Ian Readhead, director of information for the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), wants individuals to have the ability to upload videos to a police specific website to report crimes.

“In future it is not bizarre to think that people will not just contact the police to say there is a robbery happening but will say ‘Can I send you through the video?’,” he said at the recent launch of the Unisys Security Index.

The police already have said that they routinely check YouTube for videos of criminal acts.  Having a CopTube, they believe would only help find criminals.

“We have staff search YouTube for evidence of incidents. That could be inappropriate activity by police officers or criminal activity.

“It is just another way of detecting evidence of crimes.”

No, it’s just another way to get your citizens to do the work for you.  And there will be instances of revenge that you will waste your time investigating.  Instead of a citizen having to actually call the police and make a report, they can just zip a photo over to the police, who still may or may not do anything.  The police are going to be inundated with frivolous complaints.

Readhead added that police forces are also experimenting with image recognition technology that gives officers the ability to scour through hours of video captured on CCTV systems and quickly pick out suspect objects or vehicles.

“For example, say we were looking for a white transit van on the M1 between 6am and 3pm. If we had to view all the video to find that van it would take us hours to find,” he said.

Ah yes, this will not be fallible and wreck havoc on people’s lives at all.  My neighbor has a brown van, but he has frequent loud parties.  He uses his van for work every day on the M1.  A little photoshop or video editing and, voila, my neighbor gets to sit in jail for a while they sort out that it’s not him.

How many times will a video detailing police abuse and legal violations be “accidentally” erased?  What is going to happen when the police are caught breaking the law?  It sounds like a good idea, but there are too many loopholes for police, judges, and their friends to abuse this and have things just magically go away for me to trust it.