London's Metropolitan Police Service starts testing body cameras connected to Microsoft Azure

Back in September, Microsoft launched new data centers in the UK for Azure and Office 365. Today, the London Metropolitan Police Service has announced that it will be using Microsoft Azure to store data coming from the recently deployed by Body-Worn Video cameras. The Metropolitan Police Service actually started rolling out 22,000 body-worn cameras (aka Body-Worn Video) developed by Microsoft’s partner Axon. Apparently, twenty-two thousand police offers from the 32 boroughs in London will be wearing the cameras. The video evidence coming from these cameras will be stored in Microsoft’s Azure which will allow police offers to watch the footage whenever they want. Police officers will apparently record their entire shift using the BWVs, and all the footage will be uploaded to Microsoft Azure when the BWV is docked a policed station. The leader of Mobile Technology at the Metropolitan Police, Adrian Hutchinson

“We wanted to store the data in the UK so we can provide transparency around our data and where it is kept, and Microsoft is a long-term trusted supplier to the Met. We have extensive data security requirements and they [Microsoft] satisfied all our necessary audits and we have no concerns.”

The London Metropolitan Police Service has deployed 3,500 cameras so far, and it hops to finish deploying all of the 22 thousand units by July 2017. The project is apparently costing £10 million.