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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." "
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.
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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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
Wait, that's not a legitimate use of cameras?
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
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.
... 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
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
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?"
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
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.
Actually a better, far more realistic scenario...
Say you (or your sister) were a pregnant college girl walking in to get an abortion, and the local "right-to-life"thugs decided to video tape you and use that to identify and/or harass you.
Oh, you agree with the right-to-life thugs? Well what if the abortion clinic uses the same cameras to video tape and identify you and sends some pro-choice thugs over to firebomb your favorite church. Or gives the video to the police to "investigate" you.
Any technology is likely to be misused by people wanting to discredit, harass, or abuse their enemies.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
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.
That's horseshit. The vast majority of those that don't vote do so because they are too damned lazy to either a.) get their asses to the polls or b.) educate themselves enough on the issues to be able to make an informed decision. Only a small fraction of those who abstain from voting do so based on some ill-conceived moral perogative to not "lend legitimacy to an illegitimate system."
-Matt
Duke '05
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.
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.