Slashdot Mirror
Thinking About the SnitchCam
Saint Aardvark writes "From Dan's Data comes a fascinating look at the consequences of tiny, wireless video cameras: "Right now, it's hard to prove that (for instance) riot police really beat the crap out of innocent people at a demonstration....Live streaming video from multiple cameras operated by lots of people at the same time, though, will be a different matter. Even without cryptographic jiggery-pokery, it'll be practically impossible to get away with even minor editing-room spin doctoring, if thousands of people around the world have the original footage on their hard drives." "
Even without cryptographic jiggery-pokery, ..... Say, wha?????
Seriously though, this does raise an important point, however, the real issue is not "is there evidence available", rather it is: "can we get access to the evidence?". There are lots of instances where the facts exist, it is just obtaining access and recent efforts as part of and independent of the revised Patriot Act will make it even harder for the general public to 1) have access to evidentiary information 2) remain anonymous when contributing evidentiary information and 3) avoid prosecution for retaining evidentiary information that might be "determined" sensitive.
Remember to VOTE!
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Between the need to keep myself safe from injustice by documenting/recording everything, and massive invasion of privacy by documenting/recording everything...
Can someone reason me out of this conundrum? Is there a way to have my cake and eat it too?
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
... in school?
And weren't they beat up regularly?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Sounds to me like Big Brother meets P2P.
In Soviet Russia, the riot police watches you!
It's funny, TRUE and ontopic!
Hey cops get accused of things all the time. It seems to me these cameras might cut both ways.
For a moment there, I read SnatchCam.
Any possible "legitimate" use for these things will be dwarfed by the massive amounts of grainy upskirt pornography that will be produced.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is just some guys idea. A lot of people have ideas... what makes this one great enough that, say, Sony would start making the cameras he is suggestions?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Funny, a while back here in the UK there was a program about people who used tiny cameras which sent the image of credit card pins & numbers when put into an ATM back to a mobile sitting in a nearby street and I wondered how long it would be before I saw one used where I live..
Then last week, while walking through town at college I saw a swarm of police around an ATM machine with one of them holding those little camera strip things they put on ATM machines to look nicely inconspicuous while recording stuff.. Yeah they can be easily abused and it happens a lot, costs millions, but so can everything in the wrong hands, n they're cool
Justice will be served as long as everyone is videotaping everyone else.
In Quebec City, 2001, I shot 3 hours of DV footage. People getting surrounded and beaten up. An elderly woman having a cannister of CS-555 lobbed at her. It did nothing. Some of the footage was even plyed on tv. I guess it's not brutality if no-one's bleeding, right?
-Leigh
Marge Simpson: "As long as everyone is videotaping everyone else, justice will be served."
One simple rule for its versus it's
can anyone thing of any disadvantages of this? whatever you are doing in public, you probably wouldn't mind if someelse recorded it on camera.
as long as this isn't used in private places, such as a doctor's office, or the local changeroom, i don't think this is a bad idea at all.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Would that make this technology less valuable?
Salocin.com
It certainly could prove useful, but as the Rodney King tape proved, the context often does not get put into play with videos. It's not entirely certain that even 50 people will get the context of a situation recorded. I think the real bonus will be the hesitation of police to react with force in protest situations where everyone has a video outlet. A downside would be their hesitation to react with force when necessary.
When I was in London a couple years ago, I knew that I was on-camera everywhere I went and I felt safer. Part of that was because I knew that policemen were watching. I think that if I knew that the people watching and analyzing my behavior were just people with an axe of one type or another to grind, or goody-two-shoes types that want to force their morals on everyone, I'd feel less safe rather than more safe.
Curiouser and curiouser, and doubleplusbad, methinks.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
The girls locker-room...
*drool*
I reset my case.
The people watch the government? What?
Just back up one song from the album, and a text file that says "more shit like this". Think of the space you save -Mant
What's needed is the ability to take pictures or video, have it transmitted wirelessly to a trusted third party who can attest as to content and time stamp. (I've pondered this sort of system in vehicles, so that a driver could record a "Driving While Black" type incident, and be able to provide evidence to his attorney that would be more likely to stand up in a civil suit.)
Such a system would also require cameras that provide tamper-resistant digital signatures for each frame. This wouldn't make doctoring impossible, but should quiet some of the objections to this sort of evidence.
Yay to technology making the world a better place.
Salocin.com
always told me that people don't change as they grow older, they just grow worse.
of all your fellow HS students guess who became police officers, and guess who became YRO-commenting slashdotters...
I would tell you: Now you know what I meant when I said: you can hide nothing from my eyes.
Just a Random.idea
Yeah, I have been playing with a vBlog (video blog) here: m3blog.com, and my original idea was to quickly post unedited video quickly.
However, I quickly found out that is was more fun to do a little editing, as people weren't watching my raw posts, they quickly grew bored! And it wasn't very hard to do little quick edits, especially time-shifting, to make events seem like they took place before or after other a certain point.
As a previous poster said, it wont do much, even if you can get to A- produce footage from multiple cameras of 'incidents' ('innocents' getting beaten) B- Distribute said media at a scale large enough to have any kind of impact.
Public opinion is what matters. Try to get your 'point of view' on National TV. Medias are controlled, or at least aren't close to be 100% objective; they show you what they WANT to show you. In this case, Evil Anarchists rioting against the World Economy Globalization.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
This idea has been proposed before by Slashdot's favourite cyborg, Steve Mann. http://www.wearcam.org/
People are upset with camera phones and video phones because they are everywhere and offer little privacy to people. Miniature cameras are going to cause more problems than they will solve, unless new laws are passed and enforcement of new and current laws becomes more strict. Anybody could easily place one of these devices in countless places and therefore have access to private information and video of you that you might not want them to have.
All the cameras in the world won't make a difference. All that matters is what people are told they're seeing. That was proven in the famous Rodney King trial.
Or, better yet, look at what happened in Waco. No evidence of illegal activity by the Dividians. No evidence of drug manufacturing. No evidence of child molestation. Ignored evidence of the initial shots being fired by the ATF. Yet our government was able to falsely justify the torture and death of innocent civilians. Few people seemed to notice.
Look at all the video evidence you like. Big Brother will tell you what to see.
... it's shoking at the 1st time... it's somewhat disturbing at the 10th time... and it who gives a fuck at the 1000th time.
Just think of those footages you saw last time about children dying of hunger. Can you remember what did you do? Opened a new can of Coke?
Just a Random.idea
I hate to say it, but does "original footage" even *mean* anything any more? In the day where "Photoshop" is a verb, I posit that it doesn't. Not really. It just plunges us back into "he said, she said" expert-witness land, where, to a large extent, we already reside. The only people it will solidly convince will be those who took it -- and, since they were there to start with, that doesn't really accomplish much. As a means to catch your babysitter yapping on the phone, it'll be fine. For anything more than that, though, I wonder.
The only problem with tiny wireless cameras we face today is that some of the people can only see the negative consequences of their omnipresence, like industrial espionage, blackmail, or even worse, voyeurism, which while clearly controversial is not even nearly as important as the anti-fascist tasks described in the article. This very article, however, sadly fails to address those concerns, which might be percieved as a bias for those who are against such an intrusive technology and violation of privacy in the first place. In my opinion this article would be perfect if it didn't lack the arguments refuting the concerns I outlined. "Don't ask me what Sweeping Social Changes will be caused by such pervasive cameras; my ability to foresee techno-consequences stops at the certainty that it's a bad idea to let anyone called Brundle near a teleporter." This, I believe, is not enough to convince the sceptics.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
With apologizes to Dr. Stallman, I'd like to point out that information systems to which everyone has access to the information it manages/monitors/etc. are less prone to abuse by bureaucracies or governments. Take "red light cameras," for example. These are foisted on municpalities under the auspices of "public safety" (e.g. fewer red light runners, ergo fewer intersection accidents). However, since the operation of these systems is typically obfuscated, these systems invariably become nothing more than revenue generators. Yellow lights are shortened, in order to increase the "catch." Never mind that this "forces" people to "run the yellow" and thereby increase the likelihood that there will be a ROW-induced collision.
If everyone had some way to monitor exactly what these cameras saw, exactly how the lights were timed, etc. it would be dissected in public enough to prevent these sorts of scams. The same goes for "safety" cameras in public. If you saw exactly how much of an invasion of privacy a given camera amounted to, you would bet there would be fewer of them, and those that are allowed would better meet the specified purpose (instead of "once it's there, nobody will notice we're not looking just at what we said we were").
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
This sounds like an idea from David Brin(author of 'The Postman'), called "The Transparent Society", from a book of the same name. Basically, he says that the powers-that-be will always have the power to snoop on the ordinary people, so there is no point in advocating privacy; all you get is an false feeling of security, and you give those in power a cloak of secrecy.
Instead, he says that we shoud remove privacy from everyone, and let the public see what others are doing - basically, have everyone watch everyone else. The point of that is supposedly that it would keep corruption down and stop the rich and powerful from abusing their power.
Now, I don't say that I agree with Brin, but I just thought the idea of people going around broadcasting live video of everyone to keep the cops in check sounded like somthing Brin would like.
I doubt that the protest idea would work, though. People don't care about brutality if they think that the police are acting in their interest and there is even a chance of violence from the protesters. Remember how all the violence from the police at the WTO protesets was justified by a dozen 'anachists' defacing a Nike store? Or how much of America feels that it's "better safe than sorry" regarding Guantanamo and Abu Gharib?
Watching the watchers only matters when the public gives a damn that the watchers are brutal.
It's a movie produced by some folks who were at the 20 Nov 2003 FTAA protest in Miami. By my count it shows 14 felonies commited by police officers, including refusing to identify themselves, shooting unarmed & non-violent people (in the head), random pepper spraying, etc etc and so forth. The raised fist of today usually has a camera in it.
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
I've read a SF book where tiny cheap wireless cameras where a part of the background. They where so cheap that just about every part of earth was covered and the chances of you getting watched, if you did something bad (warcrimes was a part of the plot) was fairly big. Privacy issues wheren't metioned.
But I can't come up with a name... I think Linda Nagata's Limit of Vision had something like this, but I'm fairly sure the protagonist (or maybe it was everybody) had a camera build in to her glasses. Maybe Neal Stephenson, Ken MacLeod or John Barnes...?
Yeah, well, maybe it's kind of OT, but I'm just trying to say that, it has been thought of before, I've just mislayed the evidence...
TC - My Photos..
AnimeNEXT anime convention
How about slipping a few of these into the offices of our elected officials? If we can't have any privacy why should they?
Can you imagine if not one person voted in the upcoming election. Now that would make a difference. Seriously though, people push voting to no end.... I wonder why. And what if I dont like any of the candidates? or for that matter, the entire system of government? Id say I could just leave... but even that can be really difficult... damn. im fucked.
Instead of military conscription, civilians would be conscripted by the police, where they could watch from inside. When sufficiently "infiltrated" with civilians, the police would be very hard-pressed to rape civil liberties.
Some 45 years ago, France was on the verge of civil war; there were several coup attemps, most were foiled when the conscripted troops refused to march against the civil powers.
This little brother's watching you too
Yes, this will happen. The limits are size, weight, cost, storage, and battery life. At an acceptable cost, you can already get something that is small, light, and cheap. Storage is still too expensive for continuous recording. But the hardest obstacle to overcome is battery life. Either the electronics get a whole lot more energy efficient still (maybe we can even run these things off small solar cells then, like simple calculators), or batteries have to get a whole lot better.
Oh, and if you want wireless transmission, that's still going to cost you because wireless providers still want to milk the cash cow a little longer.
Just imagine this: people on the road could have a "SnitchCam" on the back of their rearview mirror that they could use to record your bad driving habits and then send it to the police department for $$$ (as suggested in the article). Is there ANYONE who has not broken some traffic law at one time or another? We'd all be getting fines sent to us in the mail on a regular basis, probably.
Then again, just like the photo-radar, people could just say, "Yeah, that's my car... but that's not me driving it!" Uh, sure...
Another thought, who is going to wade through the millions of hours of snitched data? Police departments don't have enough manpower as it is.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
... is much less of a problem that implied here. When was the last time you heard of serious concerns about the authenticity of a video clip?
----- There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend; those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
There's cameras everywhere. There is no want for footage out there.
It's just a shortage of actual people, not mediaopoly, controlled outlets for that information.
I think video channels on the web, along the lines of web radio, are what's needed. A way to get alternative view points to the people. At least one not controlled by Viacom, Time Warner AOL, or News Corp..
Oh yeah, like that's what people did with film cameras. Nope, I don't think so. That kind of behavior makes you a cad and most people don't want to be thought of that way.
Don't blame the tool for the stupid things that you might think to do with it. Better people will make better use of the same tool. Such thoughts waste your time anyway because you can't remove the tool.
I'm embarrassed to be from the same state as the hysterical Marry Landrieu, who thinks like you do or used to. I might be able to calm you, but that won't help her or me.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If they ever decide to televise Quidditch matches, I'd love to see a SnitchCam. Might make it kind of hard to follow the action, though.
Taco's days of stealing gasoline are over.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
It's easy to speak of the "original" footage, but how can you prove that it wasn't created in a modified state?
Think for a moment of the faked fight scene in "The Running Man", where Arnie's character is killed - the video is edited to overlay his body instead of the actual person.
Now think about the already existing technology to insert things into live video streams, covered by Slashdot in the past - the BBC for example overlay athlete names onto the track lanes in running events.
Is it really that long before we can make near impossible to detect changes to video in real time? I think not.
i was at the big one in the summer near the front. some "anarchists" had been dragging a flag on the ground during the protest and were being eyed by big guys with orange arm-bands on. when the protest started circling washington sq. park, the flag draggers turned into flag burners and the plain-clothed guys turned into anarchist-pummelers.. they put leather gloves on and started just beating the crap out of basically college-aged kids. There was a huge crowd of people around, some journalists, and photos started being snapped.. in the melee, it was hard to figure what was going on.. but i was standing near a guy with a very nice camera who got maced for taking pictures by one of the plain-clothers. I don't know why they singled him out. After things quieted down, i followed the plain-clothers for a bit to see where they ended up.. they walked over to the cordoned-off area and pulled out police badges (on necklaces) out from under their shirts and wore them out in the open.. now that they were next to their uniformed buddies with guns, they were big men. We went and found some reporters and told them.. Daily News and the New York Post. They started writing furiously.. but basically weren't believing us that plain-clothed new york cops beat protestors. Well, those same guys had been following us and were near us in the crowd listening to us talk to the reporters.. they were giving me the evil eye, so i told the reporters, "see, that guy right there!" and pointed at him (still had badge out).. and the reporters kind of looked at each other, decided not to back down, and started asking the cop if it was true.. he totally shrank away. The reporters apparently took that as a good sign and then got the full story from us. For no point though.. neither paper published anything significant about the event. The closest was (I don't remember which one said this) "there were reports of scuffles between police and protesters near the front of the parade at one point, but overall it was very peaceful." Yeah, riiiight. Just a few black eyes and kicks in the stomach for the "anarchists." Whatever you think about burning a flag, we have laws, and it's protected political speech. The technicality that would get the cops off in front of a complicit judge is that the protestors didn't have a fire permit. Ha! Just like Rodney King was resisting arrest. In a department full of cops who were generally reasonable for all of the protests of the last two years, those cops deserved to be identified and charged with crimes. But, no flashy vid, no sticky charges. Makes me sick.
At a political convention this summer, a girl in the front row of demonstrators held up her video camera to the cops. She told them that she was a lawyer and would be taping the events. A cop got beaten by the demonstrators right in front of said lawyer. There is a blurry picture of her pointer her camera at the guy kicking the cop. She has not brought that video forward. Shows the moral high ground of the left.
Every part of the US government seems to have a decent amount of checks and balances except for our horrible law enforcement officers. It would be nice if video cameras were a lot smaller and higher quality (and on all of our cell phones with hours and hours of storage and battery life) so we could catch them in the act.
I live in a college city that has about five times (it seems) the normal amount of officers. There's too many police here so they get bored and find things to do.
I've seen police pick fights with drunk college students and the results are never pretty. Often times, the students are groaning but complying while the police are tapping people with batons, shoving them, yelling at them, and patting down anyone at random.
I've said this before on Slashdot, but I once had a buddy get arrested for resisting arrest - without any other charges. He merely resisted arrest even though he wasn't arrested for anything. Cops were breaking up a party and he was leaving and he said that they have no right to be there... and one cop grabbed him, threw him down hitting his chin and elbow on the pavement, and arrested him for resisting arrest.. The charges were eventually dropped but his chin has a scar now.
I was thrown up against a car once and patted down for 'an officer's safety' after I asked for his badge number multiple times when he refused to give it to me. He stopped us for going 45mph in a 45mph zone, though he said we were going 62mph but he didn't have it on radar.
The proliferation of these small cameras everywhere, though hurting privacy, will definitely help in combating crappy cops. I would have loved to have a camera at the last party I was at that got broken up.. I doubt forced entry is an acceptable method of breaking up a party.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
At that point it'll be a cool luxury to retreat to renovated basements that are:
--
Power to the Peaceful
So, is the UK, which is rapidly covering every square meter of itself in surveillance and traffic cameras a "right-wing crypto-fascist governmental bureaucracy"?b I think not. We "right wing crypto fascists" are continually fighting against creeping Big Brotherism. We're smart enough to know that even if the government in charge of it is to our liking at the moment, it's just a mater of time until it falls into the hands of our political enemies, and those guys REALLY know how to gin up a repressive government (all for our own good, of course).
I often find that Hiding my Ditto with the ever constant surveilance to be a difficult task.
... well cheap.
The constant need to dictate as handed to me by realBuzz makes this Dittobuzz get freaked out.
To be real, Brin had the constant surveilance society in his book "Kiln people" where you could purchase footage from independent cams because that was often the only way those people made money when cheap labour was
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
...you have a one dimensional mind...jerking knees and support of the latest 'scary concept' does not make you wise or liked.
Blar.
We document/record everything and everybody wears masks, uses fake IDs, fingers, etc.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is just some guys idea. A lot of people have ideas... what makes this one great enough that, say, Sony would start making the cameras he is suggestions?
Some people even think about their ideas, amazing isn't it?
The cameras are being made already. They are already part of cell phones and anyone with gumption can combine a PDA with wifi and a camera. That's not the point.
The point is imagining what people will do with those cameras and the possible social good that will come from them. As long as new restrictions are not made on publishing photographs of public places, these cameras will give the public an unprecedented new witness of public events.
The same technology in government hands, however, needs to be restricted. Real harm can come from unrestricted domestic spying. The trick it to not pay people to do the spying while still allowing prosecutors reasonable access to publically recorded material for criminal investigation.
In short, it is possible for these new cameras to be used in a way that does us all lots of good. The credibility of witnesses can be enhanced without creating a police state, where the state has all of the "evidence" and the ability to harass political opponents. Recent events, such as Mary Landrie's hysterical smut cam attacks and the whole UK police cam infrastructure make me worry about the actual uses. Noise produced by people like FortKnox serves the interest of those who would do all the wrong things.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yeah, my first thought was, only on slashdot would that be considered insightful instead of funny
BATF actually DID record the initial confrontation of the Branch Davidians, the footage was to be used to show what a good job they were doing against the cultists and why funding should be continued. However, afterwards it was found that all the cameras jammed. Likewise the door that had the bullet holes going IN was mysteriously destroyed after the event. See various Waco documentaries, eg "Waco, the Rules of Engagement"
You are looking at a small, specific, potential problem and missing the big picture.
As it is, witnesses have their eyes, mouths and still cameras. Their credibility will improve with many people watching events live over their shoulders.
As it is, "news" organizations can and do edit their images. Won't it be nice to have more than them to rely on?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Well someone had to make the obligatory "Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of These" reference...
The biggest problem is that if one were to imagine a "cluster" of these their fear would or should escalate dramatically.
To reduce this to the level of the individual, I can not state how little I want Big Brother (or Anyone for that matter) to be watching me and waiting for me to do *Anything* that can perhaps be used somewhere down the road for "proof". ("Right now, it's hard to prove that (for instance) riot police really beat the crap out of innocent people at a demonstration")
To see the other side of the argument i.e. the benifits of this technology, I have to say that the abuse or the potential for abuse far outweighs even the smallest amount of potential benifit...
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Robert J. Sawyer considers something like this in his book "Hominids", which posits an alternative universe where Neaderthal never died out. Everyone in the Neaderthal society is implanted with a device that records their activity in realtime, piped to a physically and cryptographically sealed "Alibi Archive" that can only be accessed by permission of the person being recorded.
:-) even a straight digital voice recording would be of value.
While the novel isn't all that great, this idea is extremely interesting. For anyone who has ever been falsely accused of anything (like, say, any man who has ever had a close relationship with any woman
More seriously, an ex-girlfriend of mine was a volunteer at a women's shelter, and used to complain that too many cases came down to "he-said/she-said", so I suggested the shelter start using compact, cheap, voice-activated digital recorders to lend to women who were in abusive relationships but who couldn't get anyone to listen to them. So far as I know, this plan has been adopted, although the current state of my relationship with that particular woman precludes my knowing any of the details...
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
what are the legal issues behind having security cameras *outside* of my home such as ones pointing at my driveway, front/back door enterance?? do i have to have posted signs? "premesis may be under video survelance" ??
For a couple of years, I was a volunteer for the Legal Defence and Monitoring Group here in the UK. One of the main things we did was to monitor police behaviour on demonstrations to make sure that the police were acting within the law.
At the time, we discouraged the use of video cameras for collecting evidence of police behaviour because of the problems with interpretation of footage. We preferred for each monitor instead to take written notes (recorded on the day with a dicataphone) at regular intervals (once every 10mins or so) since a report that nothing was happening was often as valuable as a report that all hell was breaking loose. The police usually said they were reacting to provocation before taking the decision to modify people's skulls, and any evidence to the contrary was valuable.
While the former issue might be solved by the "network effect" described, the latter issue is not unless those with cameras record everything, or at least sample the situation at regular intervals.
In short, even if you still have some form of organisation operating the cameras, you're in for a FAR heavier invasion of privacy burden: compare a written note saying "14:55 - Nothing happening" to 10 seconds of footage showing people, their faces, their placards, their expressions... and nothing happening.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
CNET is reporting that a 3rd party developer has developed a 3rd party add-on available only in Japan (of course) that allows snitch cams to see through bikinis, thereby comverting them into fully-fuktional snatch cams
Author Vernor Vinge predicts releasing networked, dust-sized cameras throughout an entire planet that wirelessly report back to their user. Someone with read access to the network can basically see and hear anything where the speck of dust happens to be. Honestly, I don't think it will be too long before this is technically feasible. The trick will be convincing the powers that be that everyone should have read access to the system, not just the powers that be. I'd much rather everyone be omniscient than just our beloved leaders.
There are the Japanese concepts of Uchi/Soto and Tatemae/Honne as a solution.
Yep. Governments everywhere have always tried to use fear to control the citizenry and to keep them from prying into govt affairs, the better to rip us off. I say make the American govt completely transparent. Cameras everywhere, publically accessible via the web, with audio.
Oh, but the Rightwingers will whine about military secrets being exposed, etc. Kiss my ass! They are just using that for cover. They have been doing it for decades, carrying water for the rich and powerful and the big corporations, supporting dictators overseas in order to keep the 3rd world peasantry from having Leftist governments. Starting wars to feed the profit margins of the military industrial complex and other parasite megacorporations.
Bring on the mini cameras and shove up their asses. I wanna see EVERYTHING!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I saw it. Great stuff. The disappearing video was another example of evidence tampering--which was rampant. Numerous accusations of evidence tampering were made. Certainly, there is far more proof of evidence tampering than there was of drug manufacturing or child molestation (much more than none). Still, it all just seemed to disappear.
In addition to tear gas, pepper bullets, sonic weapons and microwave beams, the riot police will in the near future use the slashdot effect to knock down any nearby wireless nodes. "Look at this cool page!" they will post, pointing to some poor activist's IP number. With wireless disabled, they will proceed to bust some heads.
And they'll do it time and time again without Timothy getting any wiser. Who notices dupes any more?
This wouldn't be too hard to do (in all seriousness), would it? Just flood the wireless frequencies with noise before calling in the Riot Squad... You can build that kind of gear from spare parts at Radio Shack and mount it in back of a van.
Don't want your protest to end in an orgy of violence? Regulate it yourself.
There have been many peaceful protests with any number of people, where the cops need do nothing but sip coffee and watch.
And there are protests where you see people getting off of busses with backpacks full of masonry, balaclavas at the ready. Where during interviews, they say things like 'We'll be completely peaceful as we block off all roads within a ten block radius and hurl insults at passers by. If the cops want to MAKE it a fight though, we're ready.'
Nobody wants to be a riot cop. So you get the newbies and the burnouts. They don't get adequate training. They know that a mob can turn ugly. They know they're under watch, and that the hindsight brigade will come down on them like a ton of bricks. They know that taking proactive action to keep things under control will land them on the news; they know that letting things happen will result in a full riot.
And they know that the TV news will never show the rocks, the insults, and the provocations. They'll just show the cops wading in and busting heads.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Ask the policeman who's charged with assault. Ask the city government that's faced with a lawsuit.
Recording the event, so that the real bad guys are caught is great. It puts blame and credit where they belong.
As it is now, you have to take people's word for it. A public camera system owned by the public is a great step forward in witness credibility.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The ATF rounded up all kinds of evidence. Check out the warrant.
Buying up a whole bunch of weapons isn't illegal in itself but the ATF felt it was worth a look. They also had reason to belive some of these weapons were being converted to fully automatic which is a serious no-no. The ATF had good reasons they just fucked up the execution of their plan.
Also, in case you don't remember many of those who died were murdered by Koresh and his crew. They were shot long before the fire got to them.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
The first bully to pick on my kid is going to be buried in a zip-lock bag. And their family is going to wish they had never had that kid.
And teachers who bully... hooboy, we're talking prolonged torture in international waters.
Jamming! someone said "lots of wireless cameras" or words to that effect. If they want to do the nasty things ascribed by some posters, they'll just wade in with RF Jammers in addition to their regular ordinance.
Just think of the QWC scenes you could get with a camera in the Flying Snitch!
I've often thought the cops should be required to wear a camera in their hats or on their uniform. Use some form of solid-state recording medium and have upload terminals in the cars and stations.
The theory goes, if they cover or turn off the camera and someone makes an allegation, the cops look guilty already and the accusation gets heard, instead of the coppers all giving the same story.
In his novel Earth he described the effect
retirees with nothing better to do
had on petty street crime has they
walked around with their "TruVues" on which
wirelessly spool video to storage on central
servers. Would be criminals just simply didn't
bother, and elders knew they were untouchable.
>Bring on the mini cameras and shove up their asses. I wanna see EVERYTHING!
Begging for a goatse?
There is an Arthur C. Clark novel, "The light of other days" that deals with this idea. In the novel, Clark imagines the invention of a device that creates wormholes through which a person may observe anything undetected. He goes on to speculate about the effects that such utter transparency would have on our culture.
Secrets of any sort become a thing of the past causing all sorts of world changing effects from the total remaining of governments and corporations to the end of modesty.
Later in the book they learn to pilot the wormholes back through time. If anyone hears about a camera that can do this, please let me know as I would like to find out who took my wallet last year.
There was no evidence to ever suggest that any weapons had been converted to fully automatic. That was a fabrication. No converted weapons have ever surfaced. And I do not know of anybody murdered by Koresh and his crew. Please provide a list of names so I can investigate this revelation.
According to former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, infra-red (FLIR) video taken from the FBI's own helicopter proves that the FBI fired heavily into the Mt Carmel center just as the fire started--which was when people would most likely try to exit. The fire was NOT started by the Dividians--but was the result of the CS gas (!) used--as it was likely ignited by the kerosene lamps which the Dividians were forced to use in the compound...since their electricity had been cut. CS powder ignites at 327 F and once ignited will burn at temperatures as high as 4,200 F
Of course, that's not possible, right? It's much more likely that the Dividians started the fire themselves.
Riiiight...
Electronic News Gathering Wearcomps
I just remembered about this guy, Steve Mann. Wacky stuff in the early days but I think this is what he was trying to do. I can't really follow what he talks about now.
I remember a collaborative video project just for multi-source, low-res, worn computer news. Lots of folk wandering around gathering video from their eye-perspective (using early webcams and gargantuan backpack rigs) just so the news could have multiple collaborative sources.
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
The problem is that no one investigates these allegations unless you were arrested. This sort of camera setup would have been nice to have when I was illegally handcuffed, detained, searched and then released by Chicago police because I was doing nothing wrong and had no contraband. Unfortunately since I wasn't charged with anything I had no recourse.
In another case, I was riding with a friend and he was stopped for DWB (driving while black). The police took him out of the car, searched him and then let us continue on. They didn't give me (a white guy) a second look.
With the surveillance video I could prove these events occurred. If these things become widespread, the police are really going to have to clean up their act.
Not an entirely new idea though, as I have heard political activist/ex-punk rocker Jello Biafra suggest a very similar idea, which he calls the "Camcorder Truth Jihad". His idea was that with increased availability of these types of technologies, comes the opportunity for everyone to "become the media".
The tech suggested in the article is more advanced than what Mr. Biafra was thinking of, but he suggested this some years ago (and he is a self-confessed technophobe). Still, this is an interesting new take on a not-so-new idea.
The trouble is not spreading information once it's in digital form and on the internet. We know that's easy. We've known that that's easy for a long time now, so even bothering to point it out shows that you don't know what's going on.
The trouble is that the US government's various agencies are very good at obtaining evidence before it is digitized and made available on the internet. A good example of this would be the large number of video tapes seized after the September 11th, 2001 assault on the Pentagon by, what Pentagon officials claim, was a large commercial passenger jet. There are many such examples, and the proliferation of video cameras with audio recording capability would make it more difficult for government agencies to engage in this type of behavior.
On the other hand, such a proliferation would have an odd effect on US culture. As a comparison, the cold war, the emergence of AIDS (not that it's gone!), and the civil rights movements brought into focus things about individual people that they otherwise could ignore. Each of those affected our culture by forcing people to consider their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in ways they had not before. This consideration was required because of the focus on the effect and meaning of those thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Each time, people found themselves drawn towards or repelled from their own humanity and individuality.
If you put cameras on everyone, we will be forced to look at ourselves. It won't just be the faceless government watching us, it will be our friends, our enemies, and thousands of random strangers. Some people will riot in the streets, some will be happier, and some will recede from sight. Some will be angry and call such an intrusion into our lives wrong. Those are the responses every time we have been forced to look at ourselves. Be clear, this will be as straining an event as any we have ever endured. With the focus literally on us, our culture will change in order to survive.
Playing pornographics games during the day is evil! Play at night!
This is a great idea for the rich nations of the world, but the real trouble spots, typically, don't have such affluence.
The idea I've been pondering for a while is something that is cheap and easily distributable so that people in the places where bad stuff happens can put them in their windows and make the results available to journalists when something goes down. These could be distributed for free by NGO's, like freedom organizations, so that most trouble spots would be blanketed.
The hardware I have in mind is something really cheap, rugged and self-contined, with a walkman form factor and, perhaps, endless loop DAT tape storage and a solar power source. Journalists could knock on doors the day after an event (or dig through the rubble) and copy these tapes for later perusal. The data would ideally be encrypted, to help with authenticity and make it difficult to view in the field. Some cheap equipment actually does see outside of human visible range, so these might actually be useful at night time too. This sort of form factor might make the devices cheap enough to make it practical to distribute them to thousands of homes in each world trouble spot.
I suspect that even though people in trouble areas might be suspicious of these things, that most of them would realized the advantages of having them and be willing to participate. Since the devices are automatic and easy to hide, the danger to the operator is minimal. Also, the collection process makes them pretty much useless for military use, so there's no real danger of "bad guys" collecting the tapes for use against "good guys". The only real practical use would be reporting of abuses or setting the story straight. Regardless of which side you're on, having more info is generally a better thing for the innocent victims of any conflict.
Imagine what things might be like if there was one of these in every tenth house in Baghdad or the West Bank...
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
This is pure Anglo spin doctoring of the worst kind! King George is a brutal dictator and Britain lies at the very heart of the Axes of Evil. King George holds huge stores of weapons of massed destruction such as muskets and cannon and frigates of over fifty tons in draught. And we know also that he has ties with leaders of the lawless native bands who terrorize our settlements, burning and looting, leaving none alive neither woman nor child. The world will be a safer place when George the Third sits in a colonial prison awaiting justice for these crimes against his own people.
My phonecam has really taken the sting out of my roadrage. Instead of just screaming when people cut me off, I send a pic of their license plate to the cops. Sometimes I catch up to them at an intersection, snap a pic, and taunt them with my snitchery. It's a lot more satisfying than those old phaser and photon torpedo boxes.
--
make install -not war
Dude. Seriously. "I couldn't get to the poll?" I bet in school your dog ate your homework.
Register as a permanent absentee voter - you vote on your time, you mail the vote in (or drop it off at the county) and you avoid last-minute crap like people reregistering you in a different precinct.
If voting ain't a personal priority, that's your deal. But if you don't vote, then it's not, "because I had to work late," it's because you're a lazy bastard. Own it.
Oh, go on, check out my job.
Consider the laws that limit our abilities to protect ourselves,
even from telephone abuse, using an audio recorder...
Getting the runaround from a government department?
You need the other party's permission before you can
record them while on the phone together.
I would expect to see similar "privacy" laws enacted
that could limit use of video devices, like those
suggested here.
Actually, there was quite a bit of evidence against the Davidians. That doesn't change the fact that the government screwed up big time with the assault or that the trials were pretty farcical. But there was lots of evidence.
If you can find it, read _Mad Man in Waco_. It's a very even-handed book about the whole affair, showing just how evil Koresh was, and how evil the government response was.
I apologize in advance.
1. Remove tin foil hat (I know, I know-- but do it quickly).
2. Unfold hat design and reshape into mask.
3. Cover face with new tin foil mask.
4. Privacy!!!!
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
You really think so? I know it's a troll, but when the police, part of the Executive branch of our government, start determining punishment too (Judicial's job), our system is not longer working.
Hundreds of people with mobile phones and video cameras who attend free partys eery weekend in the uk know that it doesn't mean shit.
Hey just look at Iraq, there's tones of footage and Bush still gets 50% ofthevote.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
"Right now, it's hard to prove that (for instance) riot police really beat the crap out of innocent people at a demonstration...."
Actually given the 'crap' that some of these helpful citizen demonstrators do to the police and bystanders alike; it's a wonder they aren't beaten more often.
Not that I condone that sort of thing but remember: The camera will likely be pointed in BOTH directions eventually...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
You earned it. Yep, you are a troll. You don't like Slashdot, and you spend lots of your time disrupting it with insults, advocating things you know free software people hate, and disinformation.
Let's have a look back at some of that long posting history of yours. Ouch, it's worse than I remember. Don't dish out what you can't take.
Technically your "MS isn't always a problem" translates to lots of loud, insulting and misleading apologies for Microsoft. I think you know better, and that's what trolling is all about, right? Where there is crap flood, you will find FortKnox.
And, of course, like any good troll you reveal yourself.
So there you have it. I remember some of those things I read. Your posts used to infuriate me until I remembered your posting name, but now I can just dimsis it, "Oh yeah, there's that FortKnox guy again."
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The accusation (attack) would be that the images presented as evidence or broadcast had been edited.
This is a rather quicker-paced instance of a class of problems found in for instnace medical record applications.
One solution (developed in one form as part of the GNUMed project, as GNotary) is to generate a hash or each element of the record, ship that over the network to one or several distant servers whose ownership is separate from the originator, and receive back a timestamped hash of the hash.
The distant server can then testify that it received a hash (that can be shown to correspond to the record being presented as original) at a particular time.
If the times of production and receipt are very similar then accusations of editing would be similar to accusations of enormous talent and processing speed.
How's bout we get better officials and avoid the whole, little 1984 thing instead?
... that would cause a big "404 error" or similar on the Internet. One can only wonder if defense agencies and the President have such capability to turn off major Net backbones, and if doing so would be (in this example of a live-streamed riot) used for political purposes.
But physically small disk drives (and loop-tape DAT or similar recorders as someone else mentioned) small enough to go in handheld devices and store good quaility compressed video are available, and only one or a few people who record an event need to "get out alive" (or the person recording it really dies or is otherwise disabled, someone else grabs it and goes) with it for it to get out to the public.
For the Government Officials reading this and wanting a solution to this "problem," I'll save you some time: EMP*. You're welcome.
* And here's what to say to the companies in nearby buildings who "lost everything" as far as business data: "You shudda had offsite backups. What, the net went down in the middle of your backup? Aww, gee, sorry about that..."
Tag lost or not installed.
the cameramen wear helmets?
/. hyperbole?
Inquiring mind want's to know.
Are they stupid or just hard headed or is this more of the typical
My concern with cameras is that I'll be out walking the dog at 5AM, take a piss on a tree, and get snatched later for indecent exposure because there was a friggin camera in the tree and some little old lady was waiting for her favorite squirrel.
This concept has been around awhile and is known as sousveillance or inverse surveillance.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance
See also http://wearcam.org/
NBGeek
My concern with cameras is that I'll be out walking the dog at 5AM, take a piss on a tree, and get snatched later for indecent exposure because there was a friggin camera in the tree and some little old lady in DesMoines was waiting for her favorite squirrel.
Not voting means elections are decided by people who are not you. If everyone insightful enough to perceive flaws in the electoral system doesn't vote, you get a government elected by the dumbest, most apathetic, least observant, and most single-minded.
If you don't like the system--and sure, there's plenty not to like--then agitate to change it. There are many sensible ways to do this. Abdicating your right to be heard isn't one of them.
I should buy some cement.
Microcams won't get used much because they will catch both sides at their worst.
The 1968 Democratic convention riots were caught on camera by news organizations recording it from the upper-level floors of the hotels they were in, safely above the street. They showed "brutal" Chicago cops charging after innocent protesters and beating them bloody. What the cameras failed to show was the urine and feces that were thrown at the cops, provoking them to go after the "innocent" protesters. Yeah, tell me again how, if you were a cop, you could remain perfectly calm after being showered with piss and shit.
Other demonstrations, other forms of not-so-obvious violence are used by protesters. Before every WTC demonstration there are grass roots classes in how to incite the cops.
...To summarize the rest of this post, here aremy basic personal political beliefs:
(1) The Constitution is a great idea. We should try living by it sometime.
(2) The job of the government is to protect the people from outside forces, not to control them.
(3) Taking care of the people is the job of the people, not of the government.
(4) Any organization will attempt to increase it's power until it reaches "absolute power" and will resist all attempts to restrain it.
(5) Individuals should be free to choose their own actions, be responsible and accountable for their own actions, and accept the repercussions of those actions.
Put those together and you can probably project my opinion on pretty much any topic.
[Clarification: When I speak of "government" in the general sense, I am speaking of it at the Federal level]
That being said, I just took The World's Smallest Political Quiz, which tells you where you basically fall in the political question with just 10 questions. I ended pretty firmly in the Libertarian camp, though I am not affiliated with the party.
Fortunately, they seem to have the basic ideas that I support. Unfortunately, the very principles that make them attractive to me are the very qualities that prevent them from becoming a major political force. Sort of like Wicca in the religious arena, the very "decentralized power" structure it is based up is antithical to it obtaining sufficient power to make the changes you want to make.
That being said, I'd like to offer some strategies that might help alternative parties, whatever they may be, to obtain at least enough power to weaken the major parties that they compete against. Quite frankly I'm not worried about diluting the election for either party, as neither major party supports the 5 beliefs I described above (or lacks the conviction to support them) and I think that they are both screwed up, unsustainable in the medium-to-long-term and are doomed to failure (at least from the perspective of a citizen that wants to live in a free country) in their current forms. That being said, here's my suggestion to counter some of the usualfull-of-crap rhetoric.
Full of crap rhetoric #1:
"Don't Waste Your Vote" - This is stupidest thing you could possibly say to a voter, so of course the major political parties say it often enough that people start to believe it. The only way you could possibly waste your vote is to: (1) Don't Vote or (2) Vote for someone you don't want to actually win. Here's my counter-proposal that I hereby release to the public domain in the hopes that some other political party or organization will pick it up and run with it:
INVEST YOUR VOTE! Let's accept the fact that if you vote for a third party candidate (whatever the party may be) they are pretty certain not to win the election. But don't think of it as a wasted vote, think of it as an INVESTED VOTE.
What is an investment? It is something small that you put away now and don't use in the hopes that it will grow into something more useful and powerful in the future. And that is exactly what INVEST YOUR VOTE means to do. You take your vote
It's trivial to clone a car. Automated camera fines then go to whoever owned the original plate.
o n/ 2983527.stm
e.g.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/lond
Deleted
the author is James L. Halperin. The 'documented life' in the book involves wearing a 24/7 audiovisual recorder with 360 degree vision. The data is notarised and stored off-site with encryption so only the owner can access it.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
http://www.streetblowjobs.com/main.htm?id=
From the BBC: "MoD (UK Ministry of Defence) files exposed to asbestos". Oops. "Up to 63,000 secret files exposed to asbestos have been put out of range of the Freedom of Information Act until they can be decontaminated." Files accidently contaminated during a building renewal. These files can technically be requested but alas now journalists/members of the public won't be able to ask for them till they are cleaned. Bit of a shame.
We have the Rodney King video, we have the Zapruder film. They both show irrefutable evidence, yet what
good did they ever do?
printf("Goodbye cruel world!\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b");
I'm suprised no-one has mentioned this, but the moajority of the comments here seem to be based on the false presumption that technology can solve social/cultural problems.
Sure it's cool to debate what we can do with our new toys, but keep in mind it's purpose.
Dear anonymous coward,
I WAS IN THE STREETS IN CHICAGO IN 1968. *IF* there were any things thrown at the cop, it was they were isolated incidents, and quite possibly by agents provocateurs.
I can personally tell you about the cops attacking with no warning, and the first time I'd ever seen two-and-a-half foot riot batons. I have a picture etched in my memory of one pig (not to be confused with the regular Chicago cops) swinging it at someone's head as they were falling to the ground, not 10 yards from me.
The federal commission on the riots declared it to be 100% a police riot.
So take your lieing revisionism and shove it where the sun don't shine.
Oh, and I saw *reporters* with they heads bleeding, so take that "from upper floors of the hotels" back, too.
mark
They weren't determining punishment, they were beating a dumb fuck who attacked them.
Now hear this: some dumb fucks actually deserve the beatings they get. This is not punishment. This is a simple and avoidable response to stupid and dangerous behaviour.
Avoid being a stupid fucker by attacking cops == avoid a beating. It's quite simple.
Beating == halted attack.
iirc, brin did mention how public-access surveillance could be used for stalking, but i imagine u could also watch for the same ip accessing the same sequence of cams u were passing...
Snitch-cam conference proceedings are available here.
Everything else is pretty much either taken out of context, or overexaggerated to make me look bad.
It's hard to take your own posts out of context. If I looked hard enough, I could find things more outrageous and vile.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Where are the automatic weapons? Don't see any in the picture. The second circled area looks more like a gas tank of some sort than a weapon. Maybe an air cylinder or perhaps it's a refill for the pepper spray? Can't tell from the pic what it is.
Now, in this picture, http://www.goofalicious.com/squat/squat-arrested-1 -detail-a.jpg it certainly looks like the officer handcuffing the man in white has a weapon of some sort, but the pic is waaaaay too grainy to tell what it is. Could be a shotgun, or a carbine, or a subgun, or a tear gas launcher for all I can tell. Doesn't really look like an M16 (I think y'all call them C7s up there) whatever it is. BTW, do you know how to tell the difference, by looking, between a select-fire (automatic) M16 (C7) and a semi-automatic AR15?
I do have a few questions for you, grcumb:
When the police arrived, did they immediately attack?
Did they give no warning whatsoever?
Did the folks inside not have a chance to leave peacably?
Did the squatters want to get pepper sprayed and dragged out of the squat?
-gandalf23@work
The real issue becomes whether the public can force the government to make its activities transparent also, or whether the government, who are the most important organization that might have the power to keep other people from watching it, will succeed at doing its surveillance in secret. It certainly has the resources to do it, and it has the motives to do it, and if the public lets it get away with it, they'll go gung-ho and do it.
Now think about the Bush Administration, or about Blunkett's Home Office if you're British, and the public's tolerance for secrecy in the name of "protecting us from terrorism", and for secret "no-fly lists", and for governments storing data at Caribbean companies that don't even have the US's minimal data privacy laws, and governments running secret prisons like Guantanemo Bay, and governments preventing media access to more normal prisons like Pelican Bay, and the rapid increase in classified information.
And then go read Brin's book again, and remember that it was written in 1999, before Bush got ~elected, and think how much Moore's Law has done since then and how terrorism is being used as an excuse for everything.
And if you're an American, next Tuesday you should go vote Early and Often, and if you're not in a swing state you don't have to vote for Kerry and Edwards (who are certainly no friends of privacy, but aren't rabid about killing it like Bush and Cheney are.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks