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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." "
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.
The only way to do this is for you to invade everyone's privacy, and not have them invade yours, so you might try and get a job in the FBI or something ;-)
Personally, I support freedom of information, but I also support the freedom to prevent any information from being created in the first place.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
One danger is that the results of the riot-cams will just be dismissed as doctored film. There is also the risk of confiscation.
Finish reading the post if you're not going to RTFA:
"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."
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.
Wow, I thought I might get a funny mod or something from that post, but the amount of people who took me seriously is astounding.
;)
Honestly guys, it was a joke. I guess I should have included a smiley or something.
Well, here's a belated one:
All better now?
Honestly, the people I saw causing trouble seemed to just be bored.
Literally people who were walking down the street and decided to take advantage of the chaos to break things.
They really didn't seem to need any motivation for causing trouble other than opportunity.
I know that this is highly stereotypical, but most of the people who caused trouble were young punks. Literally kids dressed in punk outfits. People who live off the street. I have known lots of peaceful, respectable punks, but the majority of the people that I have seen causing trouble at protests have also been punks.
The police provoke in a much less subtle way. They throw tear-gas into peacefully assembled crowds. They bring in riot police and advance on the crowd, beating them back. They have no need for 'agents provocateurs', because they don't get in trouble for openly provoking unrest.
Even without cryptographic jiggery-pokery, ..... Say, wha?????
0 7.pdf (warning PDF).
The cryptographic jiggery-pokery in question would be a camera which digitally signed its output. It could use a key built in on a tamper-proof chip.
It wouldn't be impossible to fool such cameras, for example you could use rear projection on a screen in front of the camera to make up a faked image. But it would be more difficult.
As an example see this academic paper on the "trustworth camera", http://www.tsi.enst.fr/~maitre/tatouage/icip96/10
A link to the branding stuff.
Haha, I never knew they did that. Ouch... and people complain about chip implants for criminals... pffft