New Police Facial Recognition Body Cams Called "VideoBadge," Can be Edited, Re-Mixed by Cops
From [MassPrivateI] Soon nowhere will be safe from Big Brother's prying eyes. Imagine walking down Main St., and seeing officer friendly approaching you. As the officer approaches you, he or she has already scanned your face against a 15 million person database and knows if you have any outstanding tickets, warrants etc.
That is the future of American policing.
Police across America will soon be using Vigilant Solutions (VS), "VideoBadge" body cams to identify everyone they come in contact with. (Click here to find out more.)
A VS "wearable security" video tries to convince people that it is fun to use facial recognition body cams to spy on everyone.
A question everyone should be asking is, why does a private corporation have a 15 million person "gallery" of Americans and how could it be abused?
Putting a corporation in charge of a facial recognition database is only asking for trouble.
How long will it be before corporations adds images of suspected shoplifters, bad actors, activists, protesters or Americans on the do-not-fly list to their database? Will corporations also add people from their private watchlists?
The reasons why a corporate run facial recognition database is a terrible idea are too numerous to mention here but hopefully you get the picture.
Unfortunately, I have only scratched the surface of what is wrong with VS''s police facial recognition body cams.
Police can edit body camera footage
What is truly disturbing about "VideoBadge" is how police can edit the footage with one-click using VideoManager.
Make no mistake, letting law enforcement edit body cam footage "as needed" can and will be abused.
VS also allows police to use RFID to selectively choose which cam will record an incident.
In other words, police can now selectively choose which body cam will be used to fit their narrative or edit specific body cam footage to support their case.
Police can edit CCTV camera footage
VS also allows police to edit and access thousands of CCTV camera footage. But how do the police have access to thousands of CCTV cameras?
By accessing the huge database of private CCTV cameras, corporations and the public have been providing through thirty different types of police cam-share programs and spying doorbells.
"Massive scalability permits the platform to work with thousands of cameras at once while maintaining scale." VideoManager allows police to access any CCTV camera that recorded the incident.
Is this the future you want? Corporate run facial recognition databases, spying police body cams and CCTV cameras?