Cameras record incidents.Here is who sees them, and who decides.

The business that recorded it. Under the Standard, a law enforcement agency sees a record only after a named person at the business approves the agency's request, and the release opens it to that agency for 90 days. The Standard gives no one else access. No image goes to the public or the press without the business's approval, unless the law requires it, and the nonprofit organizations that teach the Standard never see a record.

A business shares a record only when a person there chooses to, record by record. Before a business approves a request, an agency sees only what was observed, its time and its area: no names, no images and no narrative. Health and welfare records are never shared.

• No record is sold.
• No one is named from a camera. A face or plate comparison is a lead for a person to check, never a name.
• No stop, search, arrest or charge may rest on a comparison result alone.
• No law enforcement agency may ask or pay a business to watch for anyone.
• No agency may build a database of faces, plates or people from what it receives.
• Nothing that widens what is kept, shared or seen may happen quietly. It is published for comment first.

These are rules of the Standard. Every rule is on What the Standard forbids.

Yes. A system built to the Standard can compare faces and plates. The public name for that comparison is Similarity Check. Its result is a lead that a person must check. It never names anyone, and no stop, search or arrest can rest on it alone.

People, every time. The business decides what it releases. Law enforcement decides what an incident means for an investigation. The system never decides anything about anyone.

Under the Standard, everyday camera data is kept for a short period the business sets. A record a person sealed is kept by the business as its own record. A law enforcement agency can open a released record for 90 days; a copy it downloads for a case is kept only as long as the case and the law require, then destroyed, and the destruction is recorded. In the first implementation today, the software does not record what happens to a downloaded copy.

Records belong to the business that made them, so ask that business. This site holds no records, and its publisher cannot search anyone's records for you. If a law enforcement agency holds a record, you can ask the agency; public records laws differ from state to state.

Write to standard@fusiontrace.io. Say what happened, when and where, and which business or law enforcement agency was involved. A person reads every message. A published complaint process is coming.

You can also complain to the business, to the agency involved, or to your state attorney general.

fusiontrace.io is published by BlueWave Technology, Inc., an Oklahoma corporation, as steward of the FusionTrace Evidence Standard until the FusionTrace Foundation takes it over. The Standard is stewarded by Stephen Pales and Jim Cords, co-founders of BlueWave Technology, Inc., which builds software to it. Any vendor may build to the Standard, and every implementation, the first included, is held to the same rules.

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