Privacy laws may need updates with emergence of police body cameras

Updated: 9:55 a.m. | Posted: 8:30 a.m.

As some law enforcement agencies across the state start to outfit officers with body cameras, a debate has arisen about how much of the footage should be available to the public.

A new bill in the Minnesota House even proposes that all body camera data be considered private, which civil rights advocates say would undermine police accountability.

Professor Bill McGeveran, who specializes in data privacy at the University of Minnesota, said both sides in the debate seem to understand that body cameras come with some benefits and some risks.

"The national ACLU is really supportive of having cameras to increase accountability for police, but there's no organization so concerned about camera surveillance in general, so they also have a lot of privacy concerns," McGeveran said. "Police groups think it would be great to have footage to exonerate officers who've been accused of something incorrectly, but they're of course concerned about constant monitoring of all their behavior on the job."

The debate may be moot, to a certain degree. The Minnesota Data Practices Act, which governs the public's access to information, already describes about 30 instances where information gathered by police is considered private. Much of the footage may already be considered private under current state law, McGeveran said.

"The law that has these 30 paragraphs gives exceptions depending on whether it's being used in an investigation, whether it has to do with child abuse or sexual assault, all specific details about what's shown in the video," McGeveran said. "Lots of times, you'd be able to fit the data under one or the other of those exceptions, but there isn't so far one rule that would cover it in a blanket way."

Another important issue, said McGeveran, is who decides when camera footage will remain private, whether it's police or another official body.

Officials may have gotten ahead of themselves in adopting the cameras before developing a coherent policy across the state.

"This happens all the time. We want to adopt some new gizmo as soon as possible that's going to be useful," McGeveran said. "Every time police go to new technology, we have to stop and take a breath and think about the privacy implications."

Police departments in Duluth, Minneapolis and Burnsville have already started using body cameras.