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Ask Slashdot: Encrypted Digital Camera/Recording Devices?
Ransak writes "As we hear more and more about dashboard cameras catching unplanned events, I've thought of equipping my vehicles with them just in case that 'one in a billion' moment happens. But given the level of overreach law enforcement has shown, I'd only consider one if I could be assured that the data was secure from prying eyes (e.g., a camera that writes to encrypted SD memory). Are there any solutions for the niche market of the paranoid photographer/videographer?"
In the UK you are required to decrypt files that may contain evidence of a crime under the RIP act.
Get an eye-fi SD car for $50.
It transfers your photos/video from your camera to your laptop/tablet/smartphone and then deletes it from its local storage.
So you can show an empty SD card. And your laptop/tablet/smartphone is password protected and/or encrypted.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
He doesn't throw the card away. The "prying eyes" do. If his car gets searched and they confiscate the contents of his car. It's very easy for an SD card to go missing or get formatted.
Presumably you would have to enter your passphrase before recording can commence. Thus, you enter the passphrase before backing out of the driveway. With a "carputer" you may be able to enter the passphrase over bluetooth or wifi from your smartphone.
Though a small screen with some beeps reminding you to enter the passphrase each time the car was turned on would help you do it every time. Might have BT turned off on your phone and thus not get the notification.
Who wants to enter a 20 character password every time you start your car? Just use public key cryptography to encrypt the data in the car, and keep your private key somewhere safe where you can decrypt the video.
11th circuit court of appeals ruled that you *CANNOT* compel somebody to decrypt their HD.
Click here for link
At supercircuits.com they have cameras built into screw heads and lots of other covert cameras...
5. The Police have NO RIGHT to search you or your property for evidence without a specified WARRANT. PERIOD.
You seem to be misinformed. They can search your vehicle during a traffic stop if they have probable cause. This can also be grounds for forcibly entering you home if they have cause to believe you are holding someone hostage, etc. Unfortunately probable cause can be very easy to abuse.
The you have even worse abuses such as the NYC stop and frisk law
In the US at least, the courts (all the way up to the Supreme Court IIRC) have ruled that law enforcement can't legally force you to provide access to your encrypted data (thanks to a little thing called the 5th amendment)
Police routinely destroy, delete, edit and/or obfuscate footage when it shows them in an "unflattering" light, why do you expect everyday citizens to turn over evidence against themselves when the police fail to do the same?
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=708&sid=1938732
http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/story.asp?S=12951588
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=428&sid=1116072
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2009/05/birmingham_police_beating_vide_3.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmXTFr5hoOo
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2010/03/fort-worth-justice-says-traffic-stop.html
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/hollywood/sfl-hollywood-cops-fake-report-b072809,0,350771.story
"Also, in some states it is a crime to record an on-duty police officer without their permission."
No, it isn't.
This has been tried in a relatively few states, and while at first some judges were cooperative with the police, eventually in every state where it has been tried so far it has been thrown out of court.
It is now a pretty well-established principle that if something is occurring in public, you can film it. Even if it's cops doing it. Almost anything that occurs on the street, in fact, plus anywhere else public. Even backcountry roads.
People have a RIGHT to film the police doing their taxpayer-funded jobs in public. Period.
Recently some cops tried a new twist on this idea. They claimed that filming was okay, but that recording audio at the same time was "illegal surveillance" under their states' "all-party consent" law. (I.e., in some states, all parties have to consent before a phone conversation, for example, can be legally recorded.)
That didn't stand up in court, either.
"11th circuit court of appeals ruled that you *CANNOT* compel somebody to decrypt their HD."
There is a caveat, however. This is only true if it is NOT known in advance whether there is specific illegal material contained in the encrypted data.
In another case, Customs (apparently randomly) searched a man who was coming back into the United States. His laptop was turned on but asleep, and an encrypted volume was active and accessible. Two Customs agents saw child pornography among the encrypted data, before the man (I don't know how) managed to switch the computer off. When the computer was started back up again, the encrypted data was not accessible without a password.
In this case, the court ruled that the man could be compelled to supply the password, because it was already known that specific illegal material was contained in the encrypted data. (With a certain measure of reliability. After all, two agents testified to seeing that material, AND if that turned out not to be the case when the data was accessed, two Customs agents would no doubt lose their jobs, to say the least. Maybe get sued or be prosecuted as well.)
The lesson here is: be sure your decryption is turned off.
There's more, though: another circuit court recently ruled firmly that even at the border, agents of the government must have probable cause to conduct a search. So the random searches they were doing are no longer kosher. (They never were, really, but they were getting away with it.)
Yes and no. Not every device that uses (micro)SD cards can do encryption, and not every card that's the shape and size of a (micro)SD card is necessarily a real (micro)SD card that supports encryption. Remember, SD is a superset of MMC, and 99% of devices that don't support encryption really just treat the "(micro)SD" card like a MMC card.
I believe that in the US, anybody can read and write (micro)SD using the 1-bit MMC-compatible SPI interface without encryption royalty-free, but if you want to either use its built-in encryption or communicate in 4-bit mode, you have to pay royalties and obtain a license to use the superset of capabilities that (micro)SD adds to MMC.