Police Body Camera Giant Made Lawyers Sign Away Client Footage...

...Fearing for their clients, defense attorneys
are refusing to hit 'agree' to access the
company's cloud-based body cam footage

Vocativ News | By Joshua Kopstein | May 12, 2017 at 3:53 PM ET

Taser International, the police tech company that
recently re-branded as Axon, has aggressively
pushed its body-worn cameras — and corresponding
cloud storage service for evidence — into police departments across the U.S.

But defense lawyers say that the company’s
control over these massive archives of footage
forced them to agree to broad terms and
conditions before they can access the evidence
against their client, potentially endangering
their clients’ right to a fair trial.

Earlier this week, California-based criminal
defense attorney Rick Horowitz posted a copy of a
user agreement he says he was asked to sign
before accessing Axon’s online video evidence
locker, Evidence.com. He refused, noting that the
agreement required him to allow the company and
its employees “access and use of the Account
Content,” including video evidence and other privileged information.

Specifically, the agreement would grant Axon “a
non-exclusive, transferable, irrevocable,
royalty-free, sub-licensable, worldwide license”
to use any intellectual property that a user
places “on or in connection with the Services.”
Complicating the matter even more, Horowitz’s
client in this case is a juvenile defendant, and
no corporation — Axon included — has a legal
right to store or disseminate juvenile records
under California state law. More broadly, as
TechDirt notes, Axon’s agreement effectively
requires users to sign away some of their legal
rights in exchange for receiving public records.

That doesn’t sit well with defense lawyers, whose
jobs depend on their ability to guarantee clients
that case information will be kept confidential,
without interference or tampering by a third
party. While the language is fairly standard for
a conventional software license agreement, they
argue Axon has no place imposing those
restrictions on evidence in a criminal case.

“It’s not just that Axon’s terms contain language
that would make certain defense actions difficult
— it’s that there’s language wholly inappropriate
for evidence to be used in a criminal case,” Fred
Jennings, an attorney with the digital
rights-focused law firm Tor Ekeland, P.C., told
Vocativ. “Agreeing to its terms would put a
criminal defense attorney in direct conflict with
their ethical and professional obligations.”

For example, several sections of the agreement
posted by Horowitz would allow Axon to erase data
or terminate access at any time and for any
reason, which would effectively mean giving a
private corporation permission to destroy
evidence in a criminal case. Even further,
Jennings says the agreement gives Axon a “blanket
waiver” of legal liability, which would make it
difficult to pursue claims against the company if
an employee ever did decide to delete or tamper with footage.

“This isn’t merely a fetter on defense counsel
whose only route to this evidence is through
Axon’s services. It’s a Faustian bargain that any
defense counsel should refuse to sign without
substantial modification,” said Jennings.

Full story:
http://www.vocativ.com/429096/police-body-camera-taser-axon-made-lawyers-sign-away-client-footage/