RCMP Chief Supt. Holly Turton said some of B.C.'s nearly 7,000 officers should start using the cameras this year, although she did not provide many details over how many or when.

More RCMP field testing will be completed in Alberta, Nova Scotia and Nunavut this year before the cameras are made more widely available in provinces like B.C.

Last October the RCMP published, nationally, a new body-worn cameras operational policy for how the force would adopt the cameras, which several other forces have begun using to film interactions with the public.

Supt. Howard Tran of the Vancouver Police Department said one of the most important aspects of getting the tool right for police and for the public is privacy and how the information from the cameras will be used.

One of the more revealing aspects of drone deployment provided by  the report is the purpose for which police are using them. A vast majority of uses, almost three-quarters of every time police in Minnesota used drones, were either related to obtaining an aerial view of incidents involving injuries  or death, like car accidents, or for police training and public relations purposes.

The Federal Trade Commission has entered a settlement with self-styled “weapon detection” company Evolv, to resolve the FTC’s claim that the company “knowingly” and repeatedly” engaged in “unlawful” acts of misleading claims about their technology. Essentially, Evolv’s technology, which is in schools, subways, and stadiums, does far less...

Officers speaking at the news conference said that, generally, the BWCs used in B.C. record video continuously on a 30-second loop, meaning they overwrite footage every half-minute, until an officer holds down a record button, which activates the camera to record video and sound until it is turned off.

"The call for more police transparency has been clearly articulated by the public and as police we are listening," she said. "We expect that the use of body-worn cameras will increase the public's trust in police and improve policing public behaviour."

The post was written by Laura Vidal (PhD), independent researcher in learning and digital rights.This is part two of a series. Part one on surveillance and control around the July election is here.Over the past decade, the government in Venezuela has meticulously constructed a framework of surveillance...

After starting a process to adopt body-worn cameras in 2009, the Vancouver Police Department equipped 85 officers with the cameras, starting this New Year for a pilot project.

Turton said RCMP will ultimately distribute up to 15,000 cameras across the country, but did not specify how many would initially be used in B.C.

California law enforcement should take note: the state’s Attorney General has issued a new bulletin advising them on how to comply with AB 481—a state law that regulates how law enforcement agencies can use, purchase, and disclose information about military equipment at their disposal. This important guidance comes...

The cameras are meant to be used in many different situations, such as speaking to someone in a police investigation, when violent or aggressive behaviour is expected, or assisting in de-escalation.

Officers also have several ways in which they communicate to people they are interacting with that they are filming and how the video can or cannot be used.

This post was written by Gowri Nayar, an EFF legal intern. Imagine driving to get your nails done with your family and all of a sudden, you are pulled over by police officers for allegedly driving a stolen car. You are dragged out of the car and detained at gun...

The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, which handles all prosecutions in the Seattle area, has instructed police in no uncertain terms: do not use AI to write police reports...for now. This is a good development. We hope prosecutors across the country will exercise such caution as companies continue to...

"We have found that around impaired driving investigations, for example, the video shows the [indications] of impairment that the individual has."

The British Columbia Association of Chiefs of Police (BCACP) outlined plans on Thursday to equip the province's largest pool of officers with body-worn cameras (BWC) in a bid to provide more accountability and public trust in policing.

BWC video will be stored on a provincial digital evidence management system and will be automatically deleted after 13 months unless it is being retained as evidence in relation to an event or for training purposes, police have said.

In its recent report, Civil Rights Implications of Face Recognition Technology (FRT), the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights identified serious problems with the federal government’s use of face recognition technology, and in doing so recognized EFF’s expertise on this issue. The Commission focused its investigation on the Department of...

Artificial intelligence dominated the technology talk on panels, among sponsors, and across the trade floor at this year’s annual conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP).IACP, held Oct. 19 - 22 in Boston, brings together thousands of police employees with the businesses who want to sell them...

Are drones really just a 1 million dollar training tool? We’ve argued many times that tools deployed by police for very specific purposes often find punitive uses that far outreach their original, possibly more innocuous intention. In the case of Minnesota’s drone usage, that can be seen in the other exceptions to the warrant requirement, such as surveilling a public event where there’s a “heightened risk” for participant security. The warrant requirement is meant to prevent using aerial surveillance in violation of civil liberties, but these exceptions open the door to surveillance of First Amendment-protected gatherings and demonstrations.

According to EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance, 130 of Minnesota’s 408 law enforcement agencies have drones. Of the Minnesota agencies known to have drones prior to this month’s report, 29 of them did not provide the BCA with 2023 use and cost data.

"Traditionally, officers would have made observations and just put them in their notebooks but here they have a video recording of what has occurred," he said.

Police in Minnesota are buying and flying more drones than ever before, according to an annual report recently released by the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). Minnesotan law enforcement flew their drones without a warrant 4,326 times in 2023, racking up a state-wide expense of over $1 million. This marks a large, 41 percent increase from 2022, when departments across the state used drones 3,076 times and spent $646,531.24 on using them. The data show that more was spent on drones last year than in the previous two years combined. Minneapolis Police Department, the state’s largest police department, implemented a new drone program at the end of 2022 and reported that its 63 warrantless flights in 2023 cost nearly $100,000.

"I can tell you in Vancouver we have developed comprehensive guidelines that recognize balancing these privacy concerns with the objective of body-worn cameras," he said.

She was clear though about the importance of putting the cameras in place, with the right training and policies to respect privacy.

Sidhu says it cost his force about $3,000 to equip one officer with a camera and to pay for administrative costs associated with it.

It is a priority for CBC to create products that are accessible to all in Canada including people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive challenges.

Since 2020, the state of Minnesota has been obligated to put out a yearly report documenting every time and reason law enforcement agencies in the state — local, county, or state-wide — used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), more commonly known as drones, without a warrant. This is partly because Minnesota law requires a warrant for law enforcement to use drones except for specific situations listed in the statute. The State Court Administrator is also required to provide a public report of the number of warrants issued for the use of UAVs, and the data gathered by them. These regular reports give us a glimpse into how police are actually using these devices and how often. As more and more police departments around the country use drones or experiment with drones as first responders, it offers an example of how transparency around drone adoption can be done.

Body-worn cameras were first used in B.C. by the Delta Police Department in 2021. The force now has 21 officers wearing the cameras, with another 16 to be added in 2024.

Both Delta's experience and Vancouver's are being used by the BCACP to inform how cameras can be rolled out in other jurisdictions, including RCMP.

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into our criminal justice system is one of the most worrying developments across policing and the courts, and EFF has been tracking it for years. EFF recently contributed a chapter on AI’s use by law enforcement to the American Bar Association’s annual publication, ...

Delta Police Deputy Chief Harj Sidhu says his force's experience with the cameras has been positive, especially in how they can help gather evidence.