by bringing much needed focus and efficiency to video investigations.