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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?"
Are there any solutions for the niche market of the paranoid photographer/videographer?"
Why yes, yes there is. It's called building it yourself. While encryption isn't illegal, you may have noticed despite the obvious benefits and lack of drawbacks to the consumer, it isn't found pretty much anywhere. This is deliberate: Various law enforcement agencies that don't want to be found out make backroom deals to keep companies from providing this most useful of features because it would make their job more difficult. Or at least, so they say. In truth, they just want access to "ALL THE THINGZ!" regardless of whether there's a legitimate judiciary need for it. And encryption means they'd have to serve warrants and stuff to get the keys, not just go clandestine copy-pasta on your personal data.
So your niche market isn't niche at all -- it would already be out there, if not for the authoritarian governments of the world (I'm looking at you "free" western society). Now with that out of the way, you can roll your own easily. Embedded devices with a USB connector and linux are a dime a dozen, and most sport the ability to store data to an SD or CF card, as well as boot off of them. It's possible to create one-way encryption so something can be written to using a public key, but only decrypted using a private key not located on the same physical device. This would provide you with a tamper-evident system, and simultaniously provide full protection for your privacy; You can't recover the data without the key, and the data cannot be modified without it either.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Hmm, an SD card plugged into your camera, sticking out in plain view, with nothing on it. A second card, installed under the dash, that does the recording. "Why no, officer, I don't believe the camera was turned on".
And the worms ate into his brain.
In the UK you are required to decrypt files that may contain evidence of a crime under the RIP act.
"Hrm. Well there, this SD card looks blank. Format."
And it's tossed in the trash because it was broken.
What you need is something that streams to off site.
I thought he was clear on the problem that encryption solves: the level of overreach law enforcement ....assured that the data was secure from prying eyes
He wasn't looking for a solution to prevent him from throwing away an SD card that he recorded his encrypted steam to - how is that even a problem? I have a flash drive right here with gigabytes of encrypted data and I haven't thrown it away because it contains gigabytes of encrypted data.
This sounds like an excellent opportunity for a tiny computer like an arduino or raspberry pi or the like. Just plug the camera into one and have it periodically offload the pictures from the camera, encrypt them, and dump them to a hard drive in the trunk. Once there, they can be deleted from the camera itself. In fact, you could probably just use a webcam and ditch the on-camera storage altogether.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The only actual solution is to stream the video to off-site hosted storage, preferably in an inconvenient foreign jurisdiction. If it's stored on the device, it's subject to seizure - whether encrypted or not. Losing the video is often worse than having it viewed by someone against your will. And rest assured, if you record something really bad, there's a good chance someone will destroy the recording device (whether the perpetrator is government or non-government).
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Begs an interesting question based on 5th Amendment:
You can't be compelled to produce a 'password' or combination, but you can be compelled to produce a physical key to a safe, or for instance your fingerprint to unlock your fingerprint encrypted laptop.
Does this 'private key' count as a password or a key from a legal perspective?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
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.
Too much work, too hard to insure you always have a signal. The answer to this one is actually pretty simple...carputer. You can either DIY with one of several kits or a friend of mine has made a good living installing mini-HTPC boxes based on Bobcat chips in trunks, its really not hard and these chips are ultra low power so its not a drain. Add an SSD using Truecrypt and voila! The cops pull the plug to get the SSD out and all they have is a brick without your Truecrypt password. There are plenty of little 5 inch touchscreens you can mount in the front so you can input your password as you are starting up and if you decide you want to keep anything you recorded 5 minutes with a portadrive and Bob's your uncle.
This ask Slashdot frankly ain't hard, hand me $600 plus the cost of the parts and I can have it done over a weekend, going DIY if you don't have exp in this kind of deal will take a little longer but if you can follow instructions and use basic common sense? Really not that hard. You can go wireless to the carputer (costs more) or you can run the wires around the door frames (cheaper but more of a PITA) to the cameras and an AMD bobcat with a stripped down OS like Win 7 Tiny or Puppy Linux can easily record a couple of cameras no problem, its a 1.7GHz dual core after all. So its really not hard, just takes a little time and depending on how fancy he wants to get it can cost anywhere from $500-$1500, price depending on how many cams, the quality, what kind of extra features like being able to playback video or surf on the carputer, etc.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
Are you sure there is no back door in it?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Not really. He never mentioned why he exactly wanted it to be encrypted. It also deletes the evidence of the police doing something wrong. What if it was a cop that ran the red light but said it was you? What if you pull up and see a cop beating someone?
The scenario I'm more interested in is having a camera running at all times that catch the various idiot drivers all over the place. Hit a button and the last 5 minutes and anything until the next press are permanently stored. Then send the file to the traffic cops.
The challenge is making the video admissible in court with sufficient weight to be enough to actually convict somebody of the traffic violation they're on tape performing. Currently "we" consider a cops' word as overwhelming evidence in such a case, with police dashboard cameras being a "bonus".
If there's some way to ensure that *I* don't tamper with the recording at a level that the courts would trust, I'd install one in a heartbeat.
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
ok.
1. The Police can, sans warrant, only seize items that are reasonably thought to have been used in the COMMISSION OF A CRIME. For example, firearms.
2. The Police have NO RIGHT to take private property just because they want to.
3. "Just Cause" is NOT a justification for seizure.
4. The Police have NO RIGHT to demand that you incriminate yourself by turning over materials. EVER.
5. The Police have NO RIGHT to search you or your property for evidence without a specified WARRANT. PERIOD.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Not really. He never mentioned why he exactly wanted it to be encrypted. It also deletes the evidence of the police doing something wrong. What if it was a cop that ran the red light but said it was you? What if you pull up and see a cop beating someone?
He said he wants to record video but keep it safe from prying eyes, doesn't that say exactly why he wants to encrypt it?
He said nothing about wanting to keep it safe from confiscation or destruction by the police, that's a much different problem that isn't solved by encryption - he just doesn't want them to be able to view the video.
If the police are searching his car and seizing SD cards, I don't think they are going to casually steal the card and format it.
If the police are searching the car, then everything they remove will go into an evidence bag for later examination, including the camera and the SD card. Before examination, the SD card will certainly be duplicated so that any changes that accessing the card while studying it can be accounted for, and an exact duplicate can be provided to the defense if necessary.
If the camera is a commercial product, then the police will contact the manufacturer to find out what the data format is when they cannot read it from the SD card. They'll know the manufacturer because it will be on the data plate that is required based on FCC certification data for part 15 compliance.
Only if the system is home-brew will there be a possibility that the police won't be able to find out the data format or think that the card is empty because the home-brew software was carefully crafted to make it look like it is.
Now, if the sole goal of the police is to get rid of evidence, then encrypting the data won't help. They'll just flex the SD a bit too much when they handle it and it will become a broken SD card. Or lose it altogether. Very small, got lost. Sorry.
post traumatic stress injury is a wonderful thing... makes you forget all sorts of shit.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I have a dashboard camera and had similar thoughts about the encryption. I don’t care to stream the video somewhere else -- this is not my concern, I just don’t want the video to end up in the hands that I didn’t approve. Current cameras store several hours of most recent footage and even if I decide to share the last 5 minutes, who knows what could be there during previous hours if my card is copied in full.
Even if the camera manufacturers are not making the camera with built-in encryption, having a public-key encryption can be achieved on a separate tiny device. With current technology the device could have a form-factor of an SD-card. Imagine you have an SD card to which you record a public-key. Every following write to the card will be done through a built-in encryption using that key. All reads will return the encrypted content and it will appear as garbage. But for the purpose of most cameras (that only need to be able to read directories and file names) this will work. If the device is not as small as the SD card, I’d be ok to have wires sticking out of the SD slot that go to my “encryptor”. I can totally see such card to be useful for general photography too.
There's no such thing as "illegal download"
Deep cycle battery and a split-charging relay. If I'm leaving the vehicle parked up for more than a day or so, I'll just power all the computery stuff off.
0100010001010011:
Original submitter:
#1: Argue that at the point of a gun ... or with 5-15 cops "talking" to you (Hint: You will lose) ... it magically becomes erased with the images that were important.
... is there someway to have a camera with 2 SD cards, one hidden?
... Wifi xfer images to a hidden system in the 'car' or in a backpack {yours or that of a friend}?
.... or one could try the old "watch in a camera" trick.
#2: Once you "lose" control of your SD card (given to - or - taken by the officer)
I would think
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.
All that sounds great in the classroom/laboratory, but in the street it's pure bullshit. The cops can and will do want they want any time they think they will get away with it, including rape. and the biggest lie they continue to tell is that it's not systematic. Well, it is, and the only anomaly is getting caught.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
11th circuit court of appeals ruled that you *CANNOT* compel somebody to decrypt their HD.
Click here for link
I have a camera built into the front license plate bracket rather than sitting on the dashboard. This particular one has the recording device elsewhere on the vehicle, but I suspect with today's technology the entire thing could fit in the license plate bracket. Just sayin'.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Encryption being on, or not on, devices is not because of any kind of backroom dealings and is all up to what a company feels it useful, and what they want to spend on it. There are popular devices out there with very good, as in the police can't bypass it, encryption. You can do it on an Android phone, the full device encryption is extremely robust. It is just a pain in the butt to use so most don't.
When a company considers providing encryption, and in what capacity, there is a few things they have to evaluate:
1) What does it cost? It isn't free. There is implementation and support time, if nothing else. Often there is more cost then that in that an additional chip has to be added to handle said encryption at a fast enough pace. While AES might not seem like much load on a desktop processor, it can hit a tiny embedded microcontroller hard.
2) How hard will it be for users to use it? The more difficult something is to use, the less people that will want it. If the encryption is something transparent that just happens as a natural function of the device, then cool. However if it requires entering a complex password every time you turn it on (as encryption like this would) then most users are not interested.
3) How easily can they fuck it up, and how badly? Remember that good crypto has no back door, no key recovery. So if someone forgets their password, and people do, all the time, they are fucked. This then can lead to rage against the company that made the product, hence why some companies will use a weak implementation with a backdoor they have to get people in.
4) How many people will give a shit? In a given market, this can vary. For some markets, security is important and people will deal with it. For others, they really don't care.
They then look at all that and decide if it is worth doing or not.
However there's lot of products out there with good crypto. If the government is preventing it through "backroom deals" they are doing a shitty job. As I said Android phones have a great implementation, as to Blackberries. Windows Pro and Enterprise editions have a solid FDE solution included, as well as per file encryption, and you can buy other solutions for a lot of the big vendors (Symantec, Sophos, etc). Lots of hardware is getting it implemented internally. You find many SAS disks can do on-disk encryption and LTO-5 units all do it.
In the case of dash cams? People don't want it. They don't want to have to key in a password each time they power on the camera (which is the only way it'd be secure). They WANT the footage to be accessible.
To me, it sounds like this guy is like the police themselves: He wants recordings, but only for the things he wants. He wants to be able to break the law, and not have people able to get that recording, but then get at other parts of the recording.
Encryption would help against corrupt law enforcement since they'd just take the camera/card. You'd want a backup, not encryption, unless the objective was for you and only you to be able to choose what people can see.
What police have the right to do and what police do are two very different things.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Either it isn't thought through, or it is chimera. The thing is if you what you are worried about it corrupt cop does something you record, they stop you, and take the recording away, encryption does fuck-all to stop that. The cops steal the gear, that is that.
The solution to that is a backup, or a fake item. A setup where the obvious camera isn't the one that records, or that there is a second SD card elsewhere that has a copy or something.
Encryption is only useful if he wants to be able to cover his tracks, and selectively release video. This is precisely what corrupt police like to do with their dash cams. They use them to protect themselves, but turn them off or "lose" the video when they are breaking the law.
So to me it implies that he probably like breaking traffic law, and doesn't want the evidence of that around, but still wants to be able to record things.
The way I understand it, you could offload the data before the corrupt cop could seize the glasses. That is, if he even figures out what the glasses are for.
How long before Google Glass-type technology shows up in a pair of glasses that don't look any different from a regular pair of specs?
I know, I know, they're creepy. But they may also be something of an equalizer in the coming surveillance wars.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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
Perfect meet good. Try not to be enemies....
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
SD card stands for Secure Digital card. it's called Secure Digital because the card includes onboard circuitry to do encryption. That encryption hasn't yet been broken. It can be used either to passphrase protect the card, or for DRM on preloaded cards.
Most cameras don't have a keyboard to enter the password of course, so use an old phone as a camera. Some phones support locking and unlocking the card with a passphrase.
Slashdot normally has good answers for TECHNICAL issues. I'm amazed that apparently nobody replying sooner knew what SD stands for.
Well you know that they can get a warrant to force you to decrytpt it
The 5th Amendment would tend to disagree with you, at least in the US. Now if they grant you immunity, then yes you have to decrypt it, but then you have immunity and are not at risk.
to be honest if you driving on the public highway is there any reasonable reason why you would want to deny law enforcement access to it?
Because I want to and it's a free society?
try to hide your footage implies that you have been doing something naughty driving wise.
It implies nothing more than I don't want other people to see it without my permission.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
"If the police are searching the car, then everything they remove will go into an evidence bag for later examination, including the camera and the SD card. Before examination, the SD card will certainly be duplicated so that any changes that accessing the card while studying it can be accounted for, and an exact duplicate can be provided to the defense if necessary."
Unless the card contains evidence of cops abusing their power. In which case... what card? They never found any card. Or, as you point out, the card will be 'broken' somehow. The only reason to encrypt the card would be to prevent them using the recording against the owner... and if they want to get you, they don't need a convenient dash camera to do so.
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)
So what the query really is, "I want a camera that I can use when the accident is someone else's fault and I can pretend doesn't exist when the accident is my fault?". After all the cameras only record a certain amount of time and then overwrite previously recorded video, hence there isn't much worry for loss of privacy.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
So what the query really is, "I want a camera that I can use when the accident is someone else's fault and I can pretend doesn't exist when the accident is my fault?". After all the cameras only record a certain amount of time and then overwrite previously recorded video, hence there isn't much worry for loss of privacy.
Exactly - what's wrong with that? If the other guy wants a camera to prove it's my fault, let him get his own camera, don't expect me to use my camera to prove my own guilt.
But even if the camera only records 30 minutes or an hour of video, there are still privacy concerns. If I'm in an accident 30 minutes after a quick romp on the hood of my car with my mistress, I sure don't want my wife seeing that video when they play it back in court.
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
60lb (~5 stone to put it in units you can understand)
A whatnow? Presumably that depends on the size of stone, and what sort of rock it's made of?
60lb (~5 stone to put it in units you can understand)
A whatnow? Presumably that depends on the size of stone, and what sort of rock it's made of?
Huh, you'd think that someone from the UK would be familiar with Stone. It may not be as common as it used to be, but my wife's Scottish grandma still uses it.
"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.)
If I'm in an accident 30 minutes after a quick romp on the hood of my car with my mistress, I sure don't want my wife seeing that video when they play it back in court.
Well then do it in the back seat. It will be more comfortable anyway.
Jeez. It's not hard.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
That's going to work only if the justice system is ... you know ... just. Which it isn't. Since the times of Cardinal Richelieu at least. You probably broke some law today before you got out of the bed.
If you wish not to be impersonated, perhaps you would avoid posting anonymously?
www.wavefront-av.com