ABSTRACT

The possibility that body-worn camera use by the police can address issues of police violence and racial bias is intoxicating for anyone who has longed for social justice and a more equitable culture. Yet body-worn cameras are also invasive surveillance devices that cast a panoptic eye on our communities and enable the production of a particularly rich source of data that is valuable to anyone who can gain access to it. Legal traditions in the United States provide only limited barriers to prevent body-worn camera data from flowing to commercial actors who transform human data trails into quantified judgements and consumer scores. The term “adverse detection” is introduced to describe the process of documenting and analyzing a data subject’s interactions with the world in a manner that can lead to negative outcomes for the subject, such as the decision not to hire her or rent her a home. Given the expansive reach and controversial choices of the police, the potential addition of body-worn camera video as an input to the so-called “reputation economy” potentially renders public spaces into forums of opportunity risk, especially for people struggling with legacies of discrimination and the forces of social marginalization.