Slashdot Mirror
No Pictures, Thanks
An anonymous reader writes "HP has received a patent on technology that would allow anyone who didn't want their picture taken to remotely instruct cameras to blur their face. While this is being promoted as a privacy measure, does anyone else see the serious rights issues here? What's to prevent this being used by police to block their images when they're beating or otherwise mistreating people? If this tech can be used to blur faces, it can be quite easily adapted to turn cameras off altogether, with deeply troubling implications. And even without these 'what if' scenarios, isn't there an expectation that, if you're in a public area, you're fair game for being photographed?"
What's to prevent this being used by police to block their images when they're beating or otherwise mistreating people?
Gee...I dunno. Regulations about that sort of thing, perhaps?
A real-world broadcast flag. Just what we need. Thanks, Carly!
sulli
RTFJ.
use good old-fashioned film!
Kevin
"It's not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in" O. Nash
Maybe the cop cameras just won't use that functionality. Just because it exists, doesn't mean that every camera in the world will be running it.
It will have certain applications to certain situations, but implying that criminals can immediately use this to their benefit is just pure speculation.
And they said zombies weren't real!
Until this "feature" is mandated by law (not likely), I don't see it as a concern...
Candid camera will never be the same again. :(
There is a more low-tech solution available as well. There's this guy who advertises in the back of "Soldier of Fortune" magazine who will blur anyone's face for a fee.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It may blur the faces but does it blur the b00bs attached to them?
Evolution or ID?
Wouldn't the camera have to support this as well? Time to stock up on digital cameras before they all ship with AutoPrivacyBlur(TM) technology.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
Would this let me blur the pics the CIA keeps taking of me? Could I select the bodypart being blurred?
I'm tired of people stealing my soul.
if their faces are blurry they'll die in 7 days!
Something that came out of a research lab but won't ever make it to production.
"...And even without these 'what if' scenarios, isn't there an expectation that, if you're in a public area, you're fair game for being photographed?"...
Like Public Restrooms, Right?
Personally, I'd rather not have my soul trapped on the mortal plane through these (often permenent) ties to the material world. However, if you're walking around in public it's your fault for getting caught in a picture. Be more careful with your soul!
(\(\
(^.^) INFECTED
(")")
This is probably the most useless patent ever filed. It allows HP to attempt to sell a device that no one will buy, because what it does is prevents someone from photographing the owner with a camera, also produced by HP, that no one will buy, because it can be scrambled.
The best part is, the end of the article mentions that HP doesn't plan on a commercial use for the patent, for exactly that reason.
Up next, Smith and Wesson announce a device that will prevent you from being killed by someone using a specific model of gun that they make. Get yours now; you can't afford to be vulnerable to 0.0001% of the guns in the world!
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Either...
A) Don't buy a camera with this "feature" (or use an older camera without it - you don't NEED a 6-7 megapixel camera... I've got an old 3 megapixel camera and it works fine).
Or...
B) Use a real camera that uses film. I think it'd be pretty hard to implement this on a strip of camera film...
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
Is the Futurama black bar generator close to becoming a reality?
Ahh Slashdot, where everything from the legit to the inane is seen as a 'serious rights issue'.
Use a camera without an infrared sensor (or put a piece of tape over it) and focus manually. Easy enough...
So what do you want? People whine about cameras being everywhere and there being no privacy, then when tech comes out that lets you turn them off, people whine about misuse and about there being no measures for protection. Geez people, make up your mind.
This might be useful when I'm cruising down the road at 15mph over the posted speed limit and notice a second too late the police van parked on the side of the road waiting to take my picture.
get the FUCK back to work..
#include
How will this affect my 1934 Leica? Not very much, I'd bet, so please remove the tin-foil hat.
Just figure out how it detects the blurring signal and jam it. If it's visual, try some filters, if it's RF just put a tin-foil-hat on it.
Duh! I thought /. catered to hackers. I don't see much hacker aptitude in such worry-warting.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They've actually been around for quite some time. They are called ski masks.
Who wants a camera which enables anyone to remotely cripple it.
Something tells me this item is NOT going to be a big seller.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
I've heard digital photos are often inadmissible as evidence in court because of how easy they are to modify. This sounds like rather intentional automatic digital editing, which would just make picture reliability / integrity worse. IANAL, but can someone else fill in the legal issues here?
"And even without these 'what if' scenarios, isn't there an expectation that, if you're in a public area, you're fair game for being photographed?"
Maybe, but on a "My Rights Online" forum that idea may not fly.
So here's a technology that is trying to PROTECT peoples' privacy, and the first thing you can fucking think of to say is that this has serious privacy PROBLEMS, and about cops blurring their faces so they can beat people?
Please, sir, are you fucking serious?
It's a patent, not a law... Come back and complain about it when it becomes law and every camera has to implement it...
Where can I buy one of these wonderfull new cameras that doesn't always work? We should all be lining up now and demanding HP bring them to market quicker so I can have LESS.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
It's a Dilbert cartoon show reference.
Makes sense.
It comes as a kit right, the camera which is setup to accept the commands to 'blur my face' the paparazzi get that. And the other part is the transponder that the celebrities wear. Now this will work, just as long as nobody tampers with their camera (piece of black electrical tape over the sensor) and if we can retrofit everyworking camera ever made with this technology.
Well done hp. Only problem is when XP service pack 3 comes out they'll still want to charge you $30 for the drivers to get the pictures off your camera.
I'm just thinking about the first time someone would commit a crime and all you see is a Laughing Man logo with a spinning quote from Catcher in the Rye around it over the criminal's face. And next thing you know there are dozens of people claiming to be the Laughing Man...
Erik http://yakko.cs.wmich.edu/~rattles
What's to prevent this being used by police to block their images when they're beating or otherwise mistreating people
/.? It would seem to me the more obvious use of this technology would be for criminals to use it to escape detection.
Why the consistent anti-law inforcement sentiment on
Just incorporate the "evil bit". If something "evil" is being recorded, like a police beat down, it won't blur. But if it's inconvenient for you to be on film you can blur the image. Easy fix.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
No, there is no organization protecting you from prisoner rape and there is no organization protecting you from crime by watching your every move.
There is only Big Brother and what he perpetrates against you, unmonitored by the public, in Room 101.
Seastead this.
Sure, in the US, we have the right to take pictures of people in public. But they still retain the right to cover their faces.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Seriously, if your face is blurred by pictures all the time, how would you know if there's a serious problem with a curse or space/time?
They may hve figured out how to do this, then decided to patent it specifically to prevent its use in the wild.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"Up next, Smith and Wesson announce a device that will prevent you from being killed by someone using a specific model of gun that they make."
It's called a gun with a biometric scanner.
I'm a believer in the firmly rooted idea that when you're in a public place, you're willingly presenting yourself to the view of others and there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. This was a problem for me when I took a photo of a stranger's car because I believed she was abusing the disabled placard system. It was on private property-- a mini-mall-- but still in a public place. Neither of us could understand the other's point of view. While I can understand her not wanting me to take a picture of _her_, it was difficult for me to accept her angry and indignant view that I needed her permission to photograph her car. She retaliated by taking a photo of _me_ (ha!). Needless to say a device in her pocket that could have disabled my digital camera would have bothered me greatly. Which is why if something like this ever comes to market, I'm going to stick with the 1965 Pentax SLR, which is entirely mechanical, instead of the more modern Kodak digital. Seems like DRM is just making us go back to older but DRM-free tech :/
I just replaced my two-year-old cell phone with a Samsung A670, which has a camera. I was surprised to find that the sound effect of a shutter clicking, which happens every time you snap a picture, cannot be turned off even with the phone in silent mode. (You can change it to one of four other sounds, all more annoying than the original; but none of these five choices is "silent".)
I was wondering if this was an attempt at addressing privacy issues - people around you would know that you were taking pictures of them.
What's to prevent this being used by police to block their images when they're beating or otherwise mistreating people?
Um, the DMCA? Unless HP licenses it to them, that is.
Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
Not really - If you're distinct enough to recognize, you can be photographed by anyone, but those photos can't be distributed for profit without your consent for the most part. For instance, no one can snap a picture of you and use that in an ad or commercial without your consent, but a journalist can publish photos of you in a newspaper. I'm not sure about how the law works around it, but I know that it can get pretty complicated if you sell digital photos because you need stacks of waiver forms.
I can't imagine the technology is so good, that it would be able to pick a face up out of a crowd. So much for stopping the Papparazi.
For that matter, I can imagine that this technology would false very easily. You could be trying to take a picture of a flower, but someone nearby might have a "magic no picture" transmitter on. Result? Blurred flower, or perhaps the loss of a one-in-a-lifetime photo.
This kind of device seems to have far, far, far more drawbacks than advantages in any real life scenario.
"Don't worry about the problems you have in mathematics, I assure you mine are much greater." - Einstein c.1919
The 'what-if' in this submission is one of the most tinfoil 'what-if's I ever read on /.
You get people coming out of the woodwork to protest camera's in public spaces, now some comapny says they can blur out a face in a picture and you get people going off half cocked all over again.
What is it like to be so paranoid?
This is just one company, if you don't like this technology don't use their cameras. Besides the fact that it's more of a could do this than a can do this.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
This story, particularly, sounds like the setup for a cyberpunk remake of "The Invisible Man", though lots of older, pre-punk cyberfiction investigate these premises, too.
How exactly are they trying to enforce this on market?
:/ )
While it is apealing function to *stars*, joe consumer does not want every other photo partially blured it it catches someones face in background.
I guess this will end like self destruct dvds - noone will buy cripled product.
And there will always be good old 8-mm cameras and other analog stuff. (just pray they are not outlawed as terrorist tool for information retrieval
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
...the patented it. So you don't have to worry about anybody other than HP actually implementing this.
What about politicians who don't want to be seen talking to certain people? Or corporate CEOs who don't want people to know which countries they have dealings with? Surely these are the types of people who are most likely to have the money and influence to abuse this technology?
Breakfast served all day!
If this tech can be used to blur faces, it can be quite easily adapted to turn cameras off altogether, with deeply troubling implications
Have we forgotten about plain old film? Or the fact that only cameras that have this feature installed will be affected? Do you actually believe that this will be legislated into each and every digital camera manufactured? Even if that were the case, that would only open up the market for imported, non-blur-enabled, or a black market of hacked de-blur-enabled cameras. No technology this restrictive will ever be all pervasive.
An HP representative said the company had no current plans to commercialize the technology, which would require widespread adoption by camera makers and possibly government mandates to be financially practical
So in short, while an interesting idea, this is yet again a patent on a system that may or may not be put to practical uses in the future. And as far as privacy goes, we have absolutely nothing to worry about. Although it's fun to be paranoid, and the technology is clever... relax.
No.
What's to prevent this being used by police to block their images when they're beating or otherwise mistreating people?
What's to keep them from turning off or siezing the camera in the first place?
If this tech can be used to blur faces, it can be quite easily adapted to turn cameras off altogether, with deeply troubling implications.
Huh? And what does the power switch do? I'm not seeing the problem here.
And even without these 'what if' scenarios, isn't there an expectation that, if you're in a public area, you're fair game for being photographed?
Legally, you can't do anything about it. But I don't believe myself to be "fair game" just because I'm in a public area. Besides this sounds like an easy to hack technology. Just make your camera ignore the request to blur the face.
This doesn't mean every camera on earth will be equipped this way. Lets say you're a bystander when COPS is filming or something. A neat feature would be opt-IN camera blurring, so that the maniac loser that ran into your yard after the high speed chase doesn't get your face on national TV. I see this mainly as a useful tool for TV filming.
This seems like a rather silly concern. There are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of old cameras out there using digial or analog media to store images that won't be affected by such a device.
I also don't see how HP would market this. Any hint that this technology is in a camera would destroy its sales (pros wouldn't touch it and reviews would herd the unwashed masses away). Certainly it could not stop the paparazzi or stalkers (both of which would circumvent as described above), so what's the value in owning the technology? Stopping 20% of tourist snaps? Certainly no one's going to want to add this to disposables (ups the cost), so even there you miss most of the audience.
Nope, this is less of a rights issue and more of a matter of filing for a patent because that's the only potential value you could extract from a technology.
I thought the technologoy already existed? People used to use lemon juice to achieve this effect, didn't they? :)
"And even without these 'what if' scenarios, isn't there an expectation that, if you're in a public area, you're fair game for being photographed?"
Just like you are fair game for having your pockets picked or having a bird crap on you. Which doesn't mean you couldn't or shouldn't do something about it if you don't agree with it.
It's not my job to make it easy for someone to photograph me - ("Oh sorry, the sun is in my back ? I'll stand over here beating up this poor fellow then, ok ?"). Really, this is not much difference from the privacy debate concerning ski masks at demonstrations etc.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
An HP representative said the company had no current plans to commercialize the technology, which would require widespread adoption by camera makers and possibly government mandates to be financially practical.
The AC is on crack when he says it can be quite easily adapted to turn cameras off altogether, with deeply troubling implications. It isn't some magic EMP device, the camera is under no obligation to obey. And there is no way it would be retrofitted to the millions of existing cameras anyway.
Big Brother left the building. In fact, he was never here.
Go ahead, mod me down.
--dw
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.
Solution #1
The hardware is mine, I do whatever I want with it. Even disable this dumb protection.
Solution #2
The money is mine, I will NEVER buy a camera with this STUPID feature.
As simple as that, if you don't want to be seen, then don't put your face in public places.
IOW: STAY HOME!.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Well, maybe not as effectively as blurring only one face, but it does mess up the whitebalance until the camera is reset... and it works on all digital cameras that aren't shielded by mirrors and most film cameras with automatic light meters.
Well, there's always film.
For this technology to be attractive to people who want to hide it would need to be supported in all cameras that might capture their image. So it is against HP's interest to keep this to themselves. However it is against the interest of other manufacturers to include HP's super privacy tech for free or cost. And it is against consumers' interests to have a camera that can be made useless by random people.
Won't work in a free society. We'd have to give up the illusion of self determination first.
I just hope Paris Hilton doesn't get one :)
That would come in handy at Disney World ... Dang that Mickey Mouse taking my family's picture and making me pay $50 for it!
Just wear a paper bag over your head.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
What might be cool about this is for this to work we would have to have the technology to reliably detect a face under any lighting and background conditions. The last time I looked we were not there. Are we now? If so that is pretty cool.
I definitely see problems with this one. I firmly believe that if you are in public, you are fair game.
That is why I don't have problems with the use of video cameras by the police, etc., in public spaces to monitor activities there.
I firmly agree with David Brin http://www.davidbrin.com/, who said in The Transparent Society http://www.davidbrin.com/privacyarticles.html#ts that we face stark choices about privacy and transparency.
He takes a position, quite contrary to what is popular on Slashdot, concerning how we should embrace and use these technologies.
For example, he argues - quite convinceingly - that we should embrace monitoring cameras in public spaces. But that in doing so, we should give everyone in our society access to the feeds and that the inside of the monitoring center should be subject to public monitoring.
Having seen how privacy laws are being used in the public square to frustrate transparency and good goverance, I find myself powerfully attracted by Brin's arguments.
Examples of abuse of privacy laws I have seen that stick in my craw are:
1. When a public agency - prison, foster care, etc. - is challenged on its conduct, and the person whose privacy is supposedely being protected has gone public, we will hear, "We can't discuss that due to privacy protections."
This action closes off any meaningful debate of the practices in place.
2. Here in California, a number of challenges are underway to the practice of not releasing public employees compensation or contracts due to privacy laws.
Yours,
Jordan
So who would buy that?
Unless... it somehow gets mandated to be in all cameras. Good luck with that.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
What the hell kind of organization is the poster in? The American I-Hate-Civil-Liberties Union?
After being out a month or two there will already be pirate roms that turn off this feature.
2. What if we would start moving towards a society, where eveone accepts that a camera is only a technical aid for your visual memory, and a voice recorder is just using technology to improve your voice memory?
You could simpley state that everybody has the right to use technical means to record what he is allowed to see or hear. If i show my face to you, you can see it, and can make a photo too. If i do not want you to see my face, i will hide it. This would transform the movie, music industries, law enforcement and all that.
Sounds futuristic, but will not be avoided as implants come... vaj
I think there should be some sort of policy in all technology companies, dilbert style, that says that non-technical people who have absolutely no fucking idea what they are talking about should not be allowed to make product suggestions or patents. There is already a similar policy in the airline industry that says non-pilots shouldn't be allowed to fly planes and i hear it works very well!
This is one of those ideas with no thought behind it, its based on the assumption that like good little boys and girls we are all going to accept technology lock down - they haven't even figured out how they are going to persuade other companies to stick this in their cameras?! or is this going to be mandatory by law soon? well i've got news for any legislator who thinks for a fucking second they are going to dictate what i can do to my property in my own home. To me it seems like this idea was thought up not by a business minded person (who in their right mind would try and cripple only their companies products for no reason!?) but by a complete and total idiot, in fact i would like that idiot to come and explain themselves, slashdot?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Technology is great sometimes, but everyone once in a while, it pays to stick to old mediums, such as film. If you shoot with a film camera, the only way they can destroy their picture is to pull the film out, and expose it to light. Sure, its as bad, but they have to catch you taking the picture first.
I shoot film as a way to take a step away from my computer, and they can't really screw with that too much. Sure, film is a dying art, but I do all the work myself, develop, print, etc.
Just cuz they have a patent doesn't mean they (or anyone else) will actually make it - or that if they make it anyone will buy it. This is just another thing to add to their portfolio.
The biggest problem that I see is that it is an abuse of the patent system. Big companies are patenting even lousy ideas simply so that their patent portfolios are bigger. Somehow, the USPTO should only patent good ideas.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
in TV shows that film psuedo reality type shows. Often times you'll see faces blured or brand names on t-shirts, etc. For whatever reason the people don't want their picture shown next to cousin Alex thats getting busted or whatever. Just give the folks something that tells the camera to blur instead of having to do it post production.
It's the balance between socities rights and an individuals rights.
robots.txt only works if the robot honors it.
There's also the analog hole.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
...Or for that matter, any cameras without this "feature".
And once the market demand goes down, people will just stop using them.
As simple as that.
Someone needs to make tshirts and ties that have the EURion constellation on them. Even though apparently they aren't that big a deal anymore. Still fascinating.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
With your film camera, the bodyguards stroll over, open the camera, take out the roll, presto!
With a wireless digital camera, too late, it's already been transmitted and is on its way to worldwide distribution, *especially* when you send a followup -urgent- signal and series of pictures showing said bodyguards on their way over.
Infuriate left and right
People who want to record your face won't be using these cameras, or probably using modded ones so they can record everything. Expect pedophiles to use these on the parks with children playing.
This "auto-censoring" technology will be probably sold to the common people, who then will have NO possible way of picturing the faces of say abusive police officers.
Worst of both worlds, heh?
What's to prevent this being used by police to block their images when they're beating or otherwise mistreating people?
Bah. There are thousands upon thousands of good police officers in the US. But one of them shoves a broomstick up somebody's ass, and now they're all bad guys.
no doubt a hack will appear within days after release and, I STILL have my trusty manual Pentax :C
This "techonology" could be used in places where you don't want some goof with a cellphone camera taking snaps of stuff, i.e.: my company's office, the ladies change room at my local gym/pool, government offices, etc. I know I'd love to have something that disables a cellphone camera in specific areas - right now I have to rely on the honesty of my guests in disclosing if their camera has imaging capabilities or not... (hint: I work with secured technologies).
The patent may be broad enough to cover the larger concept of obscuring/degrading/modifying digital data when captured via certain types of devices.
"Content's a bitch."
"Tinfoil hats cause interference"
Why are you sticking your head in the microwave?
moox. for a new generation.
I imagine that this would be a feature in only certain cameras. You seem to have too much faith in a not-yet-real technology.
On the bright side, HP will make tons of money in sales to MPs in Abu Graib.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
And even without these 'what if' scenarios, isn't there an expectation that, if you're in a public area, you're fair game for being photographed?
Sure, I guess. But uh, even though while I'm in public I must expect that I'm fair game for being farted on, I still don't like it. Just because you're "fair game" doesn't mean you have to enjoy it. I'm fair game for being shit on by a pigeon too, but if someone made an anti-pigeon-shitting device that allowed me not to get splattered by bird feces, I'd take it and run away gleefully laughing.
Just because you CAN take pictures of everything doesn't mean you should. Some of us want to be able to walk around outdoors without the concern of being in someone's photo gallery because they have a camera phone and too much time. I don't see why that's so bad.
you can take the road that takes you to the stars...
You know, police DID catch criminals before the advent of instant cameras and CCTV....
"anyone who doesn't want their photo taken at a particular time could hit a clicker"
I don't see explained the technology that the clicker is going to use.
is this going to work with IR or what?
Do you need to be close to the camera to hit the clicker??
Please, this is not going to work...
ajf
YOu could also wear infrared beacons near your face -- earrings, hats, neckaces. If the beacons are bright enough, your face should be blurred by having way too much infrared light near your face.
Of course, for those of us without much pigment in our skin, couldn't that make us tan? Think about it -- tan while standing in line at a bank (for those of us who still do that).
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Whoever thinks cops will use this technology to "turn off" the cameras when beating someone, should seriously stop hitting the bong. I mean come on. Police have policies. It's not like we live in Germany 1943 people. Lay off the conspiracy theories and move out of your parent(s) basement.
Cops beating someone up ARE criminals, and you can bet your booty they'd get a law on the books allowing law enforcement and other "officials" to have cameras which ignore the facefuzz flag while transmitting it themselves.
... fuzzbusters ... old memory cells coming back to life, creakliy ...
There's a pun in there somewhere about the fuzz using a fuzz flag
Infuriate left and right
It's called baghead. 100% GUARANTEED*!!.
*Doesn't cover situations of high wind. Avoid use near candles or fire. Patent pending.
In addition to which, audio is more easily recorded than video by such cameras and it is rare for a prison guard to be among prisoners without other guards. If all the guards covered their badges at the same time the proper move would be to simply fire them. This would be a step forward.
Seastead this.
This is the same old "camel's nose under the tent" like Intel putting DRM in silicon on their CPUs: We're doing it so you can protect the privacy of your documents!
Don't believe this BS- Geeeeee, I wonder how the camera knows where you are all the time? Maybe it does it with a postioning system attached to your body broadcast to a central server? Boy, thanks for protecting my privacy, guys!
How perfectly brainwashed are you to regard the blurring as the problem, not the abundance of cameras violating privacy?
Tinfoil hats just won't cut it anymore, we need lead foil hats now!
FRA: STFU GTFO
Every technology that gets invented has its ways of being used and misused. So we shouldnt limit the possibility of a technology for being used for many other applications, just cuz its used to mistreat people. We can similary say, guns and radio can be used by terrorists, but does that mean they're not useful, or the more subtle, encryption techniques. So we should really rethink how we debate matters!
Imagine if Celebrities could blur their pictures so that the damn paparrazi(sp?) eventually find it useless to hound them. Or prevent people from stalking you.
"My enemies hate me. My allies hate me. I hate myself."
are you aware of the fact that patents expire?
I think I saw this in a (fictional) book once... A high-profile mobster has been nabbed and he's about to be marched out of the police station and mobbed by reporters. So he gets a sharpie and writes "FUCK YOU" on his forehead, just before going in front of all the live TV cameras.
This submission is what happens when someone accidentally wears their tin foil hat inside-out.
paintball
"isn't there an expectation that, if you're in a public area, you're fair game for being photographed?"
Must file this one away for next time the inevitable "CCTV is evil" posts come out when someone mentions them in connection with crime detection...
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
It's a natural consequence. I really like that I can encrypt my e-mail. It kinda sucks that organized crime (or the kneejerk options terrorists) can use that same technique to hide from justice.
I'd like it if I could travel without giving my name to the airlines. At the very least, deducing the any number of airline hi-jackings would be difficult.
I'd love it if I didn't have to show id in order to enter into my building. However, it would be much easier to rob.
I'd love it if I didn't have to put plates on my car, but that would making getting away with any number of crimes much easier(child abductions, and bank robberies come to mind).
I like that I don't have to show my passport during intrastate travel in the US, but if we had more checkpoints where people had to show identification, we'd probably catch more petty criminals, and keep people from escaping justice.
It would just as worrisome that criminals can get away with beating someone senseless by blurring their picture (in this case the obvious solution is to not equip security cameras with such features). Just because the criminals in his example happen to be police officers shows his inherient distrust of police officers (there are good cops and bad cops, just like most other professions, pardon the pun).
Every police officer I've ever met or dealt with has been cordial, professional, and seemingly a decent human being. Then again, I'm not a young black or latino living in L.A. I understand they have a different experience the I do with police.
Anything that provides anonymity to anyone inheriently has risks. At least in this case it sure sounds fair (everyone can use it, as opposed to something only to be issued to police officers). It provides a way for someone to do something that without fear of retribution (which sometimes is good, and sometimes is bad: whistle blowers good! Criminals bad!). So yes, sometimes the most obvious is the bad stuff. Personally, I've never had a problem with someone coming up and taking my picture on a public street. I'm not that interesting that someone feels compelled to take my picture.
Kirby
"What's to prevent this being used by police to block their images when they're beating or otherwise mistreating people?" Why does every other news post have to scream goverment conspiracy? Almost every new technological advance raises another privacy issue, but I seriously doubt that police officers are wringing thier hands thinking about how this technology will help them beat people.
And so is my Pentax K-1000! And my Voightlander! And my Canon F-1! And my Canon AE-1P! Not to forget my Keystone 16mm wind up movie camera...
Remote instruct my ass.....
Legally, and from the point of view of most people, this is true, but there are cultures in which people object strongly to being photographed, whether in public or private. I believe that some Muslims object to photographs of people because they consider it to lead to idolatry, though clearly not all Muslims take this position, so I'm not sure how widespread it is.
In some cultures people object to being photographed because they believe that the photo makes them vulnerable to witchcraft. There are people who take this very seriously. A Saulteau (Canadian Indian) friend of mine was photographed without her knowledge by some people she met while travelling, who subsequently sent her copies. She was very upset and ritually burned them.
Normally on Slashdot, people are worried about not enough privacy. Then it seems the same people are complaining aboout too much privacy. I don't get it.
VKh
I call it: Being Ugly (R)
Don't buy HP cameras.
Or at least new ones.
It isn't like there is a shortage of old cameras out there.
I'm not sure why HP has been pushing this for over a year, it is goddamn retarded. The only thing I can think of is that HP is hoping to see privacy legislation passed. Still, stupid.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
At least my HP 215 has done this since the day I got it. In fact it mostly blurs everything, but specificaly including faces.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Infrared just makes you hot. Ultraviolet makes you tan (and gives you cancer).
A face mask.
Now I can go in a mall, take a picture of a bunch of people. The people with the heads blurred are probaby very tech-savvy people, so I can rob their HP blurring device, and probably score an ipod and other very nice gadgets!
Hell, vampires have been able to do that for ages! That patent will never make it through its first trial.
If the police are beating you, then you probably deserve it anyway. If you would take a shower, groom your hair and beard, go to work, and pay your taxes, the police would have no reason to bother with you.
The technology only blurs the face!
20 years is a long time in the business world, my friend. I'm not saying that HP definitively obtained this patent as a defensive measure, but I do think it's a possibility. Also, the same patent that is a defensive measure today could be an offensive measure tomorrow, and vice-versa.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Pointing out that it can be used by dirty cops is not anti law-enforcement. It's pro law enforcement; cops who beat people up are breaking the law. We need to be able to bring the few cops who are also criminals to justice so that when criminals go to trial, we know the cop won't be brought into question.
Also, criminals are not likely to use it to escape detection, for two reasons: 1) most criminals either think they won't be caught or don't care about being caught, and 2) either no security camera manufacturer would be stupid enough to make their cameras respect this or, if it's made mandatory, only cops will have access to the transmitter.
Who are the silly people who keep thinking they can come up with patchwork solutions to keep information from being copied? I keep attending computer conferences where people develop fancy watermarking schemes etc to keep bitstreams from being copied.
They try it with audio (so you can't steal from the RIAA), they try it with video (so you can't steal from the MPAA), they try it with paper documents, and obviously think they might as well try it with photographs too. It's just not going to work! If you can perceive it, you can duplicate it. Too bad, adapt to the new century, move on.
I just use that license plate spray they've been advertising.
Of course, it does make my face a bit stiff.
Now, what if, upon closer examination of the patent, we learn that it's for a bubble wrap bag to be worn by those opting out?
So did they list 'groucho glasses' with the fake nose as prior art? What about wax lips?
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Ok great. Let's assume this tech. is implemented.
Now picture this: police looking for criminals specifically tell cameras to take pictures of people who wear the blurring device, since they "have a much higher chance of being the criminal we're looking for."
It's a two-way street; once you're identified, for whatever reason, you can be filtered for either good or bad reasons.
-- isn't there an expectation that, if you're in a public area, you're fair game for being photographed?
Why should there be?
The assumption here is that I am giving away all my rights to privacy in terms of being photographed and video-taped simply because I choose to leave the confines of my house.
Given that almost anyone now has the ability to easily publish a photo of me to a large audience (think of how easy it would be to reach 10,000 people via Slashdot) don't we need to reconsider our options in this regard?
I think that the assumption should be that people don't want their lives photographed or shot to video and that we do have an expectation of privacy in public
2: How long before a jammer to the blur signal broadcaster is available on eBay?
3: Take off your aluminum foil hat and wrap it around your camera.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It's more than that. I've heard that saying for years. I don't know it's origin however
The short version is that some primitive cultures, after seeing the "magical" images created by photography, believe(d) that the camera was stealing their soul as part of the making of the image.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Police, who protect the people by putting their own lives on the line, are the ones we should be concerned about. Not the gangbangers, murderers, rapists, and thieves who could potentially use this to mask their presence when committing a crime.
Your statement show's how much of psychological bias you have towards finding the grand conspiracy rather than thinking clearly about a problem. I can't blame you. If all I watched was network television while I ate my happy meal I sure as hell would think 1) All blacks are animals. 2) Cops are evil and hellbent on beating you with a baton 3) The next antichrist will be a corporation. 4) Pillows will replace guns as a means to subdue violent citizens.
Go ahead jump on the bandwagon. But think about this first:
How the hell could HP get every other manufacturer to use this technology.
What about film cameras from last year or twenty years ago. They'll still work.
A law would have to be passed in order to enforce the compliance with this device. Security cameras would more than likely be exempt.
Use your fucking brain before porting senseless drivel.
Nothing interesting here, move along
Can it be used to turn of face recognition cameras?
So THAT'S how Samara did it.
Does mean that paper money will soon contain the Blur-Me broadcaster, to further deter counterfeits?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Normal films (&CCDs) are not very sensitive to IR. If they were, photographs would not look like what the photographer saw.
I have never really liked having my picture taken. Even now sometimes i don't like folks just snapping away in my direction.
If the technology works, then good for them. My privacy is more important to me than your's or your fun.
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
All the more reason to keep my Canon A-1 circa 1970-something in good working order. The theoretical implications of this technology are disturbing, but I wonder about the actual implementation and the practicality of it. Still, a good, mechanical, film backup camera is a good thing to have for multiple reasons. Speaking as someone who has taken pictures of cops beating up people and of landscapes and what not, and who likes the geekness of the film processing and photo developing chemical and physical technologies.
The problem with what's described is that you must always carry the "clicker" and be vigilant to use it every time someone pulls out a camera.
The next-generation system will use pattern recoginition to automatically determine which faces to blur. All you need is a simple pattern on your face for the camera to recogonize & you never have to worry about accidental photos again.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Your face isn't private when it appears in public. When it appears in private, the owner of the private place might have the right to control its distribution beyond the private place. If only lawyers and Congressmembers were as ambitious in exploring those rights as are HP's engineers.
--
make install -not war
it's called an umbrella
Another what-if is currently being explored on Cartoon Networks Ghost in the Shell:Stand-Alone Complex. Instead of just blur how about a logo.
This just seems to me like a waste of time product. I am sure that there will be mechanisms in place to unblur the image for law enforcement purposes. Gimme a break.
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
I'm getting terribly confused about appropriate slashdot dogma. First we're terrified about having our pictures taken; now we're upset that we can't take other people's pictures. Which is it?
./ editors really intent on being paranoid alarmists regardless of the actual situation?
Honestly, this is very silly. Are the
Do you really think that it's a good thing for anyone to be able to take a picture of you, anytime, with, or without, your permission?
What do you do, when e.g. that 10 year old picture of you holding a smoking flower vase, or hand-rolled cigarette shows up in court, durring a custody fight?
I've, personally, destroyed more than one roll of film, in the past, because I didn't want the pictures, of myself, to be developed and distributed.
re: cops & cameras -- what's to keep one cop from standing in the way of the camera, blocking it's view, as his partner uses mace/club/tazer/&c. excessivly on a suspected suspicious character? that was a silly objection to this technology.
besides, it's vaporware, unless every one trades their old cameras in for new ones, and all manufacturers stick to the standard (never happen).
nikon 50
Can you patent something that I've seen in an Anime?
Bumming Sigs since 1952
US Army, Marines, and British Army approuved cameras? Sure would be great to have only those types of camera's to show up in iraqi prisons...
Why are we wasting time with this inane tech, when we should be making a priority for ringing cellphones to be suppressed to vibrate indoors? All phones should receive signals that force them to vibrate, instead of audibly ring. A transmitter of those signals should cost $100, with a 10m radius. Then we can install them in movie theaters, buses/trains, and even outdoor audience spaces. To make it easier on the phonecarrier, switching to vibrate should be signalled by vibration and a message notifying the state change. These damn things should all ship in default "vibrate" anyway. I'm tired of throwing obnoxious ringers out of movie theaters.
--
make install -not war
in my country it's illegal to publish any persons photo without his/her consent.
this becomes void when you are a celebrity doing non private maters or if you are in the picture with more then 4 other people.
this is why i avoid people when I'm out taking pictures. if i take a picture i want to be abel to use it
Is there something wrong with having digital cameras and cameraphones being required to make some sort of confirmation noise when they take a picture? Then they are no more or less discreet than film cameras (shutter/film advancement noises).
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
They've got their HP decoder rings on, so no wonder they don't show up.
We had a case in Montreal Canada a few years ago that established a precedent...You DO NOT have the "right" to take my picture ! There is no fair game on MY face and or identity. The commercial photographer was in various market areas to take snap shots to use in his Commercial publications, and was sued by a few people who did not wish to be photographed/used in his publications. He declared his rights, and they sued him to protect theirs. In Canada (Quebec at least, but I think the feds got on it too) you don't have any right to take a pictures of me without my consent and approval of use. SANITY !
I want to make the camera replace my face with an amusing animated logo like The Laughing Man did on the Ghost In The Shell series. That's the next step. Besides, my face can scare small children, although that's not such a bad thing if you think about it.
--- Ban humanity.
There is prior art for this patent and there are allready these cameras on the market with this great feature: If you buy any cheapo-disposable camera in a newsagent shop, you can hardly recognize any face taken by it...
If this ever happens, maybe the public will realize how desperate celebrities are.
Wouldn't you question a person running from the paparazzi and talking about how much of a nuisance they are when they could just blur their own faces?
combine two of americas' grand passions into one, and make it a) illegal for cops not to be on film, and b) illegal for so-called 'media companies' not to participate in/carry these public cop feeds as part of their license of the spectrum
oh wait, thats already happened, never mind. its not really a problem. amen.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Then we wouldn't have footage of what is obviously NOT a Boeing 757 flying into the Pentagon and we'd probably all believe the FBI's ridiculous lie...
n ta gon.php
http://www.freedomunderground.org/memoryhole/pe
Why is the patent being ignored in this discussion? After taking a brief look at the patent, it seems like HP hasn't patented an implementation of the idea but instead has patented the very idea of blocking a photo itself. That means if someone aactually invents an ingenious camera blocking/face blurring device in the next 20 years, he will have to pay HP. Now come on, many of us have thought about blocking a photo or jamming a camera. Patent laws of all the countries I know of state that patents are for innovative ideas only and a patent should not be granted for something that is common sense.
I was going to team up with a couple of plastic surgeons and surgically blur faces, this sounds more profitable.
Hooray HP!
No, the spirit of the worry is right on target. The fear is that ever more concentrated power and smarter technology to enforce it will lead to massive injustice. He's right and there's plenty of evidence that justice can be bought off by the rich and powerful. He does not take it far enough, however, because it's not the toy that's important, it's the power.
We can see the pre tech tendency in several prominent cases. Will Kenedy Smith has routinely gotten away with rape because of who he is and OJ got away with murder thanks to his celebrity and money.
It would not surprise me at all if this technology were purchased and used by many. Take casino owners, as an example. Casinos have cameras EVERYWHERE and those who run them can dole out special badges as a perk.
Here's the rub: the badge will most likely uniquely identify the user! You can imagine that people with cameras everywhere will keep records of who is where and who owns what badge. Your privacy will be used as another enticement to give away your privacy. Those who own the system will be able to turn on and off any piece of it they chose and it all leads to further power for the owners.
The only antidote is to carry your own cameras. The only way to balance the power is to show any interests the "official" camera system owner may have and to have impartial, third party witnesses with their own vids of any given situation. Collectively, people can maintain their freedom. Individually, they are easy to enslave.
Big Brother left the building. In fact, he was never here.
He's in all of us. The collective oligarchy is just a way of thinking. If you don't recognize it, you can't fight it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What's to prevent this being used by police to block their images when they're beating or otherwise mistreating people?
Reminds me of the scramble suits worn by narcotics agents in Phillip K. Dick's excellent A Scanner Darkly?
Hmmmmm. . .
[Soon to be a major motion picture too!]
"I worked hard for it. I deserve it. And I have it," Campbell said. "It's all mine."
What's with questioning police misusing it. Why not question terrorists instead of those risking their lives protecting us?
Infrared tan? Someone has confused IR and UV.
isn't there an expectation that, if you're in a public area, you're fair game for being photographed?
I don't know where you live, but I recall a case discussed on a local radio show about a man who was arrested for using his camera phone to take a picture of someone's ass while he was standing in line at a fast food restaurant.
If reasonable expectation was a valid argument, I think he wouldn't have been charged with a crime. And for the sake of accuracy, the state is Texas and the county was either Dallas or Tarrant county.
Anyone have any feedback on this?
Later, the blur-this application was inserted into other tools, after which any recognizable pattern could be altered whenever it was copied, or transmitted, or stored digitally.
....
Meanwhile, printing operations turned out large volumes of paper copies of the misinformation, so that within a decade, the originals and few remaining accurate copies of the targets were lost in the vast volume of altered copies.
It was not necessary to fool all of the people, all of the time. Fooling 50.01 percent of the few who still were willing to vote, for the few days leading up to the election, sufficed.
Input target:
1) U.S. Constitution, 14th Amendment
Fuji film just became a circumvention device!!!
Surely if Microsoft was doing this people would say the COMPLETE oposite. I mean like come ON!!
Hansel
handweaversstudio@msn.com
Who wants a CD that can't be copied or played in a car?
Who wants a computer will only continue to give you access to your data if you keep paying a monthly subscription fee (and only if you use approved applications and operating systems)?
Who is happy with DVD players that will not play legally purchased discs from other parts of the world and will not allow the owner to skip advertisements?
This is not something being developed in response to consumer demand. It sounds like something that might be included in some future "standard" mandated by the congress (cough cough Fritz Hollings cough cough) for consumer electronic devices. Maybe someday you won't be able to use a phone/PDA/camera/whatever unless it includes DRM technology, a nationally registered ID number, a biometric login to limit use to approved users, and perhaps a GPS transmitter trackable by the government. "Legacy" devices would be around for a while, but at some point they would no longer work with the phone system. Of course, tampering with any of these functions would constitute a felony under some "Digital Millenium National Security Patriot Anti-Terrorism Motherhood and Apple Pie Act".
(OK, so I'm stretching it, but many of these things are possible, and all of them will be possible soon).
when did hiding ones face become a rights issue? I thought it was the forced recording of your actions that creates problems in the realm of rights.
The bigger issue I see is the people behind the cameras asking, "Why did he choose to blur his face; what is he hiding?".
I see a benefit in this, in that the camera blurs everyones face, except those who have a chip saying I want to be recorded. Think Reality Shows, live sets, news shows, etc...
If photos of me started coming out with my face all distorted like in "The Ring" I'd probably drop dead right there. :-)
And BTW, TFA says that HP has no plans to sell this.
Unless aformentioned camera's are forced upon photographers by law or something- Papparazzi will just avoid buying and using camera's with this technology. The problem is that it is reliant on the person taking the picture to have the magic circuit inside. And lets face it if you are going to be taking pictures of celbrities baring all - or whatever - you aint gonna pick a camera thats not going to do its job properly.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Any politician who supports installing this technology will be immediately labelled as "Secretive" and "Likely To Be Supporting A Conspiracy".
In America, probably you're right.
But there are other governments in the world.
I sure bet China wouldn't have minded if they had had some technology that could have allowed them to suddenly disable all the cameras in the general vicinity of Tiannamen Square, Bejing on June 4, 1989. Even if this had only effected the locally made cameras in the hands of local citizens, or even just a proportion of them, that sure might have been nice for certain people.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I hereby nominate (not that it's gonna work) mr. Schroeder for permenant moderator and all-around fact-checker.
Especially calling bullshit on a lot of liberal noise. I'm generally liberal myself, but I prefer to be a factually CORRECT liberal rather than a reactionary one.
The legislators have lost the plot altogether methinks. Here in Australia there are cases of guys getting charged and convicted of offenses involving offensive behaviour because they've taken snapshots of topless women on public topless beaches.
Now while it's not the nicest thing to do, and the guys involved are sad, pathetic losers, these girls are showing off their breasts in public. They don't have a right to privacy in a public place and if they don't want people taking photos they should cover up if they don't want people seeing or recording what they've seen with a camera. Instead there's crap all over the news about the public nuisance phone cameras and the like are becoming.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Probably some cameras would zoom-in on people requesting anonymity!
I've seen many posts asking who would buy such a camera. IMHO, that's not the right question. Rather, who would buy the remote to activate the blur? HP doesn't even have to produce and sell a camera with this feature. They just have to say they're going to, and then offer the remote to blur the pictures for $19.99. I might not buy this kind of camera, but my neighbor might. And I don't want my neighbor snapping headshots of me to paste to his blow-up doll, so I'm sure as hell going to buy a camera-jammer so that doesn't happen. It doesn't matter that it won't work; it doesn't matter that the camera might not even exist. All that matters is 1) it might exist; 2) your neighbor might have one; and 3) this little gadget will keep you safe for only $19.99.
The sky is not falling, Chicken Little.
While this is being promoted as a privacy measure, does anyone else see the serious rights issues here?
No, I'm stupid. Howabout you tell me?
What's to prevent this being used by police to block their images when they're beating or otherwise mistreating people?
Ah. Yes. This is the old "What if the bad guy could use it against us!" Silly me, I should have guessed.
Every technology can be used equally by anyone with any motive. The minivan is great for soccer moms, but what if the MAN uses them to transport innocent victims of the justice system or *GASP* spy on people?!?
Yes, the patent covers a technology which couldn't possibly work right now except under some exceptionally limited circumstances. Think of taking a picture of a crowd. What technology could possibly pick the one person out of the crowd that has this device and blank out only their face without user intervention and fits in a large camera, nevermind a cellphone? None. This is a useless IP grab.
But let's assume it's possible. Well, then either you use cameras that don't have this feature, you disable the feature on cameras you use, and otherwise you shouldn't care because it's not your *$#!@ camera or picture.
Worried about this technology being mandated by congress? It's unlikely given that anything done in public is public. They'd have to take away a ton of civil rights before they even got close to being able to prevent public pictures in public places.
No, Chicken little, the sky is not falling. It's not even overcast. There is little in this topic that's worth discussing to any degree as any intelligent person can work through all the scenarios and satisfy themselves of the limited utility of this patent.
-Adam
While I would like to not be photographed that means that anyone can avoid identification by blurring their face in a pic Sit back and think about how little your comment contributed to the discussion. There is a reason that your posts are modded '-1' on default. if you aren't deliberately trolling, that should give you something to think about.
Slashdotters: You are all a bunch of faggots.
Do you hear me, you repulsive faggots? NO DIGG.
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes ...
This technique was used by the title character of the (long since) cancelled "Punisher 2099" comic. IIRC, instead of blurring his face he had it rigged so that the "Public Eye" cameras only saw a modernized Punisher skull logo.
Yes, I know it was only a comic book. But this is Slashdot, the wonderful world where the consensus is that EVERY comic book invention has a practical real-world application.
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
As for me, I just think they're more interested in patenting something (whatever that is) than in privacy. There is a huge trend in security and privacy matters, whereas it looks to me as though we're losing privacy in the process at the speed of light. Just take DRM, for instance: it's the exact opposite of privacy. It just protects a big industry that doesn't even need protection, and it lets the "little people" at their mercy, without any privacy left.
Want to know something interesting? I didn't read your post.
Slashdotters: You are all a bunch of faggots.
Do you hear me, you repulsive faggots? NO DIGG.
1. Come up with new technology
2. Patent new Technology
3. Convince other goverment to make technology required on all competitors products
4. Profit
No missing steps here
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
So, how does this work on a film-based camera? Is the device really big and you hold it up in front of your face or what?
This is just nonsense.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
For those of you who can't be bothered to think about actual uses before complaining about the thing, actual uses do exist. Probably the best example is for reporters taking pictures and not having to deal with people who get caught in the picture and don't want to be. It would be a mutual relationship that helps both parties avoid trouble.
You gotta find first gear in your giant robot car
In Soviet Russia,
Camera blurs You!!!
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
One of the few places where "They shouldn't be filming me in public" and "I should be able to film anyone else in public" aren't seen as logically inconsistent.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
>What's to prevent this being used by police to block their images when they're beating or otherwise mistreating people? Having a small film camera backup.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Please visit our gift shop!
Cameras are electronically disabled in the park.
Please visit our gift shop!
Golden Gate Bridge color photos are now only $3.99!
Please visit our gift shop!
[Scene: Planet Express: Lounge. A show called Cop Department is on TV.]
Cop Department Announcer [voice-over; on TV]: Cop Department is real. The people you see are not actors. Most of them aren't even people.
[Fry, Bender and Leela sit slumped on the couch. The coffee table is filled with dishes, uneaten burgers and boxes of Chinese food. On the TV is a dazed centipede-like alien with a blurred face.]
Alien [on TV]: C'mon man, I didn't fire off no laser.
Smitty [on TV]: Then why is there a smoking hole in your ceiling sir?
[The camera points to the ceiling.]
Alien [on TV]: What? Crazy upstairs lady must've been shooting down.
URL [on TV]: Sir, you're on the top floor of this particular domicile.
[snip!]
Alien [on TV]: OK. OK, I'm co-operating.
Smitty [on TV]: That's it, now put up your hands.
[The alien puts it's 20 hands in the air and URL moves towards him, cuffs at the ready.]
URL [on TV]: Nice and slow. Aww yeah!
Smitty [on TV]: And while you're at it, unblur your face.
Alien [on TV]: Aw man.
[He unblurs his face. It wasn't a TV effect!]
--Futurama, "The Lesser of Two Evils"
Exocet Industries - Taking over the world, one computer at a
What makes you think you'll have a choice?
If this technology works, how long until there's a law passed that, "due to the threat of terrorism," all digital cameras sold or imported into the US must have this "feature." All "sensitive" sites will be equiped with jammers. As will all law enforcement officers, to prevent them from being targeted by terrorists.
Needless to say it will be illegal for the hoi poi to have or use this technology. With suitable exceptions for major contributors to the republican party - I mean officers of major, "critical" public companies.
The way this paints a big bullseye on every potential target ("Hey, Sven, let's drive around town and take pictures of everything and see what's blurry!") will be completely ignored. 'Cause, you know, those foreigners are too stupid to think of it.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
This devices requires that a person have an electronic beacon, if you will, near them at all times to prevent themselves from being photographed, right?
If so, then nude beaches would not be immune and we can still enjoy our favorite nude celebrities courtesy of the paparazzi!
"possibly"? POSSIBLY government mandates??? That's the only way this would work. Since it only works if the camera itself has such a circuit (and even then only on digital cameras,) it would be easy to circumvent. Just don't use a camera that has it! (Or use a film camera.)
What, is Britain now going to outlaw all film cameras? Make all cameras made without this technology illegal? It would be one hell of a coup for HP, since every British citizen would have to replace every single camera in the country with a new HP (or HP licensed) digital camera. There goes all those antique camera collections! (You didn't want to keep that old 'Brownie' did you?) The film industry would be instantly dead. (Film as in 35mm, not as in motion pictures.)
It's not going to be a problem. Don't worry about it. Chill.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
You forgot: 6. Profit! Hey, I'm getting the hang of this.
I use a Bessa-R, love that thing. It's a rangefinder and fully manual. I can shoot that thing at night with no flash, in low light, and no shutter lag that you usually get with digi cameras. It's compact but agile.
That and buying good film on e-bay rocks. No digital for me right now, no thanks.
My sig left me for a younger user id.
about their badass HP cameras...
Firefox &
It's not so much that this will be implemented camera-side. It won't. EVER
But this patent would give HP the opportunity to sue anyone utilizing face-obscuring techniques to prevent their photograph from being captured. This would put Michael Jackson squarely in the crosshairs of HP's legal patent defense team for infringing on their patent.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
What's to stop WTO protestors from covering their face while committing acts of vandalism and assault against bystanders and officers?
In the United Kingdom you do *not* own the copyright of your face if you're in a public place (which is why papparazzi are allowed to sell the photos they take for money). This has been tested in court.
More recently there have been rules set out to discourage photographers from stalking famous people, but the basic law still stands.
I do not represent myself.
A relevant quote from Free Culture (original text available available here):
Personally I don't mind it.
I'm sure it will upset the creepy people in this world... the ones who stalk celebreties, stalk children, etc. etc.
But for most people, what are the real implications of this?
No more voyeger cam's showing people's faces? Oh no!
No more pictures of celebreties without their makeup when they go to the store? Oh no!
IMHO I'd go for something a bit more like this:
Security camera's are exempt from respecting such technology (since facial recognition is important for things like robbery).
For personal, or commercial use, it's fair.
If you really need a picture of someone's face... ask.
Should deter some of the more pathetic individuals in our society.
It's just an other case when companies creating technology intrude into the field of society.
The patent office should have a mandate to evaluate and flag all technologies, submitted for patent that has obvious, immediate impact on society.
They should notify legislative, constitutional, privacy, etc. arms of the government to look into the matter, - and preper legislation if needed.
Flagged technologies should have "temporary patents", which should be cleared first with legislation.
This way technology companies would not have the power to introduce technologies without the proper control of society.
Have you tried to find a 5.25" floppy lately?
Give it time.
I wonder how long it will take Nokia to make a 35mm cell-phone, too.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
.../. users agree to boycott buildings equipped with "light switch".
Cut to picture of big toe.
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
Why are people more concerned with cop beatings, which are relatively rare, than criminals using this technology??? Stop being sissys and address the real problem with this technology - people committing crimes using this to block their identity.
Dupe! This was discussed last summer.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
and while your at it, to share the photos with others, just recreate it somehow on an abacus connected to all other abacii around the world via really tight strings...
just because other methods exist, does not mean we should stop discussing the impact of liberties of new methods.
My life is performance art - all of it. And I retain all the rights therin. Any republication requires obtaining a license, which is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License...oops.
nevermind, in general.
Has anybody actually thought about how this would really work? As a researcher and developer of face detection and face recognition technology, I have seen the top of the line algorithms and programs developed by some of the top companies in this field, and this sounds a little optimistic. The system would require that your camera had software on it that could first detect all of the human faces in the image and then identify the correct person's face to blur. Although the top algorithms can do very impressive things in very specific environments, they do not perform as well as movies and news stories would have us think.
Usually the cops that are doing the beatings will also take the cameras for "evidence".
On the flip side, maybe we could get the government surveillance cameras to include the tech also.
...on, nevermind...
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
It's about the little remote device that triggers the camera not to take the picture! Obviously the device will use DCMA protected encrypted signals so only HP will be able to sell these devices, and privacy freaks will buy these devices from HP to prevent their faces from showing up on any camera. Of course, security cameras will not use the feature, but if they put this feature into cameras, even if nobody uses the feature, the paranoid will still buy the devices which block their images.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Not that I plan on slighting you in particular with this
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
a) When in a public place, you cannot have any expectation of privacy. If you think this device will keep you from being recognized, I have some swamp land for sale in Florida you may be interested in.
b) How does the camera know which part is the face? What if it just blurs my hands or feet? If I believe this thing really works, perhaps I should buy some more Florida swamp land.
c) I wouldn't worry about police trying to hide their faces, as they rarely mass up an plow into crowds that often. Besides, they would wear riot masks if needed, which are much more effective. More often, it is the criminal or the terrorist who would want to have their face blurred.
d) If I were a security screener in an airport, and someones picture came back blurred, I would be over-zealous to check that person out. How does that help a persons privacy?
e) Perhaps it is a CIA thing to keep the spies from being recognized.
end of thoughts
What happens if someone is taking your photograph with an "ordinary" camera -- i.e., one that does not feature this technology? Don't think this would be impossible. Even if every camera manufacturer was making image sensors with the "no photos of me" functionality integrated right in, homebrew image sensors aren't exactly hard to make -- just very carefully split open a CMOS RAM chip, and add a lens.
..... two rather unreliable assumptions. Unfortunately, there really are people out there who will be taken in by the marketing.
It's nothing more than a variant on the "remote car stopping device" that gets touted every few years, which requires every car to have a receiver and nobody except the proper authorities to have any idea how to generate the stop signal
If I don't want to be photographed, I simply cover my face with my hands, or another object. This is IMO, not much different than having Americans invest millions upon millions to create a pen that can write in space when all you really need is a fucking pencil! That's what it all boils down to.
Now I just need a deep-frozen lifetime supply of films and development chemicals...
Now, mod me down freely. My karma can't get any worse...
I can see this technology being good for celebrities, who, it could be argued, deserve some defence from paparazzi. It is the image that needs to be obscured, though - not the identity. Obviously the "blurrer" is communicating with the camera - why not have it provide an ID showing who is in the picture, but not showing their image? That solves the paparazzi problem, but doesn't let bad guys get away with anything.
anyone else of the comic book Punisher 2099?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
It's either "HELP, Big Brother is installing cameras on the light poles and tracking my every move! I DEMAND PRIVACY!" or "isn't there an expectation that, if you're in a public area, you're fair game for being photographed?"
Holding the camera in such a way as to look up/down a womans dress/skirt is another thing altogether.
This isn't going to be a problem for police. With a couple of notable exceptions *cough*Rodney*cough*King*cough*, they're already well skilled in hiding their own wrongdoing.
Why, the New South Wales Police (Sydney, Australia) Senior Constable with badge number 66312 simply left the room and removed his official badge and other identifying stuff before he started beating up on me in the old North Sydney Police Station. There were lots of other police in the room at the time, but none of them saw a thing. (Good thing I'd already committed the number to memory huh!)
No, cops won't need to worry about electronic gadgets to blur faces - they'll just turn the other, er, cheek like they've been doing for years!
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
We put one of this scrambler on evey member of a swat team and a sensor on each gun, if there is a "blur" the gun won't fire.
Give order to team "enter the room from 3directions, fire with full automatic with that miniguns you have", 5min and an awful damage later all swat member walk out a little dusty and all bad guys are litrally in peaces....
Jammers. Or a Faraday's cage.
"As you can see, Your Honor, this camera does respond to the blur flag as the law mandates, so obviously the police must not have used it."
What I'm worried about is that such "do not photograph" transmitters will be installed everywhere, and the law will require that cameras will obey them. That will be the end of amateur photography.
It's frustrating. With exploding technology, we could have exploding possibilities. Instead every act of creation is slowly becoming a risk of copyright, patent or trademark violation and resulting lawsuit for the creator. Instead of using technology to empower people, we are using it to try to impose limitations. That is a sign of a sick, perhaps fatally ill, culture.
It would be a pity if the Age of Information slowly faded into a second Dark Age. But it is starting to seem more and more inevitable. Goodbye, printing press - you brought with you knowledge and freedom, but in the end you were no match for greed.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
What's to prevent this being used by police to block their images when they're beating or otherwise mistreating people?
What is to prevent me from using this while I assault the holy crap out of a cop? Any technology can be abused. You are not really asking a question, so what is the point of your anti-technology rhetoric?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
so HP have been granted a patent for this.. That, in itself, means nothing at all. For the issues raised in the article to become issues in the first place, people will have to buy the products in question.
Given that I will not buy an iPod because of intrusive technological restrictions deliberately introduced by the manufacturer, how likely am I to go an buy one of these?
Clipper chips anyone? Palladium (sorry, NGSCB or whatever it's called this week..)? No 2 ways about it, this crap is doomed.
While underestimating the intelligence of the american public is usually not a serious barrier to getting rich, I don't think people are likely to fall for this.
Remember - lower functionality and higher price = low sales. Just ask any LCD TV manufacturer..
.. a press photographer would never buy a camera that could blur someones face out. What a completely stupid invention. Unless ofcourse the government force its use.
Who would buy a product like this? Are we going to wear little radio transmitters that friendly devices pick-up and decide that we need our privacy? Yeah, right. Don't worry, Patriot Act III will over-rule any privacy fantisies that you may have had anyway...comrade.
So, cops beating an "innocent" person was the first example you came up with? Not "thieves breaking into ATM machine"? Or "bank robbers"?
Tells me a lot about you.
Who wants a camera which enables anyone to remotely cripple it.
The same people who want DRM capable computers, CSS and Macrovision encoded DVDs, copy protection schemes that require you to have a $%#$%@#$ game CD in your cd-rom drive when you play it, and closed source software.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I'm not so worried about this product or this patent, for reasons others have already discussed (although I think "use noncompliant cameras" is a more effective deterrent than "expect government to protect our rights"; that's just me, though). What I'm more curious about are expansions on this technology.
I mean... we're not talking high-level solutions here. It's camera that sends out a ping, coupled with devices that can respond with a pong. If a pong's detected, make the area surrounding the pong blurry at a size adjusted for distance. Hardly needs facial recognition software and artistic blur-me algorithms.
What about the Slashdot upgrade to this product? If a pong's detected, edit in the text "Anonymous Coward" in the place the face should be?
What about the Zelig upgrade? If a ping is detected, edit a bitmap of my face into the photograph. Yes, I really was schmoozing with drunken celebrities.
But more seriously, what about those pings that include camera serial numbers, which can be registered to individuals or agencies? If it's a law enforcement camera, blur me; else if it's a paparrazi camera, enhance me; else if it's a priest's camera, blur my son.
There's the real threat. Image blurring is a distraction; lawsuits pay better. I just don't like the idea of pinging products (I mean, sure, my cell phone will tell you I'm calling you; my camera will also tell you I'm photographing someone near you? Time to disable a chip or two).
I don't mind so much someone identifying me on film in a public place. I mind those people with proper scanners detecting whenever I use a product. You know who will love this idea? Those people who prohibit cameras and video devices in concerts. It'll be another RIAA-style "protect the artists!" campaign. And that's scary, because money motivates government more than civil rights ideals, usually.
Much Love,
Dylan Thomas
What he wants is more important that what I want. What he wants is also more important that what you want.
Do they make one that unblurs you?
Okay, it technically only applies to mirrors I think, but maybe not. Photographs steal your soul and vampires don't have souls, so technically they couldn't be photographed.
"Have you tried to find a 5.25" floppy lately?"
I know I've got one lying around my paperless office somewhere. Maybe buried under one of my e-books.
"Especially calling bullshit on a lot of liberal noise. I'm generally liberal myself, ..."
No, you're a co-opted, self-hating liberal.
Let me guess - you go around reflexively apologizing for the things you believe. You people make me sick.
About 10 years ago we came across some very high powered IR LEDS.
When we did some experimenting It was found almost all CCTV cameras would just white out around the area of the LED's , but in person there was nothing visible. Most CCD and CMOS sensors used in digital cameras, will saturate with the IR sources.
Useful when wanting not show up on a security camera.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Is face-blurring any more troubling than other image manipulation tools? I know there's a difference between changing an image and suppressing the acquisition of one, but how important is that difference? As image editing technology improves to the point where it becomes impossible to tell a faked image from a real one, the very idea of using an image to prove that someone was in a certain place at a certain time becomes obsolete. So the ability to blur your face out of legitimate images becomes moot.
Glad you are so easily amused. A long time ago, in the 60's, I saw half a dozen cops beat a man to death. To *death* as in caved in body, blood everywhere, etc. They were laughing and shrieking obscentities at the crowd and asking who wanted it next, etc. Right up there in the top 10 gross things I have ever seen. Their "brothers" holding shotguns and assault rifles also surrounded the crowd (at a small to medium sized anti war demo) who were watching this, and systemtaically went through and seized any cameras (not many I saw, a few though), and also beat a few more people for sport. The guy they wasted was just someone in the front lines they picked at random, I watched the whole thing go down. And no, he wasn't throwing rocks or anything like that, no one was, at least up front where I was, it was just your typical yelling and slogan chanting action before they decided to have a little police mini riot. They never got charged with a thing as far as I could find out later. I personally took the story as far as I could, with a couple other witnesses, which was to the lieutenant governor at the time. Still no action, and it NEVER even made the news anyplace either. Couldn't find out the kids name even, cops wouldn't say and later denied that anything had happened. I'd classify it as a perfect crime they committed and the blue code of silence was part of it. Dozens of cops watched it, too, yet not a single whistleblower.
So ya, a slashdotter might be concerned over that possiblity. So..have another ghoulish chuckle, it's a freebie.
> isn't there an expectation that, if you're in a
> public area, you're fair game for being
> photographed?
The issue isn't that of being photographed by some guy taking pictures of public art or buildings with you in the background, the problem is that if it's the police, they build up a database of where you are, where you've been, when, and so on. If, for an example, a rape occurred during the time you were at a mall, and you show up on the surveillance cameras, the cops could show up at your door with a cotton swab and ask you to 'voluntarily' let them take a DNA sample to rule you out as a suspect. I don't want the police in charge of the security at malls.
Another issue is if the mall keeps all those photos, and a certain wealthy person wants to know who shopped at a certain store. That person could offer a certain amount of money to those in a position to provide copies of the imagery.
In my opinion, privacy in the US outweighs the 'needs' of corporations or the government to know where I am, even if I'm in a public space. Our Bill of Rights was required as a condition for the approval of the original Constitution just to prevent the police powers of the state from overriding the privacy of the citizens. I have no desire for private corporations to have access to a database which provides them with information on where I go and when.
It's not the act of photographing me in a public space that is the problem. It's creating a database of all of us showing were we go and when. Like the 'minders' in many communist countries who kept tabs on all visitors.
that's what i thought too, but last night i was arrested for snapping a photo in a mall here in the states. the security guard stated that the storefronts were copyrighted (though no storefront was visible in the photo) and called his superiors. his superiors called the police. the police stated that i violated trademark law, arrested me, and took my id and camera phone. the officer said he was going to keep the phone as evidence of my trademark violations but changed his mind several minutes later and returned the phone after he deleted the photos that were on it. the officer said that if someone didn't want you to take their picture (even if they didn't object before or during the photographing process) then the photo is illegal. how exactly someone's objection pertains to copyright and trademark (can i trademark my face?), i do not know. and before anyone asks, these were taken in the open in the public area of the mall. what was photographed was plainly visible to at least 4 or 5 people of mixed sexes. and there was no situation that was out of the ordinary that should cause embarrassment to anyone that was in the photo. does anyone know the laws that pertain to photographing subjects in public?
You guys are never happy, first its privacy, privacy, privacy. Now its 'privacy is dangerous'.
Are you really sucking it all in and believing your administration ????
Say it ain't so !!!
That's not a valid comparison. Computer technology evolves much faster than other technologies out of necessity, but not all technology evolves the same way.
For example, the 3rd world still uses plenty of technology that's regarded as obsolete in developed countries. For example, audio cassettes are still *very* common because lots of people have tape players, and either can't afford the $30 for a cheap CD player, or know that CDs don't tolerate dirt and moisture as well as tape.
Film is in a similar situation. Digital cameras are delicate and expensive, and you can still develop your own film in a one-horse town halfway up the Mekong, with the nearest digital photo booth a few hundred km away in HCMC.
So film will live on for decades yet; probably as a niche market for people who just plain like it, and definitely in the 3rd world as a commodity product.
...if other companies don't license the technology, users of their inferior cameras won't be able to benefit from having the pictures they take messed about with?
Wow. I bet the rest of the industry's going to be queueing around the block to shell out for that little number!
Anti-jamming technology will fill the same niche as anti-virus technology.
Technology is innately driven to decentralize, demassify (make things infinitely customizable) and open source everything. That means eventually we'll personally select all of the features of our wireless gadgets and print them off from our open source desktop manufacturing system at home.
Bottom line? The market meets the demands of the many because they outweigh that of the few. This development is tomorrow's vaporware.
Thoughts on the Emergence of Computing Intelligence
I hereby nominate you for the position of Official Seer of Wisdom and Profundity Not Actually Displayed by Person He Sees It In.
Seriously, what did this guy do to deserve such an esteemed position besides:
1) Grossly oversimplify the situation by claiming that this invention would protect privacy full stop.
2) Gratuitously use the word "fucking"?
His point has some validity, but to elevate him to Dispenser of Wisdom, Destroyer of Bullshit, is just absurd.
This simply can't work. Cameras already exist which don't comply with this schema. Anyone wanting to circumvent this technology will simply purchase a cheap and ancient film camera, or a low-priced and older yet-lower-megapixel digital.
/not/ work.
A false sense of security would be imparted to would-be blurred faces, in that they believe that they're impervious to photography despite the proliferation of cameras which don't comply with it. Subsequently, the people who had put faith in the system and supported it through their purchases would quickly discard it in disgust when they find photographs that they expected to be blurred; and the financial support for the technology will flop.
Without destroying all existing cameras and banning production of new ones that don't contain the technology (a move that would be tougher than gun enforcement), this can
IMHO, it's rather arrogant of HP to believe that they can bring about such sweeping worldwide changes with success.
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
HP focuses on paparazzi-proof cameras
So let me get this straight...after this incredibly hypothetical situation comes to pass where all the governments have agreed to mandate this technology, barring of course the millions of security cameras which would have to be exempt or useless (and god knows no one would ever abuse a security camera), and the billions of old fashioned cameras have been rounded up and burned...oh yes and of course all the professional photographers who STILL use 35mm have been convinced that they have to go digital...we still have Leo Di-Caprio preventing anybody in a 2 mile radius of himself from taking a picture of anybody else because cameras still have !@#!&# telephoto lenses?!?? I hope celebrities don't hang out in too many scenic areas.
Wouldn't it just be easier to pass a law allowing people to sue the Paparazo who took their picture (and/or the tabloid that published it) and published it without their permission? Is banning camera phones from locker rooms such a horrendous inconvenience? If your phone calls are so damn important you can't wait five minutes to exit the locker room, maybe you should think about...oh..wait...it's coming to me..buying a phone WITHOUT A CAMERA IN IT!??!?!?!?
Yes, I did RTFA, and I noticed the line about HP not actually expecting ever to use this patent. None-the-less, they paid a nice chunk of change for something they don't think they'll ever use.
Because so many cops beat up innocent people. What a wonderfully biased comment to make. Let's stick to the facts, please.
Yes, the technology itself seems immediately useless, for the reasons the parent pointed out. HP may want to prevent its use in the wild, or secure fair and legal use for itself in some other, non-retail application.
In other news, I'm actually working on a patented device that allows me to block the smell of other people's farts, which will work as long as everyone buys a special brand of underwear. This has significantly more commercial viability than the camera idea, I think. You know what they say: "Happiness is a cold beer and the smell of your own farts."
The other approach is to do what the local council of one of Australia's most famous beaches is trying to do - ban cameras entirely.
Oh, except you'll be able to take photos of your own kids.
And a few other exceptions.
In Australia, that once-relaxed, but now drifting sadly right, country, someone (male) has recently been arrested for taking pictures at a public beach. So what is the issue here? Was this person wandering about, sticking his lens into the face of every topless lady on the beach? If so, he is a pest and tasteless, but is this illegal? Should it be? If you are in public, then your behaviour is on public display, yes, but should it be to everyone? Your parents, maybe? Where does freedom start and end? There are movements afoot to ban cameras from beaches. Weird. You mean I can't take pictures of my children playing in the sea? My friends and family sitting on Bondi beach? No, this is silly. Remote controlled blurring of faces - this is definitely madness. Film cameras still exist, anyway. And the ones that do not do blurring still exist. Too silly. What we have is a clash between things being possible and things being easy. (Similar to court records being available, but not easily available - who wants all that available everywhere?). A challenge.
"Cats like plain crisps"
http://www.notbored.org/privacy.html
got some freedom hating moderators around here.
Any DRM worth circumventing (i.e. most of em) will be cracked...
That is, god forbid, unless our society/government is entirely overrun by corporate greed.
I shudder to think of that sort of world.
This will never be adopted wide enough to make it anything more than a negative purchase point for those camera manufacturers who actually do implement this technology in their cameras. The only hope this technology has is to be legislated into place... won't happen...
This is easy to solve in Australia, we have a blue sticker/card that is displayed on the windshield of the car ... No sticker, no parking (and rarely, a fine).
The article mentions that only cameras in range of the device would be affected. What happens if I use one of the digital cameras with the 10x zoom to take a picture from outside the privacy range?
Does this affect ALL cameras in range, or only cameras pointed at the person wanting privacy? If it affects all cameras, how do I prevent the paranoid person behind me from spoiling my family pictures at Disneyland? If it only affects cameras pointed at the person with the privacy device, how does the camera know who has the device, or which way it is pointing?
As has also been pointed out, there's also the problem of criminals (in uniform or otherwise) using such a device to block the collection of photographic evidence. If a device like this does become mandated for all digital cameras, I can see a booming business selling privacy devices to those wanting to get past security cameras.
I don't want anyone taking any goddamn pictures of me, even in public. I applaud the ability to blur your face. As for abuse of said technology, the example given is completely absurd. Sure there might be a few cases, but a person is allowed their right to privacy, right?
Don't get uptight about anonymity when in this increasingly public world, information is a side effect of technology. I applaud the ability to become anonymous.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
So, first cameras are introduced in public places and there is an outcry about privacy and possible abuse; Now the ability to blur images or maybe even defeat those cameras altogether (no, I haven't RTFA; bite me) and again there's a public outcry about potential abuse.
...or better yet, shouldn't we as a world society start working on building our values to attack these abuse problems at the root?
Damned if we do and damned if we don't.
Almost any (all?) technology has the potential for abuse. So do RFID chips, encryption technologies, baseball bats, garden shears, gasoline, glue, walking canes, shoes, etc. Get over it.
Just my rambling 0.02.
PS: I see you in my camera; Face is blury; but DAMN you do have nice t*ts.
I see you in my hidden camera; Face is kinda blury; but DAMN you do have nice t*ts.
When I want people to have problems with my pictures, I simply wear clothes with the EURion constellation printed on them. If I want to have a blured face, I wear a hat, sun glasses and a fake beard. This story is a stupid article about a dumb idea to idioticly solve a simple problem, in a pathetic way that will work much worse than all of the other solutions combined. It's essentially: "Buy this great technology to screw people with our cameras! And by the way, buy this great camera... It has a great feature, it won't allow you to photograph some people." No, thanks. my "Lumberjack Beard" from the local toy store works just fine, thank you very much. This story might be used as a prime example of an argument against patents on technology. What an unbelievably stupid idea.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
it only works if the camera is built to accept so how many existing camera already exist that this device won't work on millions? Plus I'm mods will be found to skirt around this tech.
Well, almost. I remember one episode when an alarm went off in Thunderbird 2 because someone took a picture of it. They then chased down the photographer and took the film. Using their technology you don't have to alter the camera and it works with film or digital. Of course you have to chase down and kill the photographer afterwards but at least you know if a picture has been taken of you!
I wonder if the blueprints are still around?
Kevin
"It's not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in" O. Nash
That wasn't a response to just the grandparent post in particular, I had browsed all the recent comments that he made and found several times he's made good critiques of the knee-jerk liberal reaction that you must admit is a decent percentage of slashdot comments. liberal FUD is FUD just the same to me, and I appreciate the help dispelling mistruths I'm likely to beleive.
>His point has some validity, but to elevate him to Dispenser of Wisdom, Destroyer of Bullshit, is just absurd.
Again, my opinion was not based on that one post, but a pattern in all prior posts i could see. The job title you've invented is a little too exaggerative for me to defend, I never claimed he was such, only that he'd make a good mod.
allllll-right ACtroll, let's do this.
>No, you're a co-opted, self-hating liberal.
liberals as nouns exist only in statistics. otherwise liberal is an adjective. noone is A liberal (noun), they have liberal (adj) tendencies.
I am PROUD to be independant. I have both liberal and conservative opinions, and if you don't like that, go fuck yourself. (happy i didn't apologize?)
Lots of liberals are idiots, lots of conservatives are idiots. intelligent liberals can still be trolled by idiot conservatives and intelligent conservatives can still be trolled by idiot liberals. We have no problem in this generally-liberal forum dispelling conservative-FUD, but we're receptive to liberal-FUD. I don't want to be receptive to ANY FUD.
>Let me guess - you go around reflexively apologizing
>for the things you believe. You people make me sick.
Apologizing is less an admission of defeat, and more a recognition of the offended party's worth.
I hope you stay sick.
You have to be a little careful about this: sometimes one can be forced to park poorly because some previously parked car is taking some of your space. When this happens to me, I worry that the other car will leave, so that people will give me dirty looks when I come out of the supermarket. So, when I find myself getting angry at the owner of a poorly parked car, I stop and ask myself, "Do I know it's their fault? Perhaps they too were forced to mispark." Of course, if they're at the end of the row, leaving no possible excuse, then I put a brick through their driver's side window, pee through the new hole in their car, set it on fire--and then park so close they have to climb in the other side!
Actually a small company in Australia wants to make a gun that can only be fired by the owner. It's not as dumb as it sounds.
The short answer is there is no expectation of privacy where one could not reasonably expect to have it, and, as always, the Fourth Amendment only protects you from the Government, not individuals. Remember that when you are strolling into a bank, parking garage, or campus of an urban university with its own police force. Or when you are walking down the street in nearly any urban area.
I see little reason why a large public spectacle like a police beating (which AFAIK is usually filmed by individuals with non-digital cameras) that is easily observed and reported without the aid of photography, anyway, should be the first concern that comes to mind, except if the AC in question is a militant anarachist. I'd be more concerned about this technology's ability to aid criminals in commission of crimes and to bankrupt HP's shareholders should it ever come to market.
Recently servers in the UK belonging to The Indipendent Media Center were taken down at the apparent behest of the Swiss and/or Italian police, with the apparent involvement of the FBI. According to Rackspace the host the request was under the Multual Legal Assistance Treaty, a treaty designed to foster cooperation in cases of international terrorism, kidnapping, and money laundering. Indymedia's running newswire is here.
/. . The Register has nice coverage including information from the italian police confirming their involvement here A follow up appers here. Crucially the drives were (at the time) carrying photos of Italian, and Swiss police taken during the G8 Protests in Genoa Italy. The photos show Swiss policemen, photographing protestors, as well as provate legal documents relating to Indymedia's court cases being levelled against the Italian Police.
The story also showed up on
So the long and short being, yes such laws could be passed but, in the wake of a law for the prevention of terrorism, kidnapping, and money laundering being used to sieze legal documents including photos of police officers, I'm not holding out too much hope.
I never leave home without my trusty disguise in place.
A mole here, extra hair there, fat cheeks, sculpted cheekbones etc...
And always, always wear your shades - even on a cloudy day, or at night for that matter (they will just think you are a rockstar).
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Imagine if you could just put a little sensor next to the pepsi can and once the film is recorded, that object is blurred--meaning that you don't need to edit out the can later or talk to the lawyers to get clearance.
"What's to prevent this being used by police to block their images when they're beating or otherwise mistreating people?"
A Polaroid.
Seriously, all this does is reduce the number of usable cameras down to around what they were, say, ten years ago.
Yes, when you're in public there's some sort of "expectation" of being fair game for photographers; so is leaving your window blinds open. But there's a difference between your window facing a forest and facing a parking garage. The former understanding is that such eyes were rare, and now they're suddenly not.
Event: Man invents gun.
/. reaction: OMG, what if the cops get these and use them to shoot people?
/. reaction 1: OMG, what if the cops use this to exchange info about people they've obtained illegally (e.g. without a warrant)?
/. reaction 2: OMG, what if people use this to distribute kiddie pr0n?
/. reaction: OMG, this will allow the riff-raff to use PeeCees! Now we have to deal with lusers!
Possible
Alternate reaction: What if people get these and use them to shoot abusive cops? (or soldiers of oppressive governments, their leaders, etc., as during the American Revolution)
Event: Ian Clarke starts writing Freenet.
Possible
Alternate reaction 1: What if citizens use this to exchange info about cops, fearing the heavy foot of government censorship?
Possible
Alternate reaction 2: What if people use this to distribute info from oppressive regimes, like Iraq, Iran, China, N. Korea, and increasingly, modern-day America and Europe? What if this allows whistleblowers from inside governments and businesses to expose wrongs which would not be exposed otherwise?
Event: Microsoft buys DOS from some guy in Washington state, making personal computing dirt-cheap relative to only a few years previous.
Possible
Alternate reaction: This will spur economic growth and give rise to millions of directly computer-related jobs, making it easier to find work in the future.
Moral: As any good Slashdotter should know by now, all technologies have good and bad purposes. The key is not to try to remove the technology from our knowledge, but to work around it.
In this case, if HP has some tech. which blurs your digital camera's picture, then let's invent a camera resistant to HP's blurring device...
In closing, here's an alternate reaction for this HP blurring tech.: What if somebody uses this to evade surveillance cameras?
Being a privacy advocate, I say *anything* which can increase individual privacy is a good thing, even if it can be used for nefarious purposes... Props to HP in this case.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Capitalist Society
Market Demand = Product Supply
If you don't like the way the product works, you don't buy it.
You'll note the class action case against Verizon or Motorola regarding the crippled Bluetooth functionality in their latest CDMA phone, maybe they should have returned them instead. Don't like them? Don't use Verizon! Companies like Speakeasy fill a void for those of us who don't like the restrictive use policies of the common carriers. Remember all that noise a few years back about how the ATA hard-disk consortium were going to build in all this disk-level encryption to enable DRM at the hardware level? Where is it? DRM is a moving target, but no one is forcing you to buy the crap on offer.
We all scream about oligopoly and monopolies, but in the end we're still making choices with our dollars. Don't buy Microsoft products. Don't buy computers from Vendors who won't sell you computers without Microsoft OS'es loaded.
Should spend more time reminding your legislators about who they're supposed to represent.
It amazes me the talking heads can't manage to understand patents at all. IT'S AN APPLICATION! They have no patent
Say what? It's worse now then it was back then, including how many people are outright killed by cops. Magnitudes worse. You have no knock raids now as common, and frequently they just barge in and kill everything moving, sometimes even at the wrong address, and mostly get away with it.. Every police force from podunk on up size has black suited anonymous ski masked ninja killers squads with full military arms. You have cameras going up all over, civilian surveillence cams, you have random freekin checkpoint roadblocks,straight out of a bad grade B war spy movie,and people accept it, something we were taught as kids only bad places like east germany had, massive and pervasive government data mining that is going way beyond just flat files in actual file cabinets, spy satellites, helicopters using penetrating radar running grids over cities mapping everything, mass arrests at demos when there is no violence whatsoever, things called "free speech zones" that are just barbed wire enclosures that they 'allow" any protesters to assemble in, the complete abandonment of Posse Comitatus, government snatches and removals to camps where you can be charged in secret and held indefinetly, they are sticking RFID tracking chips in everything, including humans now, and on and on and on and on. I mean, sheesh, that crap is all real stuff!
I call the whole system much more "abusive" than it used to be and the trends are full bore brave new world styled total fascism, right around the corner.
If you can't see it...well... sorry but it's true. I guess you would have had to watch it, every year another law, another technique, another facet of command and control *over* the civilian population introduced. It's called the "slow boiling frog" technique and it's worked admirably for those people seeking it.
first of all this has nothing to do with cops bluring their faces. The technology was released because now every movie star and pretty much any public figure will buy a couple of these so that they can somewhat protect their pricasy. However, HP seems to forget that not everybody uses digital and the good old film cameras still work just fine. Plus a lot of pros use exactly that.
Victoria Snelgrove, murdered by the Boston police this past October would probably disagree with the parent poster about the idea that police misconduct is "negligible." So would Abadou Diallo. And Abner Louima. Google the name Clifford Glover. While you're there, look up Eleanor Bumpers, too. I'd mention Rodney King yet again in this thread, but that'd be trite.
Let's not go around espousing the idea that because recent history has seen a lull in police brutality in the United States, that it isn't a problem, or that it's acceptable in any way.
And, especially, let's not go around supporting the curtailment of technologies that can keep these abuses in check.
Fight for something better: www.socialistalternative.org
The best thing you can do when taking pictures that you want to use for evidence (digital or film), is make sure that you have:
- a lot of pictures
- a lot of different angles on the same subject
Photoshopping evidence in one picture is hard enough to do properly (and even then experts can tell most of the time). When you have 10 pictures from the same subject with varying angles, it becomes near impossible to fake them consistently.With the proper tools (that don't have to be expensive at all) one can photoshop analog images just as easily as their digital counterparts.
In the end, if the evidence is questioned, it's up to the expert(s) to decide what's real and not.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
I have known many police officers and I am completely offended on their behalf. In fact I may forward the text of this post to them so that they may be offended too.
Dammit, it just pisses me off when people accuse police of being brutal when they were simply doing their jobs. You want to see brutal? Move to cities like san francisco where police officers are not allowed to approach, question or otherwise detain anyone who they think might be an illegal immigrant, regardless of how heinous the crime is. YOu want brutal? Go to portland where police officers are penalized for shooting someone so high on crack that they were an immediate danger to everone around them and were obviously attacking the officers. So high on crack that they took over 10 rounds to subdue.
Just because you are some crazy hippie who believes that crime should be legal, unless a straight white male does some crime against someone who isnt, then that's a hate crime. Hello thought police, you can all kiss my ass.
After taking pictures at a family gathering where every photo had at least one person with the face blurred, the digital camera would go into the bin and out would come the [dust-covered] box brownie.
I could see (ugly) people running around naked wearing these around their neck. Anonymous exhibitionism....
yyyyyyuck!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
if you're in a public area it's fair game to be photographed
It seriously depends on what culture you're from. I was in marocco over christmas, and over there some percentage of people have religious beliefs that their photograph should NOT be taken.
So, us westerners take this for granted, while others don't.
Here in the Netherlands, if you drive a car, your licence plate is displayed. However, if the authorities start taking pictures of licence plates on public roads, suddenly we get protests because this would infringe on privacy.
Taking pictures and analysing them by computer, recognizing people is suddenly something that lots of people seem to accept. Still it carries the same or worse privacy issues than the licence plates. Boundaries differ. In time and in place.
Who wants a CD that can't be copied or played in a car?
This is way, way overhyped. I haven't yet come across a CD that I have not been able to rip. Blood Sugar Sex Magik could...Neon Ballroom could...American Idiot...The Long Road...Get Born...the list goes on. Even on RIAA music I have not found anything yet which I can't copy/rip.
maybe in your neighbourhood,
but there is plenty of places in america
where police brutality is business as usual
just like segregation in the south
laws on books don't mean shit until they're enforced
..simply tatoo the handy "Image manipulation forbidden" symbol prominently on your forehead..
http://stopthedrugwar.org/t s.org/
http://www.drugwarfac
there is another website which links
to newsstories where
DEA agents screwed up and killed innocent people,
but i don't got the link
it was something like stopdeawar
But I'll bet there are executives in Rochester who are happy to hear this one.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
True, but it's a matter of perspective and context. We don't live in the Mekong, we live here. We're already at the mercy of ink cartridges that cost almost as much to replace as would a new printer. Polaroid is already as good as dead, or at least so confined into niche usage as to be irrelevant.
And sure, it'll take decades, but that's not much different than not worrying about global warming because it won't be a problem in our lifetime.
It's a purely academic argument at this point, but it may not be in a few decades. By then, like today's situation with DRM, copyrights and patents, it may be harder to oppose than at the onset of the trend.
I don't like the idea that my kids might have to buy a film camera on the black market, just to be able to take a photo that doesn't blur copyrighted material, or insert brand names into holiday pictures.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
This is just another case of companies patenting anything and everything just in case it has any commercial use in the future.
u forgot free ipods and soviet russia in ur .sig =)
forgive my shitty spelling
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
they're called *shirts*.....