De Britten van Big Brother Watch schreven een uitgebreid rapport waarin de pro’s en contra’s van bodycams tegen het licht gehouden worden. Kort samengevat:
Body Worn Cameras (BWCs) provide accurate evidence of an incident by creating a video and audio recording; depicting everything exactly as the police officer saw, heard, said and did.
It is believed that BWCs have the potential to improve the accountability and transparency within police forces which could help to improve public and police conduct. BWCs could create more accurate evidence, leading to an acceleration in the time it takes to prosecute and convict criminals. Accurate evidence could mean that there will be less time spent on establishing what actually happened at a crime incident.
However, some fundamental privacy issues still need to be addressed with assurances made by police forces that: (1) The data be stored by an independent body to ensure that police officers do not have the ability tamper with the footage; and (2) As standard, Police officers should not have the ability to switch off their camera part way through recording evidence.
Body Worn Video Cameras (pdf)
Ook de Amerikaanse burgerrechtenbeweging ACLU staat niet noodzakelijk negatief tegenover bodycams. Mits aan een aantal voorwaarden voldaan is. Ze zetten die voorwaarden op een rijtje in een rapport.
“For the ACLU, the challenge of on-officer cameras is the tension between their potential to invade privacy and their strong benefit in promoting police accountability. Overall, we think they can be a win-win—but only if they are deployed within a framework of strong policies to ensure they protect the public without becoming yet another system for routine surveillance of the public, and maintain public confidence in the integrity of those privacy protections. Without such a framework, their accountability benefits would not exceed their privacy risks.”
Police Body-Mounted Cameras: With Right Policies in Place, a Win For All – Jay Stanley, ACLU, 09/10/2013