Taser Axon: A headcam for cops
With the Taser Axon, law enforcers will now have an eye on you, literally and figuratively. (Credit: Taser International)
Traffic cameras have some company. Uniformed law enforcers could get a portable third eye soon, if the Taser Axon eventually becomes standard police equipment.
Like the military-inspired Sanwa Throat Microphone which clips around a person's throat, the Axon wraps around the head, with a GPS-enabled camera eye peeking over the ear for full audio-video recording, even in low light.
Fortunately, there's a privacy mode to temporarily suspend recording. After all, who needs to watch our friendly officers take bathroom breaks?
We don't yet know how much onboard memory the Taser International device takes, whether it can transmit footage wirelessly back to police headquarters, or how long its battery lasts. But when the Axon debuts sometime in the third quarter of this year, it should make evidence gathering, particularly in a scuffle, a lot more cut and dried, barring hiccups such as hardware failure, dead batteries, bad lighting, or an officer down.
Just be prepared for some NYPD Blue-style choppy camera work.
The Taser Axon is waterproof and ruggedized. (Credit: Taser Axon)
The key components are a headcam, a tactical computer, and a Com Hub that connects it all with a radio. (Credit: Taser International)
Via Crave Asia
I'm starting to get really scared of the Big-Brother technologies these days... have you seen the new airport security cameras that can see through clothes at 300 feet? I got my drum key (a key used to tune drums) taken away by an officer watching one of those cameras. There is no way that key could have become a weapon or a destructive force on an airplane, yet the officer saw a key on an inside pocket in my jacket and very nearly had me arrested.