Mischievous infrastructure
Tactical secrecy through infrastructural friction in police video systems
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 18987355 |
|---|---|
| Authors | C Reynolds (0000-0002-1880-8839, Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 4-5 |
| Pages | 996-1019 |
| Publication date | 2021-09-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cultural Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0950-2386 • E-ISSN: 1466-4348 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09502386.2021.1895257 |
| OpenAlex | W3134664421 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 18 |
Police departments across the United States have adopted body cameras as a technological solution to conflicts between police and communities. A wide variety of stakeholders, including governments, corporations, and the police themselves, have positioned body cameras as devices that increase transparency and enable accountability in controversial situations. However, the lofty assurances made before the adoption of body cameras are often renegotiated after the fact, undermining the realization of such values. To understand the gap between the promise and practice of body cameras, this paper turns from the device towards the infrastructure of police video systems, analyzing the containment of body camera videos within law enforcement’s evidence regime, a system of knowledge management that determines which information is suitable for public consumption and what becomes, or remains, a state secret. The potential of police video infrastructures is consistently frustrated by the creation of infrastructural friction, or small acts of mischief that trouble the system, interrupt its functions, and prevent it from fully realizing its promises. Police and other stakeholders resistant to the goals of transparency and accountability control which videos are released, when they become public, and how they are accessible. These tactics produce a mischievous infrastructure, equipped to produce secrecy and opacity as easily as transparency and accountability. Ultimately, body cameras and other police video systems have evaded and even worked against transparency and accountability on an infrastructural level rather than enabling their pursuit
Accountability · Business · Computer security · Enforcement · Internet privacy · Law enforcement · Political science · Public relations · Secrecy · Computer Science · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Law · Privacy, Security, and Data Protection · Artificial Intelligence
The Theater of Operations
The Promise of Infrastructure
The Effect of Police Body-Worn Cameras on Use of Force and Citizens’ Complaints Against the Police
Wearing body cameras increases assaults against officers and does not reduce police use of force
Rethinking Repair
Officer Perceptions of Body-Worn Cameras Before and After Deployment
Title unavailable
Steps Toward an Ecology of Infrastructure
The Rise of the Right to Know
Toward Information Infrastructure Studies
Secrecy in the Sunshine Era
Racialization as a Way of Seeing
Fusing Race
The Marvelous Clouds
The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |