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Digital Cameras Change War Photo-Journalism
prakslash writes "Back in 1945, it took three days between the time U.S. Marines raised the flag on Iwo Jima and the famous picture of the historic moment was published in all the newspapers. In 2004, it took barely an hour before the explosive photos from an Iraqi prison were seen all over the world. This drives home a defining fact of 21st century - the pervasiveness of digital photography and the speed of the Internet are making it easier to see into dark corners previously out of reach of the mass media. As reported in
recent news, some of the most shocking Iraqi photos were not taken by photo-journalists but by soldiers and government contractors who used a digital camera, a CD burner and an internet connection to zip the photos around the world with an ease that has never existed before."
Pictures can be re-touched faster too.
I don't think the pics out of Iraq are re-touched, but the ease and power of photoshop and such is something to keep in mind...
Maybe someone should "zip" them a copy of the Geneva Convention?
Maybe Bush should "zip" away and sign the Hauge treaty?
This is going to totally change the rules, when you have 5 megapixel digital cameras that will easily fit in a BDU jacket pocket and when everyone has one you're going to see a lot of pictures that the Pentagon would rather you didn't, which is probably a good thing.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Because it provides at least a partial answer to "who guards the guards".
A crack-down on possession is almost inevitable, since our society seems to prefer hiding problems over fixing them, but IMO any such crack-down will be lamentable.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
...never made it home from the earlier conflicts? I'm sure our perceptions -- and maybe even the outcomes -- of wars-gone-by would be radically different had the public had access to images of events and incidents from those.
WTF?! From what I understand, these abuse photos were taken way back in January! That's a lot more than an hour.
What is being said about the shortening of the photojournalism cycle is still true, I just think this is a case of a bad example.
The date of the pictures is a seemingly minor detail, but I think it's very important. Little innacuracies like this perpetuate broad misunderstandings of important events.
-Matt
You are saying that it was an hour between the time the photo was shot and it was "seen all over the world"? I'm calling BS.
Sadam was a evil dictator and... .. the US is supposed to be the good democracy. The whole leader of the free world bullshit.
The rest of the world just regards the photos as proof that the US miltary is a bunch of cowboys.
The Red Cross report didn't have an effect.
The complaints didn't have an effect.
The eye witness accounts didn't have an effect.
A few pictures change everything.
Most people have stronger reactions to pictures than they do to printed words. If the military is going to control the reaction, the military is going to ban cameras.
When cameras are outlawed, only outlaws will have cameras.
They are more controversial and shocking because we are Americans and we preach to the world that we are better than everyone else and then we go and do shit like this.
Meanwhile, many of us see movies weeks before they're even released to theatres and watch TV shows the day after they air via internet exchanges. Just the other day someone promised to post a TV program that had JUST aired "as soon as the encoding is done" which, in this case, was about four hours.
I buy and sell shit via the internet in the blink of an eye. Just the other day I bought another CD from magnatune and the only reason it took me a day to get it was because of my hideously slow dialup connection and my insistence on getting the highest practical quality (FLAC).
ALL these examples and the best you can come up with is to mention an "old guard" news source releasing months old photos only AFTER they had "cleared it with washington?" Yeesh.
In Australia, the major political parties frequently hold party meetings that are closed to the public, and to cameras. Thanks to new mobile phones that now have video recording capabilities, a brawl at a national branch meeting of the Liberal Party was caught on camera for all the world to see. I'm sure a lot of people had to think twice about the image of the Liberals as a "mature and rational" party after that, I know I sure did.
Just one detail for the freepers out there--the abuses occurred (and the photos were taken) in fall 2003. This is months before the four American contractors were killed and had their bodies burned in Fallujah.
So, if you want to put a biblical eye-for-an-eye spin on this, the Fallujah killings in March may have been revenge for the Abu Ghraib abuses, not the other way around as some folks are trying to insinuate.
Remain calm! All is well!
The pictures indicate that something much worse could possibly be going on - and according to Rumsfield (and I'm surprised he said it), there's worse - much worse, including real torture and prisioners being used as target practice from guard towers.
Oh yeah, these pics are small things, but they are totally against the Geneva convention and are war crimes in themselves.
What will be shocking is when the videos of worse (which Rumsfield alluded to) surface. when your spruting how good you are and your liberators, it's a wee bit dumb to act like the regime your kicking out - but let me qualify that - the vast majority of grunts are doing their job superbly. It's only a handful of scum that is tarring an entire in the main excellent fighting force.
Since the Starr Report, and perhaps before that the Oklahoma City Bombings, the internet has become one of the most important vehicles of communication in politics. 9-11 distributed information faster, more personally, and with far less repetition than the news channels. Howard Dean's campaign, while unsuccesful, nevertheless demonstrated the importance of a web presence for an aspiring politician, something that Kerry and Bush seem to have all but neglected.
This scandel again demonstrates the increasing proliferation of the net and its significance in modern politics. What we're seeing here is like TV was to the Kennedy-Nixon debates or the Army McCarthy Hearings. This is another phase in the coming of age of the net as a viable medium at least as significant as print and TV, the "old media." And this coming of age will only continue, perhaps until The Next Big Thing in 50 years. These incidents, the Starr Report to the Iraqi Prison Pictures, should serve as a warning to any politician that would overlook the power of the net as a communicative tool. Those who embrace the web, like Kennedy with the TV camera, will flourish. Those who do not, will like Nixon regret they didn't.
Looking at the photo's EXIF info most of it was either stripped or a very old digital camera was used.
Most people don't know about EXIF so I doubt they conciously stripped out the info. Yes the data is rather banal but it could be useful to track down the make/model of equipment used to lift a finger print or narrow down suspects.
Given the fact Digital evidence is getting very dicey to track down the photographer (although in this case I doubt any investigation is really needed) I suspect that makers will begin to embed much more in EXIF and other features of the photographs that can't be masked.
Stego could be used to imprint the makers mark without the consumer ever knowing anything.
It's a reverse of how some scanners/printers/software muck with the moire patterns when you scan money.
One of the criticisms of the Bush administration is that they're a bunch of cold-war throwbacks (Cheney, Rice, Feith, Wolfowitz) left over from the Republican cabinets of 1980-92 , and they came into power in 2000 all set to pick up where they left off, with star wars, new nukes, and new air combat platforms. Never mind that in 8 years the world had moved on and the active threat to America was terrorism, requiring police vigilance and response, not nation-killing weapons.
Now the Bush administration is losing control of the media coverage in Iraq. They've done very well up to this point--embedding reporters with units makes them very sympathetic, and for whatever reason US corporate media sources simply do not give bad news from Iraq the same prominence that other english-language sources do (UK, etc.). But, they've been caught by ubiquitous digital cameras and CD burners. Word-of-mouth is deniable, but trivially copyable pictures, where every grunt can have his own collection, is just too hard to control.
Personally I'm shocked that soldiers were allowed to have cameras--what kind of operational security is that? But, just like these guys don't get the net, they didn't realize the difference between film cameras and digital cameras--digital photos propagate at T1 speeds. This means that a hot photo may be copied 1000s of times in a week, where a film photo might be handed off, but not copied.
Remain calm! All is well!
> Its bad enough US troops were doing this, but why were they even taking pictures of it? How stupid can you get, really...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Auuugh! Cameras are good! It allows the people to check on what their army is really doing. Don't want embarrasing pictures? How about not acting in a way you'd be embarrased to have the world know instead of confiscating cameras?
-- MG
The problem is the nature of the work in which they are trained professionals.
Soldiers are trained to kill.
I can think of no circumstances under which such training would encourage humanity or civic virtue.
People who undergo the psychological conditioning neccesary to kill, maim and obey orders, aquire the ability to dehumanise the "other".
Under the circumstances, systematic torture and brutality would seem to be inevitable.
Because these are probably abuses they didn't consider controversial. Things that just happened all the time without anyone reacting. Imagine the things they didn't keep photos of...
Grunts don't do that shit. They see enough blood and guts.
It seems it's always the REMF's who do it.
The Geneva Conventions only cover POW's and civilians and criminals.
2 07 07-2004Apr17.html
Bush (their Commander in Chief) has SPECIFICALLY stated that some of the people we've captured are NOT covered under the Geneva Conventions, being that they are "unlawful enemy combatants".
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A
When you have the people at the very Very VERY top trying to play word games with the rights of prisoners, you don't expect the people at the bottom to behave themselves.
In addition to that the people have had their tours extended time after time. Studies show that after about 200 or so days in combat troops fall into a zombie like state, not really caring what happens next. These produce the infamous "thousand mile stare" pictures from WWII and Vietnam. Put young 20 something soldiers in a position with a lack of training, lack of leadership, lack of planning, and no knowledge when they'll be going home and you'll be suprised what you'll end up with.
The girl in the photo with the Iraqi on a leash is just 21 years old. I think that they were told to do this by interrogators. Imagine the amount of intimidation that was being handed down (via CIA or contrators) with a huge lack of support from superiors. That coupled with the attributes above probably made positioning for the photos seem rather fun for a change. The lawlessness instilled from the interrogators coupled with the desensitisation by everyone in the military continually calling these prisioners thugs, terrorists, etc. probably put them in a state where they didn't consider the long term affects.
All the conditions were set up by the military for this to happen. The sad part is those 6 young soldiers will stand trail as scapegoats for the whole incident. Why do you think all the media suppression happened? It takes a bit of time to plan the cover up so all the higher ups can keep their jobs/commands...
The shredder is a media-created myth.
And let me see if I've got this straight. Saddam was a brutal ruler for over two decades. He gassed an ethnic minority with gas provided by the US (Reagan was President, Rumsfeld was SecDef) sprayed from US-provided helicopters. Saddam filled the infamous mass graves with Shi'a encouraged to rise up against him by George HW Bush, who left them to die when they heeded him and called on him for aid.
Now, because Saddam brutalized these people, it made it OK for the US troops to do the same thing to them? The general who submitted the report that was later leaked to the New Yorker (Taguba) pointed out that 60% of the people in there were no threat to anyone.
Go spin your wheel of justifications for war in Iraq and let me know what you hit. Remember, WMD is out, and apparently so is liberation, since you don't give a shit about those people.
It took considerably more than an hour - it took several months. The military had already started an investigation into this in January, and mentioned it to the press at a press briefing in January. There was no follow up by the press. After the firsst charges were laid in March, there was another press briefing, with a military lawyer present to answer questions from the press. There were no questions on the investigation or charges.
Odd that the press ignored this to pursue thier own agenda in Jan - April, but when the issue was finally released by CBS 3 months after the military told the press what was going on, they changed their agenda.
Transparency in government means you don't have trust the people, because you can trust the process to keep them honest. In an Opaque government it's not enough to trust the Man at the Top, you've got to trust EVERYONE under that Opaque shield.
The latter has something to do with why we're in the current mess.
The same holds for business, considering the opaque bookkeeping behind some recent scandals.
The concepts of Transparency vs Opacity are slightly different terms, but should be familiar to Open Source coders when considering security.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
a couple of months before this, some MP police guy in iraq was posting pictures to a message board about how they beat one of the iraqi contractors up because the intepreter said he didnt like americans.
Many people who heard of these "abuses" just shrugged them off anyways but once they saw the pictures it all changed.
It's sad to see those pics but you can also understand it when the iraqis are blowing up humvees everyday with roadside bombs. That same MP who posted pics etc posted one of his hummer after it took a hit from an rpg. I guess it's hard to restrain yourself when somebody is trying to kill you huh
did you forget to take your meds?
And, I can remember a certain 9/11 2001 where old style cameras were pointed at the WTC and I could see it crashing down in realtime. The images were guaranteed authentic in almost no time.
So, this thread is pure bullshit!
Achille Talon
Hop!
Because this is an Islamic culture in which such sexual humiliations are the legal and moral equivalent of rape. Because it speaks directly to the primal, tribal sexual fear of women exploited so ruthlessly by the Taliban.
If Rumsfeld is right, there are more, thousands more, pictures and videos out there, violent and obscene past all description.
If and when you are made to strip naked, sodomized, electrocuted, and forced to wear a dog leash, I hope you enjoy the experience, secure and comfortable in the knowledge that others have suffered far more horrible abuses.
The prisoners shown in the pictures may have committed war crimes. They may have committed criminal offenses. They may be innocent. Until and unless a duly appointed court finds them culpable of specific crimes, they should not be punished. And if a specific person were to be found guilty of such crimes, the US Constitution bars the imposition of cruel and unusual punishment. It is probable, although not certain, that when the Iraqis finally get their country back, their constitution will contain similar prohibitions, if only to impede a future regime's use of torture.
I hate to see news suppressed, but I am forced to admit that when the public gets involved objectivity goes out the window. People are often willing at the height of these incidences to cry for blood without regard for anyone who might be innocent of wrong doing but caught in the middle.
The public should be crying for blood.
I was a medic in Desert Storm. I took care of more wounded Iraqis than all American, British, Saudi, and other allied wounded put together. In many cases, the Iraqis I was taking care of has been trying to kill me a few hours before. Now, I'm not saying that no American soldier ever abused an Iraqi prisoner in that war -- but I will say, quite confidently, that there was nothing like the endemic, long-term, systematic abuse that is clearly going on now. Speaking as a veteran, as an American, and as a human being, I am saying that the people who committed this abuse, be they soldiers, civilian intelligence personnel, or civilian contractors, should be put up against a wall and shot.
And if it hadn't been for the release of those pictures, the chance of justice ever being done (except maybe for a few junior enlisted folks who would have been sacrificed while those who gave the orders got away with everything) would have been roughly zero.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Let's face it, the army aren't a bunch of heroes, they're a bunch of fucking simpletons who can't find gainful employment anywhere else. They are the lowest strata of a free society, and the worst possible people to arm and send overseas. They only reason that they ever are is because they are so worthless that the rest of society is willing to let them die.
A few 'soldiers' you may have heard of:
John Kerry
John McCain
George Bush
George Carlin
Prince Charles
George Bush
David Robinson
Charles Rangel
Dwight Eisenhower
Roger Staubach
Henry Fonda
Benny Hill
Steve McQueen
Sean Connery
John Glenn
Werner Heisenberg
Leonard Nimoy
Some people will never understand why someone would join the military. And that's OK, because there are people who will, to protect your right to be innocent.
Brutality in Iraq in three parts:
- Saddam killed and tortured thousands.
-> Saddam was a brutal dictator, and these are the things dictators often do...
- The US killed thousands in a war that alienated the US from most of the world and was started on surprisingly weak evidence, if not lies.
-> The majority of the US media does not question the war. Thousands of Iraqis are killed to "free" Iraq.
- The US does not behave correctly with iraqi prisonners, but does not kill any prisonners.
-> The US media finally report the news and it becomes a huge political matter, so important that Rumsfeld might even have to resignate.
I don't criticize the public outrage and political turmoil resulting from the bad treatment that happened in Iraqi prisons... but I find it surprising that the war itself, which actually killed people, did not make any a similar if not bigger impact on American politics and public opinion.
I know that this story hints at the biggest issue of the last few days in a coy way, but I have to say something. Karma be damned.
One day far from now Rumsfeld will be close to meeting his Maker, reflecting on his life. At some point I hope he realizes that there was a reason that the Geneva Convention was created. He might note that it protects our troops from torture, and that torture is an ineffective tool to gain information. He might also, for one moment, actually re-evaluate the decisions he has made over the last few years and ask: why?
But perhaps not, a man who shakes hands with Saddam months after he uses chemical weapons on the Kurds obviously sleeps well at night for some twisted reason.
hah, from an anonymous coward....
must be nice to have that freedom...............
You have to wonder about the brains of those soilders.
You don't need a course on the Geneva Convention to know what they did was a dirty deed, yet they did it AND LET THEMSELVES BE PHOTOGRAPNED DOING IT.
What those soldiers did was certainly wrong, but on the all-time list of crimes possible in times of war, this is a minor traffic violation, not a felony or even a misdemeanor. But the "anybody-but-Bush" crowd is going berserk.
Bush's justification for the war was Iraq's WMD. You'll note that WMD have yet to be found. So, the new justification? Getting rid of Saddam, and closing down the torture chambers and stopping the abuse. Oops, that didn't pan out either.
Are you starting to see why this means something yet?
Full disclosure: I would vote for a slime mold before I would vote for George Bush. I believe he and his henchmen have pulled the wool over the eyes of the American public a few too many times. Also, the fact that he still supports Rumsfeld in this, despite Rumsfeld freely admitting that he withheld knowledge of the prisoner abuse from Bush for months, speaks volumes.
I admit, I don't know how to be a prison guard.
I don't know the fundamental basics for becoming a rocket scientist, but I know that this is not the way to treat another human being. Treating another person with dignity is simple common sense.
"Not only didn't they KNOW their job, they thought that having people with CIVILIAN training would compensate for MILITARY training."
I'm a civilian for the Air Force, and trust me, there is NO excuse for their behavior. I can not speak for other armed services, but again, common sense should prevail.
"Even though their Chain of Command KNEW they weren't trained, their Chain of Command did NOTHING to fix it (above the company level)."
Tough shit for them. They're the people in charge, they should assume the role of leadership and provide the necessary training. If they don't assume responsibility, they should not be in charge.
"Now would you care to tell me what "EVERY basic military trainee is drilled on"?"
Basic-fucking-human-rights.
No person should be subjected to this kind of humility. 6 year old children understand this concept. There is no excuse why "adult" human beings should be exempt.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
If you were a neocon, you would think of the world in black and white. You would consider American soldiers to be "the good guys", and thus incapable of doing such things. So the idea of banning cameras would never occur to you.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I agree with everything you've said. You should read the report. It will disgust you. Their brigade commander (BG Karpinski) seems to have LIED to the investigators about when she was at the various prisons.
Other officers are described as "dysfunctional".
Which would have been bad enough, but then you have civilian contractors telling the troops to soften up the prisoners and telling them that they're doing a good job at it and that they're getting good information because of the abuses.
Non-existant leadership.
No training on what the limits are.
Asking to help with intelligence operations.
Bush claiming that some prisoners are NOT subject to the Geneva Conventions.
Hostile environment.
No idea when they'll be going home.
So, a few enlisted will burn and the officers will be allowed to retire from service.
I think that their entire chain of command should be doing a few years in Leavenworth.
I can see how some worthless fucks could do what they did. I can see burning said worthless fucks. And the responsibility goes up the chain. Their commander should burn. Their commander's commander should burn.
And Bush needs to shut up about "unlawful enemy combatants" and state that EVERY prisoner is subject to either the US criminal justice system OR the Geneva Conventions.
However, we have to keep in mind that the scope of the problem is very limited to a few people who took part in this whole prison thing.
But the rest of the world has no way of knowing the true scope of this, because the US refuses to let anyone monitor what is going in any of the other prisons (e.g. in Cuba, Afghanistan and others in Iraq). And quite frankly the fact that the US refuses to let anyone monitor what is happening makes it seem extremely likely that this sort of stuff is endemic. If not, then what is the US trying to hid in all those other prisons? Why not let monitors in if they're not committing war crimes in there?
Up until the release of these pics, most of the rest of the world could still give the US the benefit of the doubt, and say well maybe they're not doing anything bad. But with the release of these pics, that is gone, and there is absolutely no reason to take the US's word anymore that they're not committing war crimes everywhere. There is no credibility left, the chances seem pretty slim that this was an isolated incident.
The report, and photos had been around for months before getting released. Anyone who watched the hearing on thge matter knows this. Yet another little bit of "technology rules all" BS.
-bZj
.sig
Was nobody paying attention when Rumsfeld, Gen. Myers and the other Pentagon brass were testifying?
Indeed, the comments here are disturbing, especially if one contemplates that people who comment here that they "thought they read that dose pichas were actually from some porn shoot in LA or sumthing" (at least a day AFTER Rumsfeld publicly stated that the pictures were real and only the tip of the iceberg) are also people who have the power to vote in November. It's as if freedom of the press probably doesn't even matter to a large portion of the population, because they aren't paying attention anyway. Surely one should be expected to have even a tiny clue about what is happening in the real world before making such important decisions .. *sigh*.
Sure, the lead is good as far as photojouranlism goes, but the Pentagon has been sitting on some of the photos and torture videos since January.
So, instead of just the instant-access world of digital photos & Internet, we are also confronted with a world where the longer embarassing/damaging information is held, the more damaging it is when released. Also, from a journalism standpoint, please note how these instantaneous images have all been altered in Photoshop: the media aren't showing genitals.
-Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
http://www.prisonexp.org/
And that only took 6 days.
To summarize: Lots of very ordinary people become viscous and sadistic in the absence of external controls.
The only way to counter this is with training and a clearly defined chain of command / chain of support which provides leadership.
#1. Those soldiers need to burn.
#2. Their commanders need to burn.
#3. The civilian contractors telling them they were doing a good job need to burn.
And I'm not talking about letting the officers get off with "retiring" from service. I'm talking Leavenworth.
and, #4. Bush needs to get off the bullshit about "unlawful enemy combatants" and say that EVERY prisoner is covered under EITHER the Geneva Conventions OR the US's criminal justice system with all the rights and protections of one or the other.
There are many Iraqi blogs out there were you can learn how Iraqis feel about this.
The photos have changed their attitudes towards the USA quite a bit (if you take the time to read earlier entries you will notice).
From monitoring these blogs I conclude that the USA already lost this war. Once you lose the support of the Iraqi population there is no way that this occupation will succeed. Although it continue to drag on for a very long time.
DISCALAIMER: I am just a non-American, non-Arab outside observer.
I agree. The thing is, these people are as dumb as they come. They couldn't find the door if you pointed it to them. Consider this: their primary job is to KILL PEOPLE. What kind of sick fuck chooses a career who's main task is to filet the guts out of another human being because of where they live? They couldn't get a more productive job like construction or cooking or programming or something? They chose to KILL PEOPLE instead? Imagine being some Iraqi kid watching TV with your dad in your living room and suddenly hearing a thud and looking down and seeing your intestines on your lap because some US soldier had to shoot his 50 caliber into your house because he thought someone was hiding out in there. "But I was just doing my job, sir." Sorta puts in perspective what kind of person a soldier is, so it wasn't any surprise to me at all that these kinds of photos existed. The President is also incorrect when he states that this behavior represents only a small portion of our military, because, as I explained, you'd have to be a pretty sick fuck to even BE a soldier in the first place. Most soldiers would do the EXACT same thing had they been put in charge of that prison.
Actually, I wouldn't blame the soliders. Being as dumb as they are, they're actually the victims in this scenario: Soldiers are the most ABUSED members of our society. You can only blame those in CONTROL of our society for this situation. And, in a capitalist society like ours, the people in control are the wealthy upper-class. The tiny upper-class (let's say, Chris Rock's A+ students) figured out a genious marketing campaign to actully get other human beings, mainly members of the hated and completely stupid lower-class (D/F students) and the vast and barely qualified middle-class (B/C students), to DIE for them. This is the ultimate, most brilliant marketing campaign ever- to get someone to DIE for your product of "country". Just look at our citizenry- they absolutely LOVE the military! "How dare you cut our $500 billion military budget?!" Love 'em like they're heros! Why? Not because they did something productive like find a cure for cancer or anything like that, but becuase they did something destructive like bomb an Iraqi hut with a cruise missile launched from a boat some 900 miles away, to, ultimately, protect "country".
In this era of globalization, where the idea of "country" becomes diminished since the entire world is instantly connected and therefore seperated by one degree, this would be the equivalent of a factory owner in Columbus, Ohio to get the citizens of Columbus to invade Toledo. I'm sure the people in Columbus are mad as hell at the people of Toledo, but, come on, it's sorta meaningless to those that don't believe in "city", right? And, if you notice when you go country to country these days, they're all pretty much the same, with the trade of the wealthy upper-class defining each "country".
I've had this hope for a long time, that somewhere, sometime, something will be going down and we'll get a picture from one of those cellphones with a camera.
We're all going on about Iraq here, so here's an example. After a particularly nasty helicopter crash, the army came in, secured the area, and confiscated all the cameras. If they were digital cellphone cameras, those pics would be uploaded to a "secure location" instantly.
The current scandal is further proof that a picture is worth a thousand words. The comparison to Rodney King comes to mind -- without that video that would have been another routine traffic stop. I for one was not ready to believe just how bad the situation in Iraq is, but now that even Rumsfeld has admitted this is just the tip of the iceberg, it really casts things in a new light.
To sum up: As technology progresses, there will be more instances of people being "caught" on camera or perhaps covertly recorded in a tiny MP3 recorder, and so on. And this is a good thing. What's that old saw: You can tell a lot about a person by how they act when they think they won't get caught.
Rules? Rules are for games. War doesn't sound like a game I'd like to play, but if you make me play a war, all bets are off.
At least in this part of Europe, the United States are seen like a coutry where money and corporatism take the lead, far more than morality. Moreover, war exactions (e.g. in Vietnam) and dubious alliances aren't exactely forgotten. So yes, USA is a big great country, an economical leader, but it's not really seen as an example to follow. Not here.
Everybody is upset about this pictures, the sadest point is that nobody seems to be upset for those thousands of innocents deaths. That's the nature of the war beast, it's not news, it's not new, but it's there.
It seems that war is never the answer.
What's in a sig?
What's in a sig?
and should be modded as troll. How sanctimonious and self-righteous can you get?
Why do some people volunteer to kill people? Perhaps it's because they're dumb and don't understand the implications... but perhaps they ARE smart enough. Perhaps they understand that, in a violent, racist, zealous, genocide-prone world, lethal violence is sometimes necessary.
I'm sorry, but that's the hard truth. Look it in the eye. Go ahead. It's easy to do from your computer... a lot harder to do in person.
The soldiers who abused those prisoners WILL get what's coming to them, as well they should... but don't go tarring the entire military with the same brush... that's how racists and fanatical islamists think.
Even if you haven't the understanding of what it means to serve in the military, at least show a little respect... if it wasn't for those troops (and thousands of others like them) protecting your rights, you wouldn't be writing such trollish rants in this forum.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
If the camera can sign the images, the private key needed to do so must be in the camera. It would only be a matter of time before someone (and it only takes one) figured out how to get the key out of the camera, which would make people able to sign anything, and thus the camera's signatures pretty much meaningless.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.