Coming in June 2021 from University of California Press!Police Visibility: Privacy, Surveillance, and the False Promise of Body-Worn Cameras presents empirically grounded research into how police officers experience and manage the information politics of surveillance and visibility generated by the introduction of body cameras into their daily routines and the increasingly common experience of being recorded by civilian bystanders. In this book, which is the product of multiple years of research, I shed light on how these activities intersect with privacy, free speech, and access to information law, arguing that rather than being emancipatory systems of police oversight, body-worn cameras are an evolution in police image work and state surveillance expansion. Throughout the book, I catalogs how surveillance generates information, the control of which creates and facilitates power, and potentially fuels state domination. The antidote, I argue, is a robust information law and policy that puts the power to monitor and regulate the police squarely in the hands of citizens.My related publications that also touch on body-worn camera use by police:
“Police on Camera: Surveillance, Privacy, and Accountability,” edited by Bryce Clayton Newell. Routledge (Routledge Studies in Surveillance book series) (2021) [link]
Marthinus C. Koen, Bryce Clayton Newell, and Melinda R. Roberts, “Body-Worn Cameras: Technological Frames and Project Abandonment.” Journal of Criminal Justice 72 (1) [link]
Bryce Clayton Newell, “Context, Visibility, and Control: Police Work and the Contested Objectivity of Bystander Video.” New Media & Society 21 (1): 60–76 (2019) [link to journal page] [view PDF] [download PDF]
Bryce Clayton Newell and Ruben Greidanus, “Officer Discretion and the Choice to Record: Officer Attitudes Towards Body-Worn Camera Activation.” North Carolina Law Review 96 (5): 1525–1578 (2018) [link]
Bryce Clayton Newell, Ricardo Gomez, and Verónica E. Guajardo, “Sensors, Cameras, and the New ‘Normal’ in Clandestine Migration: How Undocumented Migrants Experience Surveillance at the U.S.-Mexico Border.” Surveillance & Society 15 (1): 21–41 (2017) [link]
Bryce Clayton Newell, “Collateral Visibility: A Socio-Legal Study of Police Body Camera Adoption, Privacy, and Public Disclosure in Washington State.” Indiana Law Journal 92 (4): 1329–1399 (2017) (link) (research referenced in the New York Times Magazine [Oct. 18, 2016])
Randy K. Lippert and Bryce Clayton Newell, “Introduction: The Privacy and Surveillance Implications of Police Body Cameras.” Surveillance & Society 14 (1): 113–116 (2016) (editorial) [link, PDF]
Bryce Clayton Newell, “Crossing Lenses: Policing’s New Visibility and the Role of ‘Smartphone Journalism’ as a Form of Freedom-Preserving Reciprocal Surveillance.” Journal of Law, Technology & Policy 2014 (1): 59–104 (2014) [PDF]
“Transparent Lives and the Surveillance State: Policing, New Visibility, and Information Policy.” Doctoral thesis. University of Washington, Seattle, WA. [PDF]
Coming in June 2021 from University of California Press! Police Visibility: Privacy, Surveillance, and the False Promise of Body-Worn Cameras presents empirically grounded research into how police officers experience and manage the information politics of surveillance and visibility generated by the introduction of body cameras into their daily routines and the increasingly common experience of being recorded by civilian bystanders. In this book, which is the product of multiple years of research, I shed light on how these activities intersect with privacy, free speech, and access to information law, arguing that rather than being emancipatory systems of police oversight, body-worn cameras are an evolution in police image work and state surveillance expansion. Throughout the book, I catalogs how surveillance generates information, the control of which creates and facilitates power, and potentially fuels state domination. The antidote, I argue, is a robust information law and policy that puts the power to monitor and regulate the police squarely in the hands of citizens.My related publications that also touch on body-worn camera use by police: