Life Recorder

Bruce Schneier writes "In 2006, writing about future threats on privacy, I described a life recorder: A 'life recorder' you can wear on your lapel that constantly records is still a few generations off: 200 gigabytes/year for audio and 700 gigabytes/year for video. It'll be sold as a security device, so that no one can attack you without being recorded."

Comments

Rogue-like

[hansamurai]

It'll be sold as a security device, so that no one can attack you without being recorded.

Except when getting stabbed in the back.

Re:Rogue-like

[InsprdInsnty]

or wearing a disguise of any sort

Re:Rogue-like

[WrongSizeGlass]

I'll just steal your "Life Recorder" after I beat you up. Thanks for understanding.

Re:Rogue-like

[tehniobium]

Exactly what I thought, but TFA suggests/hints at the possibility of the data not being stored locally.

So not only do you get to have your life recorded, but your life is stored in the cloud! Fantastic isn't it??

Re:Rogue-like

[Plastic Pencil]

"It'll be sold as a security device, so that no one can attack you without being recorded."

I hear this said in Martin Prince's confident voice.

Seconds later Nelson Mutts defeats this assertion with primal, brute, playground skullduggery and then, he simply "Ha-Ha's..."

Re:Rogue-like

[jeffmeden]

If this is the case then why is storage relevant? It's the bandwidth necessary to get the data out; doing it reliably is necessary too. An attacker could theoretically just jam the frequencies that the recorder/transmitter uses, and then attack you, steal or destroy the device, and no one would be the wiser. As a security measure, this needs to be better thought out.

On top of that, what does Bruce Schneier need with protections from attack? I hear that behind his beard lives an inordinately large prime number of fists.

Re:Rogue-like

[IBBoard]

Also, aren't those things only once every few seconds for photos? That'd let you capture people as they pass, but it won't stop someone getting right up to you and suddenly lashing out.

You're also a little dependent on it not being stolen/broken in the attack. Either that or you've got one hell of a good data plan on a "works everywhere" mobile connection!

Re:Rogue-like

[Thanshin]

Or with a sniper rifle.

Or poisoned.

Or run over with a stolen car.

Or rolled in your bedsheets and defenestrated.

Or by injecting your significant other with a deadly STD.

Or releasing anthrax on your ventilation system.

Or bombing your car.

hmm What exactly does this protect you against? And, more importantly, does it protect you more than the extra danger of wearing expensive hardware wherever you go and being a potential witness of every crime that ever happens near you?

Re:Rogue-like

[WrongSizeGlass]

If this is the case then why is storage relevant?

Because we need a reasonable technical excuse for these impositions not being deployed upon our beings. Either way I'm not worried because I have AT&T, so my 3G coverage will make my life look like a bad version of the Nixon Whitehouse Tapes.

Re:Rogue-like

[oldspewey]

An attacker could theoretically just jam the frequencies that the recorder/transmitter uses, and then attack you

Which attacker? You mean the scab-ridden meth addict who's waiting over by that mailbox while I finish my ATM withdrawl? Or the drunken neanderthal at the bar who thinks I'm staring at his girlfriend and decides he needs to prove some kind of point?

... or did you mean the computer nerd who's going to come up out of his basement and attack me as a way of testing that his latest jamming device actually works?

Re:Rogue-like

[blueZ3]

Or shot at any range. Hello, McFly--even a 360 degree view from four 640x480 cameras isn't going to help you identify someone 100 meters off. "Yes, officer. He was shot by this little blob in the lower right corner of the image"--and CSI-like enhancements are right out.

There are various (specious) reasons to purchase something like this, but "avoiding an attack" is just silly. Despite the media's fixation on crime, random attacks are quite rare. Only a really stupid mugger is going to attack some nerd wearing "always on" monitoring gear like this, and anyone with a real wish to do you harm is going to think of a way around it. The possibilities for doing mischief unrecorded are numerous and most of them simple and cheap to implement

And anyway, who wants to have their whole life recorded? Who is going to want to watch 9 hours of video of me sitting at my desk typing? Or an hour of commute time? Or the two hours I spent last night reading a book (Complete Chronicles of Conan--very amusing)? Or the seven hours I was asleep. Aside from some wild narcissists, most of the average person's daily life is utterly without interest.

Yet another WTF "future" product.

Re:Rogue-like

[mcgrew]

It's illegal in Illinois to record anyone without their permission, and nothing recorded without someone's permission can be used in court here.

I call it the "liar's law". But this tech won't help any Illinois crime victims.

Re:Rogue-like

[Pharmboy]

Is it just me, or do you live in a really, really bad neighborhood? Most people in my town just die of heart attacks, cancer, or car wrecks, with the occassional random act of violence. Not that this device is a good idea (unless you are the one selling them) but most people tend to die in ways that are less worthy of a James Bond movie plot.

As for being a witness for "every crime that ever happens near you", how many felonious crimes do you personally witness in the average day? I'm not talking copyright infringement, but about muggings, rapes, murder, burglary, robbery, etc. If your answer is > .009, you need to move. Soon.

Re:Rogue-like

[geekboy642]

You and Bruce both are thinking in a very depressingly straight-forward manner. This isn't for watching 9 hours of typing or to protect you against a theoretical pipe-wielding villain who doesn't know about disguises. You would use these to shore up a fallible memory, or for evidence in a lawsuit, or to save more images of your spouse before s/he passed away. The security implications are amusing, but trite. Ultimately, complete life recording is like the NSA's scheme with the Internet: Record enough garbage, and you'll be nearly certain to catch the important bits.

Re:Rogue-like

[blueskies]

What cloud? You mean like your home computer or a server under your control? If it's on the internet is that considered cloud technology now?

Re:Rogue-like

[NonUniqueNickname]

The estate of the late Julius Caesar called, wants his money back.

Re:Rogue-like

[Attila Dimedici]

It's illegal in Illinois to record anyone without their permission, and nothing recorded without someone's permission can be used in court here.

I call it the "liar's law". But this tech won't help any Illinois crime victims.

There is a good reason for such laws. I used to work for a guy who regularly recorded people (n violation of the law) and then egged them to say things that he thought he could use to fire them (he had two business partners, which limited his ability to fire people on a whim). He would delete where he had said inflammatory and demeaning things first. After the HR person told him that he couldn't use those recordings because they were illegal, he engineered a confrontation with her and fired her (she is now suing for wrongful termination).

Re:Rogue-like

[Posting=!Working]

If these actually caught on, you'd be able to buy the $20 life camera jammer from the trunk of a car along with the $100 Hi-Point 9mm. Just because they need to be developed by geeks doesn't mean that, once developed, they can't then be made cheaply, even by morons. And there are plenty of geek criminals, too, it's not that hard to build a jamming device.\

Drunks and people on meth are notoriously bad at thinking of long term consequences. If a drunk is going to hit you, warning him that he might get arrested is not going to stop him. If a meth addict needs your money for meth, taking his picture isn't going to deter him at all.

Re:Rogue-like

[Anonymous Coward]

Et tu, Bruce?

Re:Rogue-like

[u38cg]

Hah. He doesn't even secure his Wi-Fi.

Re:Rogue-like

[Thanshin]

most people tend to die in ways that are less worthy of a James Bond movie plot.

Most people don't need permanent recording of their lives to avoid being attacked.

So either you don't need the device, or you do and it's useless.

As for being a witness for "every crime that ever happens near you", how many felonious crimes do you personally witness in the average day?

How many muggings happen near enough that the criminal may think I had recorded his face?
How many people may think I had recorded their face somewhere they shouldn't be?

If I stay in the center plaza of my current city, Madrid, with an omnidirectional camera I assure you I'd record several dozens of pickpockets.

If I crossed that same plaza, alone, with the recording device hanging from my neck I don't think I'd still be carrying it by the time I reached the other side.

Re:Rogue-like

[rhook]

The recording doesn't matter if they take the device and destroy it.

Re:Rogue-like

[Pharmboy]

Sounds like it would only be missing if you had it in your pocket. ;) And pickpockets are not likely to attack you for having a camera, as I am sure many people in the area are openly carrying cameras, snapping off photos left and right in the center plaza of Madrid. Pickpockets are like burgulars, less violent and confrontational than robbers, rapists & muggers. They are more likely to run, not confront. I've worked enough with both types over the years. Despite the movies showing otherwise, the average criminal is also low side or below average intellegence, which is why most get caught eventually, and why they don't instantly recognize the cause/effect of their actions to their own welfare.

Re:Rogue-like

[Angst Badger]

An attacker could theoretically just jam the frequencies that the recorder/transmitter uses, and then attack you, steal or destroy the device, and no one would be the wiser.

Or wear a mask.

Re:Rogue-like

[Thanshin]

And pickpockets are not likely to attack you for having a camera, as I am sure many people in the area are openly carrying cameras,

The problem is not the camera but the act of sending that data somewhere for your security.

Pickpockets wouldn't steal your camera just for recorrding the plaza (well, they would if you leave it on an unclosed handbad and look oblivious to your surroundings) but they've attacked and intimidated reporters who were openly recording them to report about the high criminality against tourists.

Re:Rogue-like

[tehniobium]

I was merely making a very obscure reference/parallel to the anime Ghost in the Shell ;).

That having been said, how long from that service appears till a company creates an application where you can access your life-data from anywhere, and how long till facebook starts asking you for permission to look at your life-stream, and perhaps let you share/use that data for all sorts of things. (this would constitute "in the cloud", wouldn't it?)

Privacy is obviously a concern for you and me, but lots of people really don't care - evident by facebook's raging success. This could easily be reality once the technology is there in my oppinion.

Re:Rogue-like

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wouldn't really expecting to hear some crackhead on the corner say "yo sucka, i be jammin yo transmission wit mah 300 watt multi band random pulse RF jamma. gimme yo money"

Re:Rogue-like

[DavidTC]

Yeah, but locking them up will reduce the number of violent stupid people on the streets.

Almost no security system beyond physical barricades works by protecting you. They work by raising the cost and consequences of committing crime in general.

And this article is 100% right. At some point, people will start transmitting audio and video of everything they do, hopefully to a server under their control.

At that point, when the number of people hit a high enough percentage that that criminals actually start running across them, crime will fundamentally change.

Sadly, it will probably change in a pretty crappy way at first, as criminal start going after poor people, who don't have such devices yet. (Criminals tend not to rob poor people much now, because, duh, they don't have any money.) In much the same way that all installing cameras does is that criminals avoid their line of sight.

But, eventually, it will work where security cameras failed, because a) it goes where the people are, and b) it unlike random security cameras, actual victims (Or surviving family members.) of crimes have an incentive to actually review the footage.

And that's not even getting into other aspects of this, like providing alibis. Yes, video footage can be tampered with, but that's when you look at your footage of yourself on the other side of town, find a guy who passed you, and get the police to track down him and his footage with your clearly in it. (And while video footage can be faked, it's a lot harder if it doesn't have endpoints. If it shows you wandering around your house for two hours, including past a mirror, and then the police coming in to arrest you...that requires a technical skill level that would be hard to pull off for the NSA, much less some random guy, and it would be somewhat absurd for you to do it to be able to be out robbing someone's house.)

And eventually, we're going to get smart enough computers to actually parse the scene, and realize there is a crime in progress, and alert the police, or, for even more fun, all surrounding people. (Who can now respond in relative safety because they're wearing such cameras also.) Imagine a flash mob, armed with streaming cameras, and probably a gun or two, showing up at a mugging.

At some point, crimes are going to be limited to 'crimes of passion', where an argument gets out of hand or whatever, and incredibly well plotted crimes like something out of a murder mystery movie, where people are undetectably poisoned, or an action TV show, where hired assassins snipe people. The vast majority of crimes, at least violent ones, in the middle are going away.

I'm not sure what will happen to things like cons and pickpocketing. The criminal can be photographed much easier, but I'm not sure if that will help. And I expect a rise in blackmailing.

Re:Rogue-like

[DavidTC]

That's not a good reason for forbidding people from recording others.

That's a good reason to require people to turn over all footage of someone they've made to that person if they've shown anyone any of that footage. I.e., if I hear you've got video of me saying 'X', I should be able to demand you produce all video footage of me you have, which I can then use to counter your misrepresentation of me.

In fact, that should be part of libel law. Quoting people out of context is already libelous behavior.

Re:Rogue-like

[NotBornYesterday]

If this technology ever comes to pass, I can imagine a crowdsourced Google streetview type mashup that meshes together the combined streaming lifeviews of several pedestrians & motorists on every street at any given time, providing a near real-time 3d model of a city at street level, as well as the ability to roll that model forwards and back through time.

Re:Rogue-like

[salemnic]

Why would anyone want to work for such a jerk?

Re:Rogue-like

[Bieeanda]

He's really not as bright as he thinks he is, is he?

Re:Rogue-like

[Surt]

I love those guys. Neither one has ever spent any serious time studying martial arts, so with the meth addict you get in some good practice, and then the bar guy you get to leave with his hot girlfriend while he spends the month in the hospital.

Re:Rogue-like

[Surt]

Quoting out of context is not at all libelous. Otherwise, every single political ad in this country would be sued for.

Re:Rogue-like

[Anonymous Coward]

No. See, have you ever seen the Google Streetview car? Now imagine that contraption made out of cameras as a helmet you wear all the time.

Re:Rogue-like

[mcgrew]

Quoting out of context is not at all libelous.

It doesn't have to be, but it CAN be.

Re:Rogue-like

[Locke2005]

Or better yet, just wait in ambush in a tunnel, then take the memory chip out of the device.

Re:Rogue-like

[Surt]

No, for the most part, it can't.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-06-21/news/1991172083_1_antonin-scalia-constitutional-protection-quotations

You have to mangle the actual words used, which goes beyond 'out of context'.

Re:Rogue-like

[Lumpy]

Exactly, Fighting a drunk guy is like Dojo practice in slow motion. I cant believe how delays and telegraphed even a "skilled fighter" is when drunk off his ass.

I usually simply give them more momentum, I dont defend myself, I simply help them contact the floor or tables under their own power. Nothing like helping a guy throwing a punch by taking a leg out from under him and a quick push on the shoulder to make him eat a bar stool with his face.

"Hey buddy you alright?" is good to say after he does that..

Re:Rogue-like

[Lumpy]

It's going to have super high res 4K sensors! that will extend the range to 300 meters.... in bright noon time lighting.... Oops most crime is at night and even the best HD camera sensors cant see 10 feet in less than 12 lux. a typical street is 3 lux and a bar is 8 lux...

so when the thing is NEEDED to record it will record nothing usable.

Re:Rogue-like

[oldspewey]

Drunks and people on meth are notoriously bad at thinking of long term consequences.

So why is it that the Baitcar Program has reduced the number of auto thefts?

Re:Rogue-like

[Lumpy]

So that means they cant use the ezpass lane camera footage to get me for bypassing the toll booths! COOL! I never gave them permission to record me!!

I suspect your interpetation of the law is outdated or incorrect, otherwise the news and all Chicago webcams are illegal.

Re:Rogue-like

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone want to work for such a jerk?

Right, as opposed to someone I know who went on Vacation only to have their boss fire all of their staff, and being told "You can do their job".

When they couldn't (its a bit tough for one person to replace 5), they were terminated.

Another co-worker had the same thing happened and was terminated just shy of retirement (and pension).

Years later the department still has a 98% turnover rate, at the Executive level, in a Fortune 100 Company. :/

Sleeping with the boss apparently is really good for job security, even if you're the bitch from hell.

You don't always get to chose who you work for, and some of them deserve to be eliminated from the gene-pool with a little chlorine.

Re:Rogue-like

[Attila Dimedici]

He would have gotten rid of the other footage, so he doesn't have that footage anymore. If he turned over all the recording he had of the person, it would only be the incriminating bit, not the part that showed him getting them wound up, that stuff he would have destroyed.

Re:Rogue-like

[slick7]

and...and...and...

Dropped on from above.
Teleported to another dimension.
Swallowed by quicksand.
Mugged in the fog/snow storm/ sand storm
F**ked in a Faraday cage.
Shived in a submarine.

Re:Rogue-like

[scottv67]

Or with a sniper rifle.

Or poisoned.

Or run over with a stolen car.

Or rolled in your bedsheets and defenestrated.

Or by injecting your significant other with a deadly STD.

Or releasing anthrax on your ventilation system.

Or bombing your car.

Or nuking from orbit - it's the only way to be sure.

Re:Rogue-like

[swillden]

Those tactics wouldn't work if the other person had their own recorder. In fact, they'd backfire.

Re:Rogue-like

[b4dc0d3r]

Change your thinking from "how many do you see per day" to "how many happen near you that you might have unknowningly recorded".

If you are in the area, and police are aware of your recording capabilities, they're going to ask you where you were. It might not be a court order, and you can probably refuse to answer, but if they are following every possible lead you're on the radar.

How would police know about you? Simple, you're going to look odd and they are going to ask questions at least once. Especially in a traffic scenario. They hate being recorded, so you're just as much a threat as as resource depending on where you live. Bottom line, you're likely to be noticed and once noticed likely to be used if at all possible.

Look at any typical city, find the local newspaper's website, and look at the number of crimes committed. "Police respond to..." means a potential crime - there's at least one a week. Where were you mister-record-everything guy, when the liquor store got knocked over, or the bank, or were you out walking when this home invasion occurred?

It doesn't matter how many you personally witness, it matters that they happen and you're potentially nearby. Your drive to work might go right by the liquor store, maybe even while it was robbed. You didn't see anything, but the camera caught the vehicles in the parking lot.

The "even worse" scenario is walking by a crime, not knowing about it, and being seen recording everything. Now the criminal has to get rid of a witness. I believe that's what Thanshin meant. You don't even have to see it, just be near enough that you seem like you might have recorded it. And once a criminal introduces himself to you by saying "Did you just record me killing that old lady for her purse?" you're in trouble. It only has to happen once in your lifetime to be a major bummer.

The original point was "every attack on you personally will be recorded," which has nothing to do with the number of crimes people witness per day. Every attack will be recorded, but it will be useless for the list of crimes posted above you, negating a lot of the benefit. Recorded but useless is not a prime selling point.

Re:Rogue-like

[slick7]

I simply help them contact the floor or tables under their own power.

Their own power plus your added momentum.

K00L

Re:Rogue-like

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Is it just me, or do you live in a really, really bad neighborhood?

No, he just watches too much CNN.

Re:Rogue-like

[nine-times]

If this is the case then why is storage relevant? It's the bandwidth necessary to get the data out;

Well even if you're storing the data on the Internet, you still have to store it someplace. Like you could store it on Amazon's S3, but you'll want to know how much it will cost you.

Re:Rogue-like

[b4dc0d3r]

You kinda have a point, but you're flailing on a few points. Poor people are much more likely to be paid in cash or cash checks immediately, and have cash around. Rich people need to be kidnapped and driven to the ATM for money. Rich and upper middle class people are more likely to have surveillance systems on their houses, or at least alarms. It's easier to steal from poor people, and I bet if you went looking for statistics to back yourself up you'd be wrong. Poor people who can't afford this will likely become targets of this, but when everyone around you has one you get herd immunity. Crimes will focus on not just poor people, but poor people cut off from the rest of society (temporarily even). You can already get yourself a voice/audio recorder that looks like sunglasses, so with a briefcase or backpack or purse to hold the additional equipment these might not be immediately visible. Not knowing who has one and who doesn't is a very good deterrant.

http://www.google.com/search?q=mini+spy+sunglasses

The flash mob is unlikely - I don't know my neighbors, and would not risk my life for them unless I was right there in the middle of it. I'd be a witness, but I'm not going to intervene..

Crimes are already mostly limited to crimes of passion. Statistically speaking, that is. You see an opportunity and take it - I'd argue this will make people think twice. Opportunistic crimes will go down, passion crimes will stay the same, and people will spend more time plotting revenge. Manipulate things when the recorders (and your head, but not your eyes) are looking at some legitimately attention-grabbing thing, and it goes unnoticed. The types of plotting you're talking about are rare enough, but those same types of people will go out of their way to out-wit a streaming video so everything appears innocuous. "Yes I visited his office the day he died, but here's my video of the visit..." leaving out the preparatory night before of course where you stashed items places.

We could both be wrong, but I do see some flaws in everyone's thinking on this, including mine. The one that interests me is blackmail. Kobe Bryant wouldn't need to prove everything was consensual, it's all on video. But would he still cheat? Probably yes. Look at Tiger woods - there are text messages and phone calls a blackmailer could use already, so now you're only able to blackmail people for things that actually happened. Fight Club's plot just got blackmailed because you have a video of a guy beating himself up, no fake job now. People are still going to do things because they will think everyone else is keeping the secret - it becomes a game of whether you trust someone. Just like it always has - remember the Duke Lacrosse accuser? Everyone has a good time, someone cries foul later, then the videos and pictures emerge. Every person at that party took a risk, but decided to keep partying due to an assumption of mutual trust. This will be no different - you trust and most of the time it works out, sometimes people call you out on it. David Letterman - that appeared to be an open secret, and finally someone decides to go public for money. Video surveillance would only have changed whether Dave and his conquests agreed to get naked in the first place.

Re:Rogue-like

[julesh]

Why would anyone want to work for such a jerk?

I knew someone once who made a good living out of suing for wrongful dismissal. He'd do things that weren't technically valid reasons for firing him but really annoyed his managers. He managed to get fired about once every two or three years, and get basically a year's salary as bonus whenever it happened. If I know him half well, he'd go out and have a celebration the day he realised he was working for this jerk, because that money would be practically in the bag.

Re:Rogue-like

[MPAB]

If the pickpocket is a child, as it will always happen, it won't matter if you record his face, voice and those of his mother giving him instructions in some eastern tongue.

Re:Rogue-like

[AkiraRoberts]

Actually, record enough garbage and insure that the important bits are forever buried in said garbage. See John Crowley's short story 'Snow' for an example, involving a technology similar to the one under discussion. Of course, the comparison doesn't quite work since his version allowed for only random access to data. That said, even if access is non-random, it might prove harder than you'd think, barring some high powered visual indexing, to get to the data you might be interested in.

Re:Rogue-like

[Anonymous Coward]

food ? rent ? little kids at home ?

Re:Rogue-like

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I can't imagine this being sold as a security device. But as a memory aid, it would be of immense help. And at 1TB/year, this is well within the range of say, your average Wall Street Stock broker right now, that's only $4000/year for your replaceable SSD to record the data.

Re:Rogue-like

[KiloByte]

It would also help against many non-violent crimes.

A couple of years ago, two municipal cops stopped me in a park. They claimed I crossed a street on the red light -- which I didn't. The crossing was ~40 meters away, partially obscured by waist-level bushes, a few trees and a statue. When I protested, they asked if I have any witnesses -- obviously, everyone was already gone. The cops told me that if I keep denying, it will be their word vs mine, and since they were two, their word would prevail in the court. As I heard rumours about similar cases and that the law indeed says so, I had no way to fight it and paid the fine -- and it was pretty steep.

If I had such a recorder, the fuckers wouldn't be able to pull such tricks.

Re:Rogue-like

[thetoadwarrior]

People are always sniping the elderly around here. It's always a shock but awesome to watch. Your town is boring.

Re:Rogue-like

[jamie(really)]

A jammer would work against the hacker version I just wrote for my Android, but for these devices to really take off, they would have to be immune to such a trick, which is extremely easy to do assuming the military would allow the public to own such a device.

However, if everyone had one, at least it would reduce the chances of some prick in a bar who thinks violence is an acceptable expression of offense, jammer or no jammer. And of course, turning on the jammer would be useful warning in and of itself.

The "right" to not be recorded benefits no one but criminals. It means proof of a crime cannot be admitted as evidence. If *everything* was recorded all the time, we'd live in a much better, and freer world.

Re:Rogue-like

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say a lot more poor people are stolen from than we'd think for more practical reasons, demographic things like location and that thieves are also poor and thus nearby poor victims. But if a thief has a choice, they're more likely to go after the wealthier target. The poor may get their weekly pay in cash, but that might be $400; the middle class guy may only have $40 on him, but also credit card(s) with a higher limit, a better watch, a more expensive phone, maybe a work phone or laptop, and so on. Not to mention the difference in what different socio-economic classes carry in their cars (more expensive radio, GPS navigation system, and of course the whole car itself if you can take it). And those targets are available all day every day everywhere, not just friday evenings near banks.

Flash mobs probably won't stray into firing range of a gunman, but peeking out of windows and around corners a block away is possible. At the very least, they'll provide timespacestamps of where the suspect was or wasn't, as well as outright eliminating a whole lot of other people as suspects.

> Opportunistic crimes will go down, passion crimes will stay the same, and people will spend more time plotting revenge

I think it'd even deter the revenge plots somewhat. The more difficult it is, the longer it takes, the more time there is to cool down and reconsider risks and consequences. With a high enough implementation level among the population, even a few layers of indirection would be difficult - not only would the records of suspects and victims be checked, but also the records of the people and locations they interacted with, extending back in time until the murderer is found. Certainly the poison example isn't very good - clever people already go to jail for that, even without video footage of them preparing and/or serving the fatal dish.

Come to think of it, even some crimes of passion may go down, if it enters the general human mindset that the audiovisual record itself is a weapon with an extremely high chance of winning criminal or civil cases against the one you're angry at.

Re:Rogue-like

[mcgrew]

Jerry: "I'd have to be retarded to say that the boss is an imbicile".

Bob "Jerry said 'The boss is an imbicile'".

Re:Rogue-like

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is the case then why is storage relevant? It's the bandwidth necessary to get the data out; doing it reliably is necessary too. An attacker could theoretically just jam the frequencies that the recorder/transmitter uses, and then attack you, steal or destroy the device, and no one would be the wiser....

"A communications disruption can only mean one thing. Invasion!"

Re:Rogue-like

[Anonymous Coward]

... plus think of all the new voyeur porn

Re:Rogue-like

[DavidTC]

Which, as I said, should be illegal.

I don't know why, in your universe, people will follow the law and not make recordings when it's illegal, whereas somehow in mine you assert they're going to break the law by destroying extra footage.

Re:Rogue-like

[DavidTC]

Erm, did you read that link?

It actually said 'The decision also left unclear how much legal risk the press and publishers would take if someone claimed that a quote, while accurate, was taken out of context in such a way as to give a wrong meaning.'

And then continued with 'The court did say, without elaboration, that "an exact quotation out of context can distort meaning."'

Considering they just denied constitutional protection to quotes that cause a 'material change in meaning', I think the idea that an out of context quote can 'distort the meaning' is a pretty good indication they wouldn't extend first amendment protection deliberate miscontext it automatically.

Re:Rogue-like

[Anonymous Coward]

Or if they attack you to steal your "life recorder".

Re:Rogue-like

[Surt]

Exactly. Not prosecutable as libel.

Re:Rogue-like

[Anonymous Coward]

Depending on who's doing the fucking, that faraday cage scenario sounds pretty hot.

Re:Rogue-like

[DavidTC]

The flash mob is unlikely - I don't know my neighbors, and would not risk my life for them unless I was right there in the middle of it. I'd be a witness, but I'm not going to intervene..

Well, no, this would be after the societal change after people get used to it. We're not at the tech yet, but at some point the recording devices on us will be vaguely 'aware' of what is going on, and if we're being mugged, or if we've just been in a car accident, or whatever, they'll start broadcasting a distress call. (Or, before that, I can see a 'panic button', like inside the shoe.)

After the first few times the police or EMS take fifteen minutes, someone will have the bright idea of using some sort of local broadcast signal, and letting other people get them on their cameras.(I suspect at some point it will become illegal to signal a distress in a non-emergency, like calling 911 now.)

You might, or might not, have someone show up ready for a fight, but you'd probably get some people willing to chase the mugger down, or at least follow him until the police get there.

Crimes are already mostly limited to crimes of passion. Statistically speaking, that is. You see an opportunity and take it - I'd argue this will make people think twice. Opportunistic crimes will go down, passion crimes will stay the same, and people will spend more time plotting revenge.

Yup.

The types of plotting you're talking about are rare enough, but those same types of people will go out of their way to out-wit a streaming video so everything appears innocuous. "Yes I visited his office the day he died, but here's my video of the visit..." leaving out the preparatory night before of course where you stashed items places.

I actually read a sci-fi store with a 'history viewing' device, where the police can look back in time. Premeditated murder is still illegal, but at some point it was decided that 'crimes of passion', where you just intended to harm someone and didn't mean to kill them, were nowhere near as severely punished. (As they were now 100% distinguishable from premeditated murder)

The plot revolves around murderer's years of effort playing with some innocuous thing on a man he loathed's desk, and then managing, entirely 'innocently', to have that object switched out with something a good deal more lethal but the same size and shape, and then the very next day getting that man mad at him, starting a screaming fight, so the murderer could respond by 'accidentally' hitting back with the wrong object.

But, anyway, actual planned premeditated murder, (As opposed to 'I'm getting my gun and driving over to kill him', which is legally premeditated, but not well planned.) is pretty rare, and if murder is reduced to just that, it's still a lot better than what it is now.

Re:Rogue-like

[KDR_11k]

Eaten by a grue (would be too dark to record)...

Re:Rogue-like

[KDR_11k]

Oh, imagine the fun of breaking into someone's storage and grabbing videos of them entering their ATM PIN, various passwords and potentially finding some prime blackmail material.

Re:Rogue-like

[Attila Dimedici]

The difference is that in your universe, they will have some excuse as to why the rest of the recording is gone, whereas in mine (the real one) not only is the recording inadmissible in court but they can be prosecuted for having it (although I believe that should rarely--if ever-- be done).

Re:Rogue-like

[Attila Dimedici]

They don't, but he was an inactive owner when they were hired. About a year before I left, the other owners tried to buy him out. He decided to prove how indispensable he was to the company and started to reassert his authority (actually, he hired a new lawyer to pick through the corporate bylaws to find a loophole to allow him to run things against the wishes of the other two owners). Unfortunately, many of the employees need the job and have been unable to find another one.

Re:Rogue-like

[Attila Dimedici]

He's really not as bright as he thinks he is, is he?

Not even close. When I worked there I was one of his favorites because when he decided to redo the corporate organization chart while the other owners were on vacation and demote them, I made up the new corporate org chart after another person with the access to change it refused without authorization from the other owners. What he didn't realize was that I put it in different folder from the official org chart. If someone with the legal authority to demand a copy of our org chart had come in before the other owners came back, I would have printed them out what I still considered to be the official org chart.
As a result of this and several other instances where I humored him, he thought I was his buddy. I never tried to get him to think that, it was just easier to nod and go "uh-huh" when he said he wanted to do something a particular way and then do it the right way. He was shocked when I turned in my notice and told him I thought the company would be out of business before much longer. He told me I was wrong. I left in November and the company is less than half the size it was when I left.

Re:Rogue-like

[oldspewey]

I actually read a sci-fi store with a 'history viewing' device, where the police can look back in time.

I actually think I read the same story - a loooooong time ago. IIRC the technology involved had something to do with ordinary walls and other surfaces being discovered as having some sort of quantum memory, which stored impressions of nearby events.

Re:Rogue-like

[Anonymous Coward]

The court should assume that, if there are gaps in the recording, the person who took it is trying something like this.

Re:Rogue-like

[Rophuine]

He said it will be sold as a security device. He didn't say it would be any good as one.

Re:Rogue-like

[ooshna]

No Chuck Norris has the only beard with a prime numbered amount of fists behind it. Guess how many he needs. That's right only 1.

Re:Rogue-like

[DavidTC]

I'm pretty certain the law doesn't run on 'excuses'.

Re:Rogue-like

[DiscoDave_25]

Maybe that's the key to this working (living in a bad neighbourhood). That way you're far more likely to die sooner and therefore you need FAR less storage. In some areas if I believe the movies you'd need less than 20mins of storage before it was game over... If that's the case then these already exists in a simple camcorder.

Re:Rogue-like

[DavidTC]

Did the 'view the past' tech have incredibly strong warrant requirements? And did the story end when he killed another person, who had figured it out, in the heat of the moment?

Which would be okay for him, that actually was a crime of passion, except that he realizes when the police check that incident, they'll also get his confession to the first murder? (Whereas, ironically, even if they'd suspected he premeditated the first murder, even if the murder victim had come forward with his suspicions, the police could no longer review his past for that, as he'd been cleared.)

Re:Rogue-like

[DavidTC]

Indeed.

Of course, there'll be push-back on that..just look at the fight against filming interrogations.

Re:Rogue-like

[DryGrian]

Parent post is made of win.

Re:Rogue-like

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me, or do you live in a really, really bad neighborhood? Most people in my town just die of heart attacks, cancer, or car wrecks, with the occassional random act of violence. Not that this device is a good idea (unless you are the one selling them) but most people tend to die in ways that are less worthy of a James Bond movie plot.

As for being a witness for "every crime that ever happens near you", how many felonious crimes do you personally witness in the average day? I'm not talking copyright infringement, but about muggings, rapes, murder, burglary, robbery, etc. If your answer is > .009, you need to move. Soon.

You obviously don't live in a major city.

Re:Rogue-like

[Pharmboy]

Lived in Dallas, Phoenix, now in the Triad area (over 1 million), so yes, I'm pretty familiar with "city".

Re:Rogue-like

[WuphonsReach]

(Criminals tend not to rob poor people much now, because, duh, they don't have any money.)

Nonsense.

Criminal activity almost always starts in one's comfort zone - which means victimizing people near to you. Or stealing from a store that you frequent and already know. Or committing a crime of opportunity when a situation presents itself.

Now, what proportion of street thieves and robbers live in poor areas?

It's only the more organized criminals who think ahead a bit and realize that they should commit crimes outside of their home turf.

Re:Rogue-like

[dossen]

Charlie Stross - Halting State: Searchable voice tags... And the police are wearing recorders for evidence - there's actually a small bit of the story that involves the police not being able to prove their case because of having no video - Imagine a world, where confessions get thrown out of court, if the police can't establish continuous video from arrest to court hearing...

Quoting himself now? Megalomania

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there no new story, only Bruce quoting himself from 2006?

Re:Quoting himself now? Megalomania

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like you have to click the link to get the news part. Scoring some hits, mebe?

Re:Quoting himself now? Megalomania

[eparker05]

It seems that a Tech columnist posted a scantily detailed opinion piece on the subject last march. Our submitter linked to his opinion on the opinion piece.

http://www.darkreading.com/blog/archives/2010/03/is_it_time_for.html?cid=nl_DR_DAILY_2010-03-15_h

Re:Quoting himself now? Megalomania

[Glonoinha]

It's a gargoyle rig as described in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, circa 1992.
It was a good idea. Not an original idea, but a good idea nonetheless.

Hmm...

[ShadowDragoonFTW]

I don't like the privacy concerns if something like that was ever stolen or linked into...

Re:Hmm...

[WrongSizeGlass]

Um ... what about it being used against someone as evidence that they committed a crime?

Judge: I'm sorry, Mr Smith, but your "Life Recorder" does not enjoy your 4th or 5th Amendment rights. Take him away boys!

Re:Hmm...

[inviolet]

I don't like the privacy concerns if something like that was ever stolen or linked into...

Presumably they have two decryption keys: one that you own for use in retrieving stuff for personal use, and another held only by the state that can be obtained only with a court order.

On balance I'd say this prospect is a Good Thing, because it would make it vastly easier to prove somebody guilty or not-guilty. That, in turn, will pull the rug out from the more offensive aspects of our current justice system -- particularly the ridiculous business of conviction based on the testimony of a single eyewitness.

Re:Hmm...

[smooth wombat]

Take him away boys!

That should be:

Bake him away toys!

Hunny!

[TheKidWho]

"Hunny, I demand you have your life recorder on you at ALL times!"

Please don't try to make this practical.

Re:Hunny!

[maxume]

I'm pretty sure you are well past "She's not worth it" if you are having that discussion.

Re:Hunny!

[Homr Zodyssey]

Heck. With one of these I might actually win an argument. She never seems to remember things happening the same way I do.

Can't use it in MD

[ColdBoot]

MD is a 2 party consent state - can't use it here!

Re:Can't use it in MD

[Rogerborg]

Even in public? Photography or journalism must be a risky occupation then.

Re:Can't use it in MD

[cenobyte40k]

Sure you can. In MD they use security camera's all the time. In fact I have seen hidden security cameras in MD. The only time consent for taking your picture or recording is necessary is when one or more parties have assumed privacy. IE in there own home, on the phone, etc. Once you are in public is doesn't matter. Consent BTW doesn't have to be in writing either. If the camera is obvious that's good enough.

Re:Can't use it in MD

[TheNinjaroach]

Sure you can.

No, not as far as audio is concerned. You cannot tape conversations in MD - even in public - if you do not have consent of both parties. Police in Baltimore use and abuse this law on a regular basis when they are filmed in public. Fark or Slashdot had a story on this many months ago.

Re:Can't use it in MD

[fprintf]

Just last week there was a case of a motorcyclist recording a man waving a gun running up to him. The guy was a state cop and after he had taken a few steps out of his car yelled "state police!". The motorcyclist was being charged with a felony under federal wiretapping laws. MD is indeed a two-party notice state according to the news articles last week.

Re:Can't use it in MD

[IanO]

Having a camera didn't work out so well for this guy in Maryland:

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/04/19/motorcyclist-arrested-for-recording-cop-brandishing-gun-with-hel/

He ended up having his computers confiscated as recording the officer is considered a felony.

Re:Can't use it in MD

[rhook]

That law applies to recorded conversations when you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Think telephone calls.

Re:Can't use it in MD

[rhook]

Police can charge you with anything, that does not mean the charges will stick. Its also perfectly legal to record public servants during the course of their duties. I even bet the police have video and audio of the interaction from their dashcams. How much do you want to bet they don't have consent for those recordings?

Re:Can't use it in MD

[Hatta]

How much do you want to bet police officers have specific exemptions created for them in Maryland law?

Re:Can't use it in MD

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact I have seen hidden security cameras in MD.

They clearly weren't hidden then, were they?

Re:Can't use it in MD

[Anonymous Coward]

cameras

Re:Can't use it in MD

[Locke2005]

You can take pictures or video, but can't record conversations. Strangely enough, pictures are legal anywhere you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy, but recording audio without people's knowledge is illegal by federal and most state wiretapping statutes -- a clear case of the law not keeping up with technology. (How is audio recording any different than video recording someone's face and showing it to a lip reader?)

Re:Can't use it in MD

[Hurricane78]

What he meant, is that it’s not legal. Just like those cameras are not legal. Unless there are a big warnings *outside* of its field of view.

Your argument is like saying: Sure you can rape someone. It’s happening all the time.

Re:Can't use it in MD

[rhook]

Doesn't matter, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy when you are out in public. Same applies if the police are recording. There is case law that supports this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katz_v._United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy

Attacked from Behind?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a stupid idea. If you were attacked from behind, you would get the voice, if there was one. Additionally, you would get a picture of the ground as the attacker beat your arse senseless.

Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like the Alibi Archives from Hominids.

It already exists

[kaldari]

A little pricey, but you can already buy such a thing: http://wearcam.org/domewear/

Re:It already exists

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently they couldn't find a sentient female model

Copyrights?

[Thiez]

Good luck getting into a cinema wearing one of those.

Re:Copyrights?

[captainpanic]

I believe that the law states that you have to mention that you're wearing a recorder before starting ANY conversation.

Also, confidential meetings and conversations would become more interesting.

In addition, I would turn the damned thing off a lot - because I like my privacy - and if I'd lose that recorder, it would all be out on the streets.
And I would probably forget to turn it back on if I'd take my little walk on the streets.

Re:Copyrights?

[SethJohnson]

State-by-state, friend. No federal law on recording conversations. Since this only records what the wearer may witness, it evades a lot of laws against hidden video cameras.

Seth

Re:Copyrights?

[fprintf]

And if you are like the motorcyclist in Maryland, recently, you will find yourself brought up on felony wiretapping laws for illegal audio recording of a state police officer without permission. Yikes! Most states are two party consent, which means each party to a recording needs to provide acknowledgment and agreement for the recording to proceed.

Re:Copyrights?

[Anonymous Coward]

State-by-state, friend. No federal law on recording conversations.

Country by country, my friend. Most of the world is actually outside the US, and US federal laws have little or no relevance.

Re:Copyrights?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I believe that the law states that you have to mention that you're wearing a recorder before starting ANY conversation.

It depends. Most US states have a one-party consent law. That is, if the person carrying the recorder knows he's carrying it, that's good enough.

There are 12 (last I checked) that have two-party consent laws, meaning that all parties being recorded have consent. For phone calls, some states also require an audible background beep at regular intervals.

Re:Copyrights?

[Surt]

But on the plus side, countries outside the US have little or no relevance, so it balances out.

Re:Copyrights?

[mikael_j]

People who seriously feel that way are the reason I'm in favor of a UN trade embargo against the US for whatever cooked up reason they could possibly come up with, just to see how "little or no relevance" the rest of the world really has to the US...

(I'm not saying you actually feel this way but there are definitely loudmouthed idiots screaming shit like this any time they get the opportunity)

Re:Copyrights?

[SethJohnson]

That little embargo will last just up until the trailer for Avatar 2 is released on the internet.

Seth

The Final Cut

[omnichad]

And they can make a great highlight video of your life to show at your funeral. Whether you were a good man or a bad man is all in the hands of the editor.

Re:The Final Cut

[bytestorm]

Comes complete with a real-life blooper reel!

Re:The Final Cut

[phulshof]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364343/
That one you mean?

Re:The Final Cut

[totalg33k]

This : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101698/ (Defending your life w/Albert Brooks) came to mind first

Re:The Final Cut

[omnichad]

Yes. A very strange role for Robin Williams, though not as disturbing as One Hour Photo.

Re:The Final Cut

[tgd]

Mine would like like a porno.

Only the Cinemax kind where nothing really ever happens.

Sucks.

Life Recorder: a.k.a iSecure

[Anonymous Coward]

Sign me up so ALL my activities can be followed by
Big Brother.

This is definitely THE device to blend.

Yours In Astrakhan,
Kilgore Trout

clear evidence we did not evolve from primates

[Anonymous Coward]

monkeys use better judgement, are infinitely more independent, & they never rely on us to provide them with anything, unless we capture/cage them. there's more.

Re:clear evidence we did not evolve from primates

[Errol backfiring]

Apes however...

a few more years...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have considered buying/building something like this for my bicycle, in case I die in an accident, but the battery/processor are still not there yet.

Since I first looked at what's required one component became cheap enough - the data storage (microSD).

Re:a few more years...

[bluesatin]

I have considered buying/building something like this for my bicycle, in case I die in an accident, but the battery/processor are still not there yet.

Why need an expansive battery when you have a viable source of power between your legs?

Re:a few more years...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why need an expansive battery when you have a viable source of power between your legs?

That's what she said.

Re:a few more years...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why need an expansive battery when you have a viable source of power between your legs?

That's only true for women; what about men you insensitive sexist bastard?

Great Sci-fi movie

[Anonymous Coward]

Johnnie J. is just your average, overworked employee at a large, multinational corporation. Like everyone else, he uses a liferecorder to keep track of his most precious memories.

One day, Johnnie goes to review the data. It has footage of him stealing company secrets. The next thing you know, Johnnie's being shot at. He's being chased. The government goes after him for his data. The corporation goes after him for his theft. Hitmen have been contracted for him.

The only problem? Johnnie doesn't remember doing anything that was captured on his liferecorder. Was he brainwashed? Is he being framed? Is he a sleeper agent? Will some hot chick who is part of a third, mysterious organization help him to clear his name?

Coming this year, Tom Cruise in "The Schneier Incident".

That's just generic enough to work!

Law Enforcement Implications

[Anonymous Coward]

Cops do not like being recorded by civilians.

Expect to be harrassed, criminally charged with trumped-up charges, maybe even have illegal drugs or weapons planted on you, and in extreme cases possibly even get beaten up or even killed (depending on your location) as a result of recording any interaction with police.

Re:Law Enforcement Implications

[Spatial]

No, that's what happens when you don't record them.

Re:Law Enforcement Implications

[linzeal]

That's why these should be immediately installed in every cop badge in the country.

Re:Law Enforcement Implications

[allcaps]

Without their knowledge.

Re:Law Enforcement Implications

[lite99]

Rather, we only need the knowledge - every cop gets a badge that is said to contain a camera. Much cheaper than actually recording, and touches the root of the problem. We don't want cops that beat us and get convicted with cam footage; we want cops that don't beat us to begin with.

Re:Law Enforcement Implications

[KraftDinner]

We don't want cops that beat us and get convicted with cam footage; we want cops that don't beat us to begin with.

Good luck with that one.

Re:Law enforcement implications

[hedwards]

In most areas the cops are already being recorded. Around here on video and there's been talk of getting them wired for sound as well. The things that cops tend to worry the most about are mostly involving weapons and obeying their instructions. If you're wearing the equipment you've made your decision and unless they ask for it to be removed you shouldn't even consider doing so.

Bicycling

[ciaohound]

How about a bicycle-ride recorder, for the next time someone throws trash at you or yells obscenities.

Re:Bicycling

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a bicycle-ride recorder, so law enforcement can ticket bike riders for not obeying traffic laws like they are supposed to?

Re:Bicycling

[DNS-and-BIND]

Why would people be doing that? Strange. I ride my bike and nobody throws trash or screams at me. Maybe this random image I found on the net could shed some light on the subject?

Re:Bicycling

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a bicycle-ride recorder, so law enforcement can ticket bike riders for not obeying traffic laws like they are supposed to?

Or provide evidence when they hit pedestrians in crosswalks (as I've narrowly escaped, twice)?

Re:Bicycling

[dunezone]

I don't condone those actions but its probably a reaction to the following...

You are on a road that is heavily used by traffic and should not have bicyclists on it in the first place.

You are 5 feet away from the curb and slowing up traffic. Your distance from the curb keeps changing making passing extremely dangerous for the driver and puts the you at risk.

You ignore stop signs and street lights.

Re:Bicycling

[maxume]

Bicycles are traffic.

There are restrictions, such as freeways, but this is true for most roads.

Re:Bicycling

[LWATCDR]

I know this is off topic but there are a lot of idiots on bicycles that give bicyclists a bad rep.
I used to ride a lot and have both a street and off road bike so I feel your pain but sometimes there are idiots that out there that cause big problems.
A good example is one day my wife and I where driving to lunch and our bumper was in the cross walk. Not our tires mind you just a bit of the bumper. An idiot on a bicycle yelled at her and told my wife that the crosswalk as for him!
The thing is that idiot was riding on the sidewalk on a rode with a BICYCLE LANE!
I will not get into the group ride that decided that three abreast on a busy two lane road at 8:00 am on a workday was a good plan.
I was terrified because I had a line of cars behind me. on coming traffic to the left and two bicyclists right in front of my car! If one had had a flat I would have had no choice but to hit them! The though of hitting a fellow rider makes me sick to my stomach but they literally hemmed me in.
So yes we have to deal with idiot cage drivers and idiot riders making our life hard.

Re:Bicycling

[Glonoinha]

If one had had a flat I would have had no choice but to hit them!

For future reference you don't have to wait for one of them to get a flat to hit them. Just do the speed limit and stay in your lane and you will hit them regardless.

Re:Bicycling

[HungryHobo]

You forgot the most likely scenario:

The drivers are malicious arseholes.

You know the ones.
The ignorant dickheads who think that cyclists have no right to be on heavily used roads.

Re:Bicycling

[u38cg]

Usually, I stay away from the kerb to force vehicles to pass me when it's safe, because I don't appreciate being ground against the side of the kerb by idiots who don't seem to appreciate the width of the road in comparison to my vehicle. I'd be the first to agree some cyclists are damn fools, but at the end of the day cyclists are *incredibly* vulnerable. I have close calls on a monthly basis, and it happens no matter how safely you ride. It's not surprising that a lot of us behave like dicks.

Re:Bicycling

[Nadaka]

A bike has every bit as much a right to the road as any other motor vehicle. As a bike rider, you are supposed to stay in the center of the traffic lane. It is a courtesy by the bike rider to move to the left and allow more room for passing. That said, if you can't drive in a strait line and refuse to obey traffic laws, you shouldn't be on the road. Most car drivers can't drive in as strait of a line as I typically bike and they utterly refuse to cede right of way as legally required to a bike rider and they never come to a complete stop at stop signs.

Re:Bicycling

[LWATCDR]

Way not funny.

Re:Bicycling

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the most likely scenario:

The cyclists are malicious arseholes.

You know the ones.
The ignorant dickheads who think that they own the road and have no requirement to follow posted signs and signals.

Re:Bicycling

[Anonymous Coward]

Is everyone this grouchy in real life?

Re:Bicycling

[Hatta]

Obey the traffic laws and I won't yell obscenities at you. That includes riding on the road in the correct direction, passing me on the left unless I'm turning left, and coming to a complete stop at stop signs. I can't tell you how many people I've nearly hit because they thought a line of cars at a stop sign meant they could just speed past everyone on the right and blow through the intersection.

Re:Bicycling

[Psmylie]

As has been stated, bicycles are traffic. They have every right (legally speaking, at least where I live) to be on the road. The fact that they slow down traffic isn't a valid complaint. Some drivers slow down traffic by driving 10+ miles per hour under the speed limit. They can legally do so. The speed limit is intended to limit how fast you can drive, it doesn't mean that a cyclist has to be able to go that fast in order to have the privilege to use that road.

Also, hugging the curb is a bad idea. There are often debris, parked cars, potholes, etc. to go around. This is why cyclists often have to swerve suddenly, to avoid those obstructions. It's better and safer to maintain a constant distance from the curb, even if the cyclist could spend most of his/her time much closer. I do agree about obeying traffic signals, though. Many cyclists will blow right through stop signs or traffic lights, make lane changes and turns with no signal, and things like that.

People are too impatient. Drivers think they own the road. Cyclists don't bother stopping when the law says they should. People need to just be patient and follow the rules that were set up to protect them. That, and being observant, will drastically cut down on the number of cycling accidents every year, in my opinion.

Re:Bicycling

[Anonymous Coward]

A bike has every bit as much a right to the road as any other motor vehicle. As a bike rider, you are supposed to stay in the center of the traffic lane. It is a courtesy by the bike rider to move to the left and allow more room for passing. That said, if you can't drive in a strait line and refuse to obey traffic laws, you shouldn't be on the road. Most car drivers can't drive in as strait of a line as I typically bike and they utterly refuse to cede right of way as legally required to a bike rider and they never come to a complete stop at stop signs.

When I see bicyclists obeying the law, I give them more than the necessary respect: they deserve it, as some drivers can be clueless or pricks. When I see bicyclists flaunting the law (like going the wrong way down the one way street I'm driving on, or cutting me off as I walk legally in a crosswalk), I verbally let them have it in no uncertain terms, using an argument that goes along the lines of, "do you drive your car like that, too, [expletive]?"

Unfortunately, the large majority of the riders where I live fall in the latter category.

Re:Bicycling

[hedwards]

But they have a point. In most of the places where that happens the cyclists are violating the traffic codes. No driver is supposed to impede the flow of traffic. Which means that cyclists huffing up the hill are supposed to be on the sidewalk. Rather than impeding traffic. Likewise rolling through red lights is not something that they get to do.

Sure there are dick head drivers, but it's a non-starter to say that since drivers are frequently dickheads that somehow cyclists violating traffic laws is somehow OK.

Re:Bicycling

[Surt]

Right, those two issues are balanced. One threatens the life of the bicycle rider. The other ... threatens the life of the bicycle rider.

Re:Bicycling

[silas_moeckel]

So your saying you force people to do things your way while riding a bike. Hate to break it to you but your what people dislike about bike riders. Please stop interfering with a safe traffic flow (we need more enforcement of those regs) your slower than everybody else so get out of there way same as a tractor, big truck or my granny. If it's not safe to pass pull over to the curb and stop and let traffic pass you safely. You seem to be somewhat rational and have avoided the bike/prius geen eco peen syndrome but please stop thinking that you can force others to do what you want.

Re:Bicycling

[Surt]

I've had it happen to me 5 or 6 times, and I ride in full legal compliance. People think its fun to scare the shit out of you and risk your life if they can speed away and never have to deal with you again.

Re:Bicycling

[Surt]

And risking the life of the cyclist balances out their inconveniencing you? Nice ....

Re:Bicycling

[Surt]

Not sure where you're riding. Britain? In most US states riders are required to keep to the right WHEN SAFE in order to allow passing. You should not be in the center unless it's required for safety.

Re:Bicycling

[AmericanGladiator]

"Which means that cyclists huffing up the hill are supposed to be on the sidewalk. " And with no sidewalk? Don't do what this guy did: http://www.portlandpersonalinjuryaccidentlawyer.com/blog/bicycle-accidents/california-doctor-sentenced-for-assaulting-bike-riders-oregon-accident-attorneys/

Re:Bicycling

[Locke2005]

How about the suicidal dickheads who ride on the shoulder of unlighted roads at night, in dark clothing with no lights or reflectors? I have the greatest respect for those cyclist who go out of their way to make sure I see them, but very little respect for those I can see until they are 20 feet in front of my car. Please, cyclists -- buy yourself florescent vests, and the brightest headlight and blinking red rear light you can find! It make everybody safer. (I've also had cyclists point out that I had pulled out of a driveway at night with my lights off -- something they were entirely within their rights to do, as they probably didn't see me until the last minute either.)

Re:Bicycling

[HungryHobo]

please stop thinking that you can force others to do what you want.

Stop trying to get people to do what you want and instead do what I want!!!

Re:Bicycling

[Bryan3000000]

Yeah, I see bicyclists riding on pretty narrow roads around here all the time. Roads that have no shoulder, that are quite well noted for having accidents because of this, and on which people have a tendency to break the speed limit (which by the way I have a serious problem with all of these things, as they caused my wife to have a very dangerous rollover accident when an oncoming, speeding car crossed the median and then, of course, just kept going since there was no collision).

I like bicycles. I wish there were more appropriate places to ride them, and I also wish that more roads were appropriate places to ride. But the people who ride bikes on these roads are idiots. They seriously endanger both themselves and others, regardless of any right they have to ride their bikes on those roads. They do however cause people to slow down (to well below the speed limit), which is nice, but the cost-benefit on that is definitely not a winner.

Re:Bicycling

[HungryHobo]

Odly enough none of the dickhead drivers have ever done their obscentiy yelling or object throwing anywhere near stop signs, when passing them or near an intersection.

No it's always on a long stretch of road when a car full of Typical Young Male Car Enthusiasts pulls level while I'm cycling reasonably close to the side, scream some bullshit, throw a can and accelerate away laughing.

But let me guess- because you sometimes see some random cyclists breaking traffic laws you have rationalised that it's perfectly ok to act like that to any cyclist you see.

Re:Bicycling

[noidentity]

How about a bicycle-ride recorder, so law enforcement can ticket bike riders for not obeying traffic laws like they are supposed to?

The video will conveniently have technical problems at every stop sign and red light.

Re:Bicycling

[Hatta]

No sir. I hate cars. I drive a beat up 15 year old honda accord with everything stock. I'd love to share the road. It's just that about half the time when I see a cyclist he ends up breaking the law in some way that endangers his safety and my driving record. As a result, when I see a cyclist the first thing that goes through my head is "uh oh, what's this guy going to try to pull".

One thing that I see all the time is passing on the right. I may pull behind a cyclist and be stuck going 10 mph for a few minutes until I can pass. That's ok, I pull around into the left lane and give him plenty of space. After I get around him we get to a stop light. Instead of stopping behind me, the cyclist pulls all the way up to the intersection, illegally passing me on the right. If I'm lucky, I'm just stuck behind him again. If I'm unlucky, I nearly hit him as I turn right and he blows right through the intersection.

If there were a bike lane, I'd be fine with that. I am very much in favor of installing bike lanes around my city, and they are working on it. But until then, remember you have to obey all the laws cars do.

Re:Bicycling

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a bicycle-ride recorder, so law enforcement can ticket bike riders for not obeying traffic laws like they are supposed to?

Because car drivers always obey traffic laws.

I recently started bicycling in downtown Seattle.. Probably a tame city compared to many. But I quickly learned the obvious - that many cars don't follow traffic laws. And many won't yield to bicycles (pulling out in front of them, etc), even when they are supposed to.

So while it's fun to self-righteously *say* bikes should obey the traffic laws like cars, that assumes the cars obey the rules and laws.. And many don't. So on a bike, that assumption will get you injured or killed. You gotta do what it takes to survive.

Example: I stop for the red light on my bike. It turns green, but a car cuts in front of me and stops to make a turn, sometimes even blocking a designated bike lane. Now I'm stuck behind the car while he waits for the pedestrians to clear the intersection. I now have the option of trying to merge into the next lane of very busy traffic (not). And I get stuck for another light cycle.

Re:Bicycling

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a bicycle-ride recorder, for the next time someone throws trash at you or yells obscenities.

An then it can be subpoenaed to show the bicycle rider ignoring traffic controls such as red lights and being pricks in general.

Re:Bicycling

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Bicycles are traffic.

There are restrictions, such as freeways, but this is true for most roads.

Just try and convince bicyclists they have to follow the rules of the road too. Most of them seem to think any piece of pavement is fair game and the rules of the road; even common courtesy do not apply to them.

Re:Bicycling

[bugs2squash]

If only they would consistently be traffic. In my town they switch at will from being "traffic" to being "pedestrians" giving them free reign over the streets and the sidewalks and apparent immunity from all traffic laws. They are a menace to pedestrians when on the sidewalk and their behavior on the road is frequently appalling.

Re:Bicycling

[maxume]

Especially the ones that you notice, right?

Re:Bicycling

[u38cg]

Nope. It's in your best interests for me to do what's safe for me. Killing a cyclist really puts a dampener on your day. If it takes you an extra thirty seconds or so - which is the order of delay we're talking about - to reach the next red light, well, boo hoo. Yes, it probably does irritate you, but I prefer you irritated to me dead. As vexing as that is for you, I've been run over twice since January - both times in clear view by idiots - and so I really have very little interest in shaving a few seconds off your journey time. Sorry.

Re:Bicycling

[Jawn98685]

"...full legal compliance..."
Riiiiht...
Meaning, "I'm crowding into traffic as much as I can get away with and so what if I'm moving twenty miles an hour slower than the flow of traffic would otherwise move. I'm making a statement here, so fuck those carbon belching asshole motorists." Right?
Sorry, pal. I support cycling, all things green, etc. I really do, but I have had far too many "activist" cyclists deliberately and needlessly make my life miserable too many times to give them any slack anymore. Share the road means "sharing", not deliberately holding up traffic when you could do otherwise.

Re:Bicycling

[Surt]

No, I don't do that. I don't know anyone who does. If I'm in the traffic flow, I'm doing it for a reason (typically: hazardous levels of glass along the right, potholes, etc that will cause me a flat or a fall, or for left turns.)

Re:Bicycling

[kgo]

Yeah, having to slam on my breaks with a semi behind me becuase of some jackass doesn't threaten me at all.

Re:Bicycling

[Surt]

Well sure, if the bicyclist is on the freeway like that, they get what they deserve. On surface streets where the speed restrictions and modern auto safety designs have been used, no that wouldn't threaten you at all.

Re:Bicycling

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you and your faggoty bicycle.

Re:Bicycling

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. They never come to a complete stop at a 4 way intersection, nor do they signal when they want to turn. Of course, it is not like drivers follow these rules either.

Re:Bicycling

[rusl]

Why can't you apply your brakes safely? If not you are driving dangerously. If you are driving dangerously then how is it my fault?

The fact is the car is the danger. Also the truck. The only fault I have is that I am paying my taxes to subsidise your unethical and unsafe behavior in public. But I can't opt out of that even if it ruins my city, planet and kills and maims people around me.

If there were any justice people driving cars in cities would be criminally prosecuted. And people could then move on to comfort issues and minor threats like bicycles bumping into people. If you think this isn't so you haven't looked at the issue objectively and are taken in by the car propaganda, the biggest advertising industry. To get a more realistic perspective look at death statistics especially for those who are not newborn infants or elderly (the majority of people). The facts are clear. Cars kill most people unless they live to be old enough to die of disease, or if they don't make it past infanthood. Maybe not in war-torn parts of the world but the 40000K/yr in the US isn't small. Compare that to American losses in Vietnam. And one can add that oil wars are not unrelated to car driving. Also the history of car technology is intertwined with the military in WW1 and WW2 (tanks) and the Cold War (Interstate system)

Re:Bicycling

[rusl]

"Everything bad I do on my bike I learned from cars."

Re:Bicycling

[rusl]

You obey laws and I won't pack a gun with my bike and shoot warning shots next to your children's heads whenever I feel like it or if I think you are maybe breaking what I think are the rules. Oh wait, I'm not allow to use a weapon when I get around and randomly threaten your life.... Something about driving a car is encouraged for the economy and cyclists and pedestrians have a REAL choice: follow the rules or die.

Sorry to inconvenience you in your morning commute. I'm sure you have somewhere more important to go than I do.

Re:Bicycling

[Hatta]

See, this is the kind of stuff that gives cyclists a bad name. I suggest you follow the laws, and I get threatened. You're not going to garner much sympathy from anyone that way.

My suggestion that you follow the laws is as much for your safety as my convenience. I *really* don't want to hit someone because he decided his momentum was worth more than his safety.

Re:Bicycling

[quacking duck]

Then there's this guy who mowed down 5 cyclists, from behind, with a minivan, while the cyclists were in a designated bike lane, then drove off.

Re:Bicycling

[quacking duck]

But they have a point. In most of the places where that happens the cyclists are violating the traffic codes. No driver is supposed to impede the flow of traffic. Which means that cyclists huffing up the hill are supposed to be on the sidewalk. Rather than impeding traffic.

Where I live, biking on a sidewalk (if it's not a recreational pathway) is illegal, so the cyclist would be in a catch-22 where he could be cited one way or the other.

Re:Bicycling

[kgo]

Uh, I'm just responding specifically to the claim that a bicylist breaking the law only endangers himself.

How does slamming on the breaks when a bicyclist runs a red light or darts out of a blind alley make me an unsafe driver?

Re:Bicycling

[kgo]

A bicyclist running through a red light when I'm going 35 doesn't threaten me?

Re:Bicycling

[Surt]

Nope. Your car (assuming you are driving something built in the last two decades) will easily protect you from a 35 mph collision, while the cyclist has almost no chance of surviving a comparable incident.

Re:Bicycling

[silas_moeckel]

If your have been run over twice in 4 months your obviously doing something wrong, if it's 30 seconds to the next red light your obviously living in a city I hope by your own choice or that you will get out of that hell hole eventually. That said getting run over every other month leads me to believe there is a problem with how your conducting yourself.

Re:Bicycling

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Especially the ones that you notice, right?

Actually I do notice the ones who are actually polite, they are few and far between.

Re:Bicycling

[maxume]

At least the first one can't have been that bad.

Re:Bicycling

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you learned in Bangkok...

Stealth as the only option

[Zero_DgZ]

I sort of use something like this today, in the gritty old present day.

In my car I've got one of my old PDA's mounted instead of a GPS device. It's rather firmly permanently mounted to the dash until you take all the bezels off and unscrew it from the back, so I consider its risk for theft fairly low. Also, it's not mounted in the usual look-at-me GPS area but down by the driver's side kick plate.

Anyway, I have it there because I use Pocket Excel (don't laugh) to keep track of all my invoices and orders for the day. I also have a mapping program installed, and obviously it uses GPS. I've successfully used it to defuse two frivolous traffic tickets by less-than-scrupulous police officers: Once by making it a policy to keep all of my GPS logs, and once by happening to have a hotkey for the note taker "record" function bound, so I could easily and silently (also legally, in this state!) record everything the lying police officer said.

I've also seen on DealExtreme and other places some always-on, rolling-record capable video cameras for mounting wherever, and I've been tempted to pick one up and mount it in my car, police car style. Mailing a CD-R every month to the local precinct with video of their police officers flagrantly breaking traffic laws would be optional, but probably a lot of fun the first couple of times.

Remember: Big Brother is only bad for you if you are not personally Big Brother!

Re:Stealth as the only option

[GameboyRMH]

Anonymously mailing a CD-R every month to both the local precinct and the local media with video of their police officers flagrantly breaking traffic laws would be awesome and a lot of fun every single time.

FTFY.

Law enforcement implications

[Anonymous Coward]

Does wearing such a thing break wiretapping laws if you are being questioned by the police? Getting a speeding ticket for going 5 over the limit gets a lot more hairy if the cop finds out he's being recorded.

Down with FPP

[Anonymous Coward]

The movies Strange Days and Brainstorm come to mind... ergo, the most common usage will be FPS... First-Person Porn.

Doesn't have to be that big

[cenobyte40k]

It doesn't need to have that much space. Anything over a day is more than enough for now, sure as storage and power gets smaller and cheaper having days,weeks,months or years will happen, but I think we will start to see them before they get all the way to a year at a time. Oh and when are we going to make the cops wear them? Can we start doing that now? As we know cops are involved with more violence per capita than any other group of citizens annually, year after year. (With the exception of maybe solders)

Re:Doesn't have to be that big

[maxume]

There are pilot programs going on.

I think it is Tazer that is making the hardware/selling the service (the video is uploaded to their system, to reduce tampering).

I saw a blurb on television, so no links.

Re:Doesn't have to be that big

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh and when are we going to make the cops wear them? Can we start doing that now? As we know cops are involved with more violence per capita than any other group of citizens annually, year after year. (With the exception of maybe solders)

Many cops already do wear them when on duty. The camera is on the dash of his car, the mic is on the cop, the tape is locked in his trunk where only his sergeant can get it.

Re:Doesn't have to be that big

[Anonymous Coward]

First they came for the cops...

Re:Doesn't have to be that big

[religious freak]

As we know cops are involved with more violence per capita

Are you trying to insinuate cops are the CAUSE of the violence they're involved in?

I want it - For My Car

[StCredZero]

I want such a device, but not for my person. I'd want it on my car with 360-degree coverage, but no audio. I'd like to have a record of all of my interactions with traffic police. If there's no audio, then it doesn't fall afoul of recorder laws. It would also be dandy for catching people who dent your car in parking lots. Also, I've been in the occasional traffic accident and I know that people lie in that situation.

Of course, have it encrypt its content using RSA and randomly generated session keys, so that only I would be able to decrypt the recordings. (Even if an attacker hacks the hardware! You'd have to be able to read the RAM while the session keys were resident. You could even get around this with some judicious White Box encryption. )

Re:I want it - For My Car

[Anonymous Coward]

I expect we will see something like that on cars within 20 years.

Although with two caveats:
They will be mandatory on new vehicles
There will be a back door (no pun intended) for Law Enforcement

Re:I want it - For My Car

[Yvan256]

You mean that kind of pun?

Re:I want it - For My Car

[SethJohnson]

Cars would be a lucrative application of this technology. It would likely get your insurance rates reduced because it would help document collisions and vehicle thefts.

I think it would also be exceptionally valuable for use with police. A camera system that records forwards and backwards could be used in court to dispute a cop's claim that a driver was swerving and might even refute a claim of speeding. It certainly could bolster a driver's claim that she fully stopped at a traffic signal. Because the conversation would be held on public property, a roadway, I'm not sure the officer's consent would even be required to record the audio. The police dash cams record audio for DWI stops and there certainly isn't any consent involved there.

If the reason for a traffic stop can be proven to be false, anything that is charged afterwards must be dismissed. i.e. if a cop pulls a car over for swerving across lanes and then notices a funny smell in the car and searches to find a collection of pot, a camera recording that proves the driver wasn't swerving would require the possession charge to be thrown out.

Seth

Re:I want it - For My Car

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's no audio, then it doesn't fall afoul of recorder laws.

In the USA an encounter with police is a public event. I don't know of any state that would have a law against recording such from a car.

Sadly, in the USA, ordering recording devices turned off is not unlawful. IMO it should be an almost instant destruction/obstruction of evidence charge.

Re:I want it - For My Car

[thijsh]

Excellent idea, but no need to wait for new tech... you could build this with a low power PC with some standard small camera's and record to an SSD drive (I guess they should be able to survive a crash)... As an added bonus you can add a tiny screen to the mix and create a parking camera. I'd set the system up with some harddisk encryption, but nothing over the top paranoid is needed since you should configure the system to always power off once you turn the engine off (your keys won't be in memory). There is an added bonus to record possible theft, but leaving the system running would drain the battery overnight. So the main purpose would be to have better legal standing in all traffic related incidents. But then again if you build a system like that adding some theft-protection with a GPS receiver and a 3G uplink should be easy, then you would be able to track your car when stolen.

Hmmm... looks like this project would run away from me until I have a full blown car computer, adding satnav, media player, car-phone or internet browser... it's too tempting. My guess is I would spend more on this system then the car...

Re:I want it - For My Car

[Anonymous Coward]

This is already available. :) We've been working with them recently on this:
http://www.esycam.com/welcome-to-esycam-2990.html

Re:I want it - For My Car

[gclef]

And shortly after that "amateur" videos will flood the net with images of very awkward sex.

Re:I want it - For My Car

[Hatta]

What would encryption get you? The roadways are all public, so there's no point in trying to hide what's on the camera. What's important is replication of the data, so that it can't be destroyed when the camera gets confiscated.

Re:I want it - For My Car

[Anonymous Coward]

You could even get around this with some judicious White Box encryption [kuleuven.be].

Is that what they call DRM nowadays?

Experiment now

[Exp315]

If you want to experiment with this on the cheap, you can get a sub-$20 mini-cam from many online sources that records VGA-res video and sound to a microSD card for about an hour on a battery charge (battery being the limiting factor at the moment). I often use mine as a dash-cam in the car (to provide a video record in case of a traffic accident), or as a sports cam. I've thought of using it to secretly record meetings or transactions where a future dispute might arise, but haven't done so because of legal concerns.

Re:Experiment now

[Anonymous Coward]

"you can get a sub-$20 mini-cam from many online sources"

Any chance of a couple of links? All the ones I'm seeing are more expensive - $50+.

200 and 700 GiB?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you on crack?

Audio: HE-AAC at 16kbps = 63072000 bytes per year. That's 63.072 GB, very far from your 200 GiB estimate.

Video is debatable because of frame rate, resolution, etc. But let's assume you used a shitty CODEC, so switching to H.264 would allow you to cut your 700 GiB down to maybe 250 to 300 GB.

Re:200 and 700 GiB?

[allcaps]

redundancy and parity, don't forget ;)

Unless they mug you for your life recorder

[petes_PoV]

so that no one can attack you without being recorded.

recording a crime is one thing, still having the recording afterwards is another. Having a sufficiently high quality record of the assailant's voice or image is yet another. This thing might, just be usful as a "black box" in a car, but to have it strapped to your person? Nah!

Won't matter in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

My understanding is the cameras are useless there at catching muggers.

I'm mounting mine on my glasses

[alispguru]

Stereo mikes on the temples, heads-up display on the lenses, wirelessly connected to the wallet-sized CPU/Internet-connection box. I want it clearly stated that the US 5th Amendment covers this, though.

Some security

[Kenoli]

Presumably the device would need to (magically?) upload everything it records to some remote location to protect the data from simple theft/destruction. Naturally it won't prevent you from being brutally assaulted, but at least you might end but with some kind of evidence.

Though, recording and broadcasting everything you and everyone around you says and does might be a slight privacy concern.

David Brin hits another one....

[son_of_asdf]

Well, there's another prediction from David Brin's Earth down. http://earthbydavidbrin.pbworks.com/Predictions

Re:David Brin hits another one....

[Anonymous Coward]

Brin also wrote about this on an even more extreme level in Kiln People. If you wished, the AI on your personal server could broker video footage recorded by your home/business security cameras to interested parties for you.

The Final Cut

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a Robin Williams movie a while back that took up the implications of such a life recorder. It is called The Final Cut, and was actually a pretty good movie. I would recommend it. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364343/

For your protection, your life is being monitored

[Junior J. Junior III]

Opt me out on this one. I don't need anyone monitoring me 24x7.

Lapels?

[rwade]

A "life recorder" you can wear on your lapel

Who wears jackets with lapels all day anymore? This is not an irrelevant question -- I'm not sure where I'd put this thing if I were wearing just a t-shirt.

Re:Lapels?

[Anonymous Coward]

On your belt. Make it look like a cell phone.

Re:Lapels?

[psydeshow]

On your trucker's cap, of course.

Re:Lapels?

[jamie(really)]

Why would it not *be* your cell phone? Motorola Droid: linux, 5mp camera, 3G + wifi, battery.

In illinois

[the_Bionic_lemming]

In Illinois, it is against the law to record a conversation without consent of the other party.

How will this device work then? Do you have to advertise that you are recording? Is there an easy shut off button? Can this evidence even be used if the opponent/perp/officer starts off the defense with "He did not have permission to record" ?

Re:In illinois

[egcagrac0]

It's not my problem that you live in Illinois.

Re:In illinois

[the_Bionic_lemming]

I'm not worried about needing it.

http://www.rcfp.org/taping/

But many other states have similar injunctions, and allow for civil action against the recording individual. And, there is a caveat that all audio portion of the recording can or does fall under the wiretapping laws of the state.

Re:In illinois

[Soilworker]

Same with Canada.

Re:In illinois

[egcagrac0]

That seems to apply to recording telephone calls.

How does that apply to a compact audio or audio-visual recording device carried on ones person to document one's surroundings in public places where there is no expectation of privacy?

Re:In illinois

[the_Bionic_lemming]

from the link I posted

At least 24 states have laws outlawing certain uses of hidden cameras in private places, although many of the laws are specifically limited to attempts to record nudity. Also, many of the statutes concern unattended hidden cameras, not cameras hidden on a person engaged in a conversation. Journalists should be aware, however, that the audio portion of a videotape will be treated under the regular wiretapping laws in any state. And regardless of whether a state has a criminal law regarding cameras, undercover recording in a private place can prompt civil lawsuits for invasion of privacy.

Bold added for emphasis.

So in some states this device could be a problem, especially if talking to an officer of the law, as there was a case brought against a person for recording the officer that showed up to his front door.

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/man_charged_after_videotaping_police_on_his_own_property/

Re:In illinois

[egcagrac0]

While you generally are permitted to photograph or record video of people without permission in most public places, it is illegal in Illinois to "videotape, photograph, or film" people without their consent in "a restroom, tanning bed, or tanning salon, locker room, changing room or hotel bedroom." 720 Ill. Comp. Stat. 5/26-4(a).

Your linked article makes sense for private places, but as far as I can tell, if you're in a public park, or on a public roadway, or on a public sidewalk, or in a government building, or other public place, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

The police department elected not to prosecute Mr. Gannon. (Sorry for paywall) Yes, he was certainly hassled a lot, apparently within the letter of the law.

Re:In illinois

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Illinois's wiretapping law is a "two-party consent" law. Illinois makes it a crime to use an "eavesdropping device" to overhear or record a phone call or conversation without the consent of all parties to the conversation. The law defines an "eavesdropping device" as "any device capable of being used to hear or record oral conversation or intercept, retain, or transcribe electronic communication whether such conversation or electronic communication is conducted in person, by telephone, or by any other means.

I thank you for the link, but the above from your link supports my assertion.

Re:In illinois

[egcagrac0]

I think we're in agreement on the facts - can't legally record in private without consent. I hadn't realized how the wiretapping law (which should cover, you know, wiretapping) had been extended to cover non-telephone conversations.

I'm still focused on the public-space applications; hypothetically, I worry less about trying to videotape my assailant in a private place (where I know everybody, or know someone who knows everybody) than I do trying to figure out who mugged me in the park.

Still, an enlightening discussion. Thanks.

Illegal?

[adamdoyle]

Isn't it illegal to covertly record audio of someone in public?

Re:Illegal?

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL, but I don't think so. In most states you can even record your phone calls without informing the other person.

temp storage and important people

[ciaran_o_riordan]

> If this is the case then why is storage relevant?

Connectivity can never be guaranteed, so you either need storage or you have the thing discarding all data whenever the wifi connection is bad.

> An attacker could theoretically just jam the frequencies that the recorder/transmitter uses

Yes, but no one will ever do that just to attack someone. Unless you're a president of something, in which case you won't be walking around with just a camera around your neck for protection.

Re:temp storage and important people

[Thanshin]

> If this is the case then why is storage relevant?

Connectivity can never be guaranteed, so you either need storage or you have the thing discarding all data whenever the wifi connection is bad.

And you need a year of storage for that? How long are you planning to stay on that bad wifi tunnel?

Re:temp storage and important people

[Dalambertian]

A life recorder doesn't just deter criminals, it also deters abusive police officers, molesting teachers/parents, and the like. Those terrified of surveillance should realize that it is a double edged sword and it can be used to benefit us as much as harm us. I for one am tired of waiting for camera phones to be on when cops are literally body-slamming teenagers on the concrete.

Re:temp storage and important people

[Eivind]

Actually, in a world where a large fraction of people are recording, it's reasonable to assume that -many- will do that, if it's a practical way of thwarting the recording. Recording locally on the device doesn't really help though, as the attacker can just steal the device.

Islands in the Net

[mattr]

In Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net, the protagonist wears video sunglasses (1988). Streaming to the net live is seen as a shield. Even now, clearly it would be safer to stream it than carry the video on you.

No bets about quality of the recording. However a cue might be taken from the "smart bandaid" wireless health sensors that are being developed now, with enough power to reach a wristwatch or pocket device. What market opportunity (and perhaps technological advance) needs to be presented to camera manufacturers in order to get them to package small wireless audio/video sensors for the mass market?

Re:Islands in the Net

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that this isn't going to be really used as a security device. The biggest use will be for perving on women. You know it and I know it. In fact, I've wished I've had such a device for those fleeting "OMG, look at that hot chick!" moments that are gone long before you can grab a camera.

Re:Islands in the Net

[jimnorcal]

The day we have cameras attached to us at all times that stream the video to a far off server is the day that the police have a (legally permitted) way to turn it off before they plant drugs and guns on us and then gun us down in 'self defense'. Then they'll happily turn it back on for us.

Re:Islands in the Net

[WuphonsReach]

See also David Brin's Earth where privacy is an outmoded concept and peepers (people with recording devices) are common.

Transmetropolitan is also a weird look at a possible future.

Too many legal issues for audio alone

[futuresheep]

There are 12 states where recording a conversation of any conversation without all parties consent is illegal.

http://legallad.quickanddirtytips.com/the-legality-of-recording-conversations.aspx

Ever seen a video of a cameraman in a fight?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Ever seen a video of a cameraman in a fight? Camera goes haywire and you can't see anything but a big blur. But, like most security snake oil, I'm sure that won't make any difference to the buyers.

Re:Ever seen a video of a cameraman in a fight?

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

You still could get a clear shot of the person in the footage just before the fight begins.

Re:Ever seen a video of a cameraman in a fight?

[grumbel]

Use multiple cameras with a large field of view and some motion tracking software to fix up the video later on. The biggest problem is battery life and resolution, as the resolution will go down quite a bit if you want to capture a full 360 degree view.

Anyway, as security device it is indeed snake oil, its much more interesting to capture the important moments in your life that you didn't see coming.

Over/Under

[Anonymous Coward]

So, when will the first person born with a miniature recorder implanted at/before birth record every second of his/her entire life? My guess is after 2030, anyone think before then?

"200 gigabytes/year for audio" is practical now

[asdf7890]

"200 gigabytes/year for audio" is not "still a few generations off" unless you particularly need the device to keep data locally for long periods.

200Gbyte/year is just over half a Gig per day. You could store nearly a fortnight on an 8Gb microsd card (which are not expensive and are very small even with the required read/write interface (see http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.25557 for a small one, and this device would not need the physical USB interface so could easily be made smaller)). As long as you switched card or otherwise offloaded the data to other storage in that time your 24/7 recording is good to go - battery life would be much more of a problem than storage.

I can imagine such a device being easy to produced right now. Maybe not as small as a little lapel badge, but certainly "StarTrek TNG broach-like communicator" size or smaller. All you need is a microphone, the card reader, a small processor for compressing the incoming data, and a battery. Battery life would be the big problem, but with advances in processor tech (doing more with less power), battery tech, and the potential in the near future for trickle charging from reclaimed energy (there are a number of research groups showing promising work around gaining power from human movement via devices inlaid in clothes or, for applications such a pace-makers, installed internally) I expect the device you describe is practical in the very near future if it isn't already now.

Heck, I could set my MP3 player to voice record and leave it in my pocket all day. Call that version 1.0, and work on miniaturisation and the interface to non-local storage.

Great for self-incrimination

[Bearhouse]

When the Gov force you to reveal the recorder's contents...http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10172866-38.html

Re:Great for self-incrimination

[LWATCDR]

Yea I can see that now. "What where you doing on this date?" .....

Re:Great for self-incrimination

[adamdoyle]

I would like to think that most people are smart enough to turn off their personal video recorder before committing a crime.

So they get recorded - so what!!??

[AbbeyRoad]

Ok, Mr Big attacks you and gets recorded.
Explain how that helps you?? So now, at the end
of each year, the police have 10,000 pieces of
video footage of people attacking victims; instead
of 10,000 verbal descriptions. One for each case
file opened.

Considering the miriad of types of information
that are used to track crimes like this, video
footage will add very little really.

The biggest problem with police detective work
is NOT a lack of information. It's pooling and
cross-referencing the existing information
together in a meaningful way.

For instance an attack that happens within
100 feet walking distance from another attack
at the same time in the afternoon on a different
Tuesday.

Now THAT tells more than any video footage.

Re:So they get recorded - so what!!??

[jvkjvk]

Facial recognition software?

The verbal descriptions in no way capture the details the way a picture does.

They already have a large pool of pictures of criminals. If they take your footage and try to match, isn't that a good thing? They may be able to fix identities to a certain percentage of otherwise anonymous crimes.

Regards.

I've always wondered...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read the various posts remarking how it would be against the law to use in states where two-party consent is required for recording and whatnot, but I've always wondered about something.

Technically, the human brain is _already_ a recording device, is it not? While it doesn't create a perfect digital copy, of course, it seems to me that by simply trying to remember an experience, you are, in essence, recording it.

The only real difference between this and an external recording device is that somebody else can potentially access the information on it via technological means... but the brain is not really less of a recording device than any other.

Re:I've always wondered...

[maxume]

You are using 'technically' in the wrong sense here.

Technically, a judge would laugh you out of his court if you made that argument.

Re:I've always wondered...

[omnichad]

Don't let the RIAA hear you.

OMG!!!

[owlnation]

It's like twitter with moving pictures.

Here's some footage of me taking a dump...

And it will only make it so much easier for every cheap whore celebutard to release a sex tape, or some other low-life publicity stunt.

Do NOT want.

I don't even know where to begin.

[dotfile]

How many things are wrong with this kooky idea? Completely ineffective if you're attacked from behind, if your assailant wears a mask, if the attack happens at night, etc. Of course the very FIRST thing that's going to get stolen is your "life recorder", so now your mugger knows your ATM PIN code, all your passwords, your address, your home, your family, your friends, EVERYTHING. Your "life recorder" will of course provide evidence against you in any trial. Your employer will use it to prove you've been slacking off or sneaking off to your car for a company policy prohibited smoke. Use your imagination, there's almost NO upside to this.

If you live in constant fear of being attacked, you either need counseling or you REALLY need to move somewhere else. This country is full of small towns, medium sized cities, and even larger cities where you will be quite safe.

Re:I don't even know where to begin.

[jonaskoelker]

Your employer will use it to prove you've been slacking off or sneaking off to your car for a company policy prohibited smoke.

Stand up to your boss. Work for a company where you get the sense that you don't even need to ask if you can go outside and smoke whenever you feel like it. No amount of money is compensation enough for being treated with less dignity and respect than that.

Re:I don't even know where to begin.

[mcgrew]

If you live in constant fear of being attacked, you either need counseling or you REALLY need to move somewhere else

I can vouch for that; I'm walking distance from Springfield's ghetto, and often walk to a redneck bar in the ghetto and stagger home later. Other then people trying to sell me dope or sex, I've never been accosted.

If I want to carry my netbook with me, I drive -- I'm not THAT fearless.

umm

[nomadic]

"In 2006, writing about future threats on privacy, I described a life recorder: A "life recorder" you can wear on your lapel that constantly records is still a few generations off: 200 gigabytes/year for audio and 700 gigabytes/year for video. It'll be sold as a security device, so that no one can attack you without being recorded."

Ok, so you foretold a life recorder in 2006 on your blog. Some other guy has now suggested the same thing on his blog. The technology still isn't around. Is any part of this story news at all?

BS on 200GB/year for audio

[Rockoon]

The assumption the author is making is that there is always something to record. I'm pretty sure that the 1/3rd of the year that a person sleeps will contain highly compressible audio, not to mention the fact that he seems to think that a 64kbps bitrate is a requirement.

Regular telephone quality audio (from the "you can hear a pin drop" era) was considered to be about 8,000 samples per/second, which is in fact 64kbps for an 8-bit sample depth. This is uncompressed recording here. TFA can't beat uncompressed telephone quality audio? Really?

Re:BS on 200GB/year for audio

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see a bitrate given in the new, original, or secondary articles. But if you take 200 gigabytes (base-2, gibibytes) and divide by the seconds in the year, you get 6805 bytes/second. And nothing said it had to be uncompressed. Lossless compression of even fairly complex music cuts file sizes in half and is not very processor intensive (it can be done much faster than realtime on a general purpose CPU). Simple conversation ought to compress much better, and, of course, silence need not be recorded at all.

IMO, you wouldn't want a year's supply of data on you at all times anyway. A month, even just a few days would be fine, with regular backups, since you have to stop and recharge the device anyway. The "buffer" could be very high quality and the backup could be compressed.

Re:BS on 200GB/year for audio

[Rockoon]

I don't see a bitrate given in the new, original, or secondary articles.

Nobody said he gave a bitrate.

But if you take 200 gigabytes (base-2, gibibytes) and divide by the seconds in the year, you get 6805

Which is 54.4kbps. Sure, maybe he meant 56kbps (the next valid MP3 bitrate), but 64kbps is probably what he meant because he is just some neophyte that calculated the storage cost of a video file that he had on hand. You can tell because he doesnt justify anything and lacks any actual understanding in what he is talking about.

And nothing said it had to be uncompressed.

Nobody said it had to be uncompressed. Not even me. I pointed out that for the purposes he is talking about, you can go ahead and use uncompressed audio and STILL meet the purpose requirement of a "Life Recorder" in the space requirement he is theorizing.

We expect about 10:1 compression on average with MP3 files, so essentially he was either (A) grossly overestimating the quality required, (B) not knowing that at least 10:1 compression can be expected, or (C) based his calculations on an arbitrary video file that had absolutely no bearing on the requirements of a "Life Recorder."

I'm guessing its (C), leading to both (A) and (B) as well.

Re:BS on 200GB/year for audio

[grumbel]

The details don't really matter that much, I think the important point is simply that technology is now not only doable, but also quite cheap. A $100 1TB drive will last you a good year for audio and video recording, a little less if you don't compress much and a good bit more if you compress heavily. Also SDHC cards have enough storage for days or even weeks and hardly cost much any more. Battery life is still a bit of a problem as most device in that range only last for half a day, but things are improving. We are basically at a point where the life recorder goes from neat sci-fi idea, to something you can soon buy for the price of a NintendoDS.

Re:BS on 200GB/year for audio

[Anonymous Coward]

The full rate GSM codec is defined as using 13 kbit/s. Let's be generous (to account for music, etc) and double that to 26 kbit/s. The 1/3 of the year spent sleeping will be very compressible - say 1 kbit/s, so the daily average is going to be 18.3 kbit/s.

There are 31556941 seconds in a year, on average (yes, including leap years -- this is Slashdot after all). Times the above we get 577492020 kbits for a year; that's 68.8 GB (proper gigabytes, not marketing GB). Woot!

A shame..

[greyworld]

When I read the article, I thought - thats a great device, something to record my life, like a diary.
Then I realised it was conceived as anti violent crime device. Thats so depressing, Its not magic diary, its a bulletproof vest for daily life!
Why are Americans so afraid of violence?
How many good ideas get subverted in the name of personal protection?
I found that really sad.. Andrew

Re:A shame..

[mcgrew]

Why are Americans so afraid of violence?

Two words: The Media.

Chhld abductions (other than by a parent in a custody battle) are incredibly rare, but when they happen they're hyped by the media to the point that people think there's a child molester around every corner. The fact is, if you're a victim of violence in America, it's almost certain to be a close friend, lover, or family member that does the violence.

The media doesn't report that. They're not about news, they're about gossip and making money.

A Better Security Device

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce,
You've got to be kidding right? Talk about identity theft and the ability for the government to get in your shorts. The only way this could be made more effective for those uses is if it was surgically implanted in our cerebral cortex prior to birth so it could record our thoughts for posterity (especially our Big Brother) as well.

For security devices, I much prefer my Smith & Wesson, Glock, or Heckler & Koch. That will keep both bad guys and the government out of my shorts, especially since its getting harder to tell them apart.

"Snow" by John Crowley

[Tom Boz]

And in 1985, John Crowley wrote a short story titled "Snow" with the same idea. A miniature recorder captures all the video (no audio, if I recall) but due to the recording method used to save space in the recorder, moments can only be accessed randomly. It's part of the collection "Masterpieces," edited by Orson Scott Card.

A Speculative Novel

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned "The Truth Machine" by James L. Halperin (first published in 1996). Good sci-fi that contemplates this technology in our society, as well as several others.

"Guardian angel" software

[VShael]

has been in SciFi for sometime.

It would also tie in very nicely with the ideas in the show "Caprica" where a persons experiences (including thoughts, diaries, emails, etc...) can all be datamined to create a virtual copy of the person.

Ha-ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Muntz.

I want one

[ka9dgx]

This little bundle of technology has been shown to radically improve recall in Alzheimers patients. Here's the study: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/projects/sensecam/memory.htm

I've taken something like 200,000 photos over the past 13 years... and I've noticed I can remember almost everything about days that I have pictures from... and not very much of the rest.

I want one of these far more than I fear someone else having access to it.

robin williams made this movie in 2004

[circletimessquare]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Cut_(2004_film)

The Final Cut is a film written and directed by Omar Naim, released in 2004. The cast includes Robin Williams, James Caviezel, Mira Sorvino, Christopher Britton, and Genevieve Buechner. It was produced by the Canadian production company, Lions Gate Entertainment and filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and in Berlin, Germany. The film featured original music by Brian Tyler. The story takes place in a near future in which people can pay to have their babies implanted with memory chips. These "Zoe Implants", developed by EYE Tech company, record every moment of their lives, so that they may be viewed by loved ones after one's death. The plot centers on Alan Hakman (Williams), a cutter, whose job it is to edit the Zoe footage into a feature-film length piece, called a "Rememory".

who is Bruce Schneier ???

[Anonymous Coward]

who is Bruce Schneier ???

is he like top notch Crypto or is he like "Dali-Lama" of Crypto ?

Pfft. you know nothing about hardware

[way2trivial]

you obviously have NO idea of the price of a trunk sold 9mm

Much more.. much much more...

Police head-mounted cameras

[MHz-Man]

I just watched a news report on this kind of device for police officers last night. Here's the link:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/04/16/police.head.cam/index.html

In theory it's a good idea for police to have these, iff the video is available to the general public. Otherwise, the police could lie about their own actions and only show evidence against others. Then again, right there in that video, they show a female police officer chasing a drunk man on foot and using her taser on him for seemingly no good reason. He didn't seem to be physically resisting arrest (other than the running) and was not a threat to her, yet she tased him and they're showing it on a news report like it's no big deal or standard procedure or whatever. The fact that it's on a news report and there's no backlash against that use of a taser is a bit disturbing to me, personally.

Anyway, yes I think personal cameras are a great idea for several reasons. If more people start wearing these and it becomes more normal and accepted, then maybe, just maybe societal norms will change and less people will get hassled by authorities for taking pictures or recording video in public

"Strange days"

[operagost]

It's a bit late, but this reminds me of "Strange Days"-- and the recorder didn't help Brigitte Bako.

Security my ass...

[geekmux]

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I present Exhibit B, the Life Recorder audio of the murder..."

(Bang!)

(Thud.)

"Clearly you can tell by the audio that my defendant is innocent."

but you can buy a over shoulder camera too

[BrentRJones]

just watch out for those guys who grab you from the drains you walk over

Recursion

[Scatterplot]

What about the real narcissists who have this? They would just re-watch their day-to-day activities, thus filling up more space. Then they'd go back and watch the vids of themselves watching vids, and so on and so forth...

This Summer on Fox

[kaizendojo]

The most widely dispersed reality show ever... 15 Minutes! This time *everyone* gets their "15 minutes of fame" in this hilarious reality show consisting of raw footage from everyone's lifecams!

(Please... kill me before it airs!)

too much obstacles in law

[azgard]

Unfortunately, it is probably very unlawful to do it. I like the idea, I wouldn't mind it at all, if only I had access to the recording and could switch it off.

Various people mentioned laws against it, and also need for explicit consent (as opposed to implicit disagreement with someone doing that, which would be an alternative in society where such device is commonplace). I see another problem - at work, I work as a programmer, and it would be illegal for me to videotape my work and take it away.

Re:too much obstacles in law

[Geminii]

Illegal for you to tape your work? What if you simply have a perfect memory? Are you not allowed to leave the building, ever?

Re:too much obstacles in law

[azgard]

It's generally assumed people don't have a perfect memory, and those few who maybe have are probably paid so much so that the moral hazard is minimized.

In practice, there really is a difference between "I have a vague memory of how our program is implemented" and "I have videotaped the source code".

quantum world is your friend!

[alex_l83]

Entangled particles anyone?

Not for security, but for life-efficiency

[Bretski]

I've been talking about this for years too. But not for security, just to remember everything. Everything. The important thing about this device would be how the video/audio is stored, tagged/indexed and later retrieved. To make this effective, I'd need an easy speech query mechanism, so I can say "Hey when was the last time I changed the oil in my car" or "What did I do with my wallet yesterday when I got home". Or how about "What was the name of that guy I met 8 years ago at that conference and where did he work"? There are so many tiny events in life that, if remembered, would really help out, so we don't repeat the same mistakes twice. Or just to give "tips" to our future selves, that will always be recalled.

Re:Not for security, but for life-efficiency

[Chrisq]

I've been talking about this for years too. But not for security, just to remember everything. Everything.

Yes, I'd like that too so when my wife says "you never told me....." I can show her when I did. Second thoughts sometimes its better just to say "sorry love I must have forgotten" and have done with it.

Re:Pfft. you know nothing about hardware

[Posting=!Working]

It all depends on where you are. NYC and Texas have very different prices.

Thank God

[GrumpySteen]

I was afraid the world would miss out on the glorious moment that I die from auto-erotic asphyxiation. Immortal fame, here I come!

Point please?

[dsoltesz]

I'm not sure I understand the point of this article or what we're to discuss. This post and TFA seem to be half-finished thoughts with no conclusion. The OP appears to take credit for an idea that was hardly new in 2006 (or even 1996)... we've just been waiting for the technology to progress, miniaturize, ubiquitize to the point of feasibility. The OP's pointing out that he (like many people before, during, and after his 2006 article) was writing and thinking about the ideas around a "life recorder" seems to be the only point he's trying to make. Is he trying to claim he made a unique prediction? Is he trying to make a legal claim? Is he asking us to worship him as an all-seeing clairvoyant deity? Is he looking for a pat on the back? Is he trying to explain why he's going to beat up Rob Enderle? Is he trying to recycle some old content and make it relevant? Why are we here?

prior art?

[globeadue]

I remember a Microsoft beta / concept whatever device. I recall reading about i think in early 2002 ish. It was basically a necklace that snapped a picture every 15-30 seconds or minute. That gave you a diary of your day. I believe the concept was to also be able to snap a pic when needed. This way when you got home sat down to your computer, it would download to your diary app and you could write about your day with photos.

hmm

[jollyreaper]

If this is the case then why is storage relevant? It's the bandwidth necessary to get the data out; doing it reliably is necessary too. An attacker could theoretically just jam the frequencies that the recorder/transmitter uses, and then attack you, steal or destroy the device, and no one would be the wiser. As a security measure, this needs to be better thought out.

Actually, the bigger risk I'm thinking of is the wearer turning it off to avoid documenting something embarrassing. If the target is having an affair, he's going to turn off the tracker or find a way to feed it bogus "safe" data to cover up the trip to the by-the-hour motel over that long lunch. When it's turned off, he's vulnerable. The technology is pretty much here to do this these days via cell. Given the risk of kidnapping and such in the crappy parts of the world like Mexico, there's bound to be a market for shrinking this stuff and getting it put in an injectable chip. So the first thing the abductors will do is get some RF shielding around the target, second step is burning out the chip. Meanwhile, the security firm knows that losing the signal is the first warning of an abduction attempt.

Of course, what I've always wanted to know is when tracking devices are put in someone in the movies, do they ever consider that the same beacon used by the good guys could have been used by the bad guys to locate the person in the first place?

Cool for cat owners

[SirGarlon]

I wanna get one of these for my cat so I can see what he does all day while I'm at work.

Could be illegal in PA

[EmagGeek]

PA is an all-party consent state for audio recording. If you record someone without their knowledge or consent, you can be charged with a felony under the State's anti-wiretapping law if the person you recorded can show they had a reasonable expectation of privacy.

PA residents, please be careful.

Re:Could be illegal in PA

[Hognoxious]

Define "reasonable expectation of privacy". At home in the bathroom, yes. At the Superbowl, no. That leaves a lot of cases in between.

Re:Could be illegal in PA

[EmagGeek]

On second look, the reasonable expectation doctrine is not actually written into the law. Rather, it is a "with intent" doctrine. So basically, you cannot intentionally record someone without their consent. So, permit me to correct myself.

Here's the text of the law. There are many exceptions for law enforcement and other entities, but there's no exception for people who intentionally record every interaction they may have with another person. Any such intentional recording in PA would require consent.

Chapter 18, PA Consolidated Statutes:

    5703. Interception, disclosure or use of wire, electronic or oral communications

      Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, a person is guilty of a felony of the third degree if he:

      (1) intentionally intercepts, endeavors to intercept, or procures any
      other person to intercept or endeavor to intercept any wire, electronic
      or oral communication;

      (2) intentionally discloses or endeavors to disclose to any other
      person the contents of any wire, electronic or oral communication, or
      evidence derived therefrom, knowing or having reason to know that the
      information was obtained through the interception of a wire, electronic
      or oral communication; or

      (3) intentionally uses or endeavors to use the contents of any wire,
      electronic or oral communication, or evidence derived therefrom,
      knowing or having reason to know, that the information was obtained
      through the interception of a wire, electronic or oral communication.
 

Off-Camera is Off-Guard

[Alt0n]

Lee Evans made the more relevant Freeze Frame, also in 2004. I would recommend it; it's certainly the only movie I can think of in which the protagonist carries cameras at all times.

Re:Pfft. you know nothing about hardware

[Lumpy]

In Texas they give them to you when you buy a bottle of liquor.

Fifth of Vodka? here's your free handgun!

Re:Pfft. you know nothing about hardware

[Intron]

Vodka? Are they out of Tequila?

It doesn't follow

[egcagrac0]

I'm sorry, maybe I really am an idiot.

How does a law about recording telephone calls apply to making an audio or visual recording in a public place (for instance a public sidewalk) where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy?

Re:It doesn't follow

[egcagrac0]

This comment was intended to be attached to This thread. Please disregard.

Re:Pfft. you know nothing about hardware

[slick7]

Home theater gear from Best Buy is low grade dog food.

From a lower grade Chinese dog food manufacturer.

What we need...

[studog-slashdot]

...is a companion-like device (360 degree recording out to a distance of tens of feet), and the backing alibi archive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_Parallax#Government_and_justice

...Stu

Incompatible with Slashdot geeks?

[noidentity]

I take it this "Life Recorder" device is incompatible with us Slashdot geeks, due to its requirements. No point in having nothing to record.

Not for security. For self-promotion. Duh.

[kerubi]

That part of the human race that is just so awesome that everyone else just must know what they are doing every moment is screaming to get a "liferecorder" and sharing everything on bookface or equivalent. And then you can watch other people. Who are watching other people. Who are..

Clearly the greatest betterment of life on earth ever.

Re:Pfft. you know nothing about hardware

[Lumpy]

Nope, Just a lunch drink.... you cant smell it on your breath.

prior art

[Onymous Coward]

Rob Tow's Fair Witness, pre-2003.

Jumping ship is hard.

[Valdrax]

Why would anyone want to work for such a jerk?

Because, sadly it's not often easy to tell what kind of manager you're going to have in an interview when they're on their best behavior, and many people are reluctant to leap right back into the job market right after getting a new job because it's easy to tell yourself that things will get better and that a bad job is better than unemployment.

I once jumped ship after two weeks on a job because of a horrible manager, and to this day I'm not sure how wise of a decision it was after considering how long it took me to find another job after I left. I was stuck between interviewing without a reference from my previous employer who would know how long I was at the new job before quitting or admitting up front that I left a job after two weeks. (Would you hire someone who did that? Or someone who was willing to bad mouth their previous employer so quickly?) I'm not sure I could make myself do it again.

This won't prevent attacks

[WillAffleckUW]

Any decent sharpshooter can pick you off from a distance of more than a block anyway.

And wearing a mask and glasses makes it very easy to attack you in person.

Silly rabbit, there is no such thing as "safety" - and that's the opinion of an ex-Army Sergeant qualified sharpshooter in a few weapons systems.

Side note: you having a gun doesn't make you safe, it just makes it easier for me to use it against you.

Re:This won't prevent attacks

[jvkjvk]

Side note: you having a gun doesn't make you safe, it just makes it easier for me to use it against you.

Perhaps that's because you only try to take guns away from people who don't know how to use them. Guns are no panacea but it is ridiculous to claim that My having one makes it easier for you in the general case.

Do enough people who own weapons take the time necessary to tip the odds in their favour? In my opinion, no.

However, if one is trained and keeps this up (target practice at *least* a few times a month, IDPA or the like) then the probability swings way around the other way.

While a perpertrator twenty feet away can stab me if I don't have a gun pointed at them, that same person is dead if I do. Knowing the limitations of your tools is as important as knowing what they can do.

The same scenario repeats in the home. If I have a gun and have it available then any intruder is much more in danger than I am, because I have already built up a mental model that allows reflexive response when necessary. My fire will be precise and accurate, whereas someone who hasn't done this may even shoot themselves.

It's the same with training in martial arts, or piano. Practice, practice, and practice. Does that mean that I am 100% going to win? No, of course not. But 90% is better than 10%.

Regards.

Re:This won't prevent attacks

[WillAffleckUW]

Not unless you received the same dirty tricks hand to hand infantry combat training I got right before the Falklands War or something similar.

Being used to a gun, and firing it is not the same as keeping the weapon or being able to fire it in a crisis combat situation.

You're still more likely to have it used against you by your relatives and friends, even if you take a lot of precautions.

Okay, so no *smart* criminals, but...

[Valdrax]

Yeah, yeah, the device isn't fool-proof against criminals that take extraordinary measures to watch out for it, but most crime isn't committed by criminal masterminds. It's committed by idiots who can't find better solutions to their poor impulse control.

The device being proposed isn't going to help solve mysterious, planned assassinations because it only triggers when someone knows there's an emergency and tries to get help in some form. In other words, this only helps for the kinds of crimes where calling 911 might be useful. I hope you wouldn't say that just because no one is likely to call 911 during the commission of a poisoning or a sniper attack that hooking the police into 911 is useless (except for doing the cleanup and post-crime report).

Would this device help in domestic violence incidents? Would it help when someone breaks into your house? Would it help if you're witnessing a crime against someone else? Would it help in many of the most common violent crime situations?

I'm kind of horrified by the notion of having a device that records someone's life 24/7, especially if that person has any kind of regular contact with me and records my life, but a device that makes it easy to make emergency recordings isn't useless just because a smart criminal can beat it. No more so than having a house alarm, owning a dog or a gun, or setting up a neighborhood watch.

Simple, use pigeons

[solweil]

Then perhaps some sort of failsafe involving IP over Avian Carriers is in order.

Re:Law Enforcement Implications - Uniform

[rusl]

A simpler if less radical approach would be for police to have their uniforms in a different colour. I'm told that police uniforms use to be a bright almost sky blue. Some british police (where the modern tradition of policing emerged) wore red, or had bright copper buttons. However in recent years the uniforms have gotten darker. Now they are often a paramilitary black. What has been lost from the uniform is the public honour/duty and the symbolic colouring that indicates it is a very public responsibility that should not be done hidden. In my city unmarked police cars use to be a rarity. Now it is commonplace. The change was really obvious around 9/11. Now I think half the time the reason for unmarked police cars is as much saving money on paint as it is covertness. Personally I think the uniforms should be bright pink unless a judge gives a warrant for covert behavior. There is a great Marilyn Manson video with pink cops in uniform. If not pink I'd settle for the sky blue. But the point is that police acting in camo isn't ethical - they should be proud of their work and being bright, if not they are not serving the public or doing real policework.

Re:Bicyclist Deserves to die

[rusl]

...Because riding on the freeway at slower than the maximum speed means you should be Capitally Punished.

We live in a free land. Cars are our freedom.

Intention doesn't equal safety

[rusl]

"ignorant dickheads who think that cyclists have no right to be on heavily used roads."

Those I can usually hear coming by the way they rev their engine. The most dangerous are those who think that they can drive a car safely and are not vigilant - those texting, cell phoning or otherwise driving as normal around soft bodies with heavy steel boxes. It's always nice to not how this threat to you life is for the sake of being too lazy to exercise, or to look cool, or to fit in... or to be too ignorant to know that driving cars is immoral.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Drivers *do* own the roads here.

[Anonymous Coward]

People are too impatient. Drivers think they own the road.

Around here, the motorists do "own" the road**. We've paid for it to be built, plus continue to pay its ongoing upkeep with our fuel taxes. Bicyclists only get to use the road for free as a privilege granted by those who paid for it. When bicyclists deliberately impede the orderly flow of traffic and antagonize the motorists, they need to be issued traffic violations.

** I'm talking about a major thoroughfare in my city which was built explicitly for handling rush hour automobile commuter traffic in the mornings and evenings. Lately we're had far too many bicyclists think they can stubbornly defy two-ton automobiles on this road which was intended for, and has posted speed limits for 50MPH auto traffic along its length. If a bicyclist can keep up with the auto traffic and accelerate and blend in so as not to create a traffic hazard, then more power to him, but so far I haven't seen Superman riding a bike here, just dipshits who need to get their bikes the f--k off this road.

Re:Drivers *do* own the roads here.

[Psmylie]

I understand your point, but keep in mind that a bicyclist may also own a car, pay taxes, and thus "own" the road as well. If they choose to use an alternate form of transportation on "their" road, then it's their right to do so. If bike traffic becomes an issue on a particular road, then the city can pass an ordinance forbidding bicycle traffic on that road, at least during rush hours (the one you mentioned sounds like a prime candidate for such an ordinance). And as for giving tickets to cyclists who are reckless or violate rules of the road? I agree 100%.

Tip to save disk space

[KharmaWidow]

Have all the audio dynamically transcribed to text. You'll save tons of space. Or, store all the data as binary on the atomic level in a multilayer format.

MS Research did it... with MyLifeBits

[Etcetera]

From Wikipedia:

MyLifeBits is a Microsoft Research project. It was inspired by Vannevar Bush's hypothetical Memex computer system. The project includes full-text search, text and audio annotations, and hyperlinks. The "experimental subject" of the project is computer scientist Gordon Bell, and the project will try to collect a lifetime of storage on and about Bell. Jim Gemmell of Microsoft Research and Roger Lueder were the architects and creators of the system and its software.

They've been experimenting on tagging and electronic recording of an entire person's life since before Zuckerman was in HS, and of course the concept stretches long before that.

Re:Bicyclist Deserves to die

[Surt]

Riding on the freeway is generally illegal for bicyclists or non motorized traffic of any sort.

Motto "Life-recorder. Better than a pre-nup."

[GuyFawkes]

Seriously, lots of guys / cops / teachers falsely accused of various shit could rent these at a thousand bucks a month, and still end up way ahead on money alone, plus they'd keep their jobs and reputations.

It's Not a Security Device

[johnshirley]

This would be better classified as a surveillance device, not a security device. Cameras don't provide security -- that's what locks, restraints, and other physical barriers do. Cameras only serve to provide evidence afterwards... or to gather amusing videos of its owner doing stupid things so they can be posted on break.com.

Would be great for the morning after

[TehDuffman]

Would be great for the morning after getting hammered. I would always like to know some of the things I have done (or hit on) while blacked out...

Access to your memory

[kentsin]

With modern technology, it is not far from we can extract our memory like Dumbledore with RMI.

A life recorder may ban me from going to the toilet.
No thanks.

Insurance idea of the nineties

[HavanaF]

In 1999 Andersen Consulting's (now Accenture) Center for Strategic Technology Research (CStar) developed a necklace with a camera, mic, heart rate sensor and an electrical skin resistance sensor for measuring Electrodermal Response (EDR).

Wearing a battery pack and a hard disk on your hip, it would record constantly but only actually store the minutes right before and after moments of great excitement, tension or shock, thus automatically collecting the highlights of your life. Life recording with a filter. I guess the filter was originally intended to save disk space.

They had a few people walking around with prototypes. In their publications (I cannot find a reference) they did express the worry that insurance companies might make this a compulsory gadget, some day. Perhaps they didn't want to be associated with big brother insurance after all and removed all references, as big brother would.

Re:Law Enforcement Implications - Uniform

[sznupi]

Heh, yeah, until quite recently the police at my place didn't look that much different from those guys, the main differentiating things being different shoes and more toned down (black...) colors. Plus reflective area with "POLICE" (well, local version of the name). Here are main variants of what I'm talking about. Though lately they got new uniforms...on one hand some elements go "back" in the right direction, on the other it's even more meh, even more like tracksuit

It really isn't so hard, as this one example from just across my border shows... (to be fair even there it's not the norm)

Even worse thing is happening to police cars. The old scheme is very distinct, the new, badly implemented EU guideline is just a silver car with reflective stripe attached...
Similar destruction of damn good scheme happened in Germany, though at least their new blue stripe is definatelly wider...

using it to replay interesting conversations

[pietros]

I agree with all the critics about using it as a security device, although most security camera can be tricked, what they do is to stop all the other crime that is not so committed to find a way to trick it.

But most of all I think those camera would be useful to record interesting conversations. Think about going to a conference with something like that, for example.