These will be all the rage at future demonstrations

[andrewducker]

Twenty years ago, David Brin wrote about the death of privacy in "Earth" (later, he wrote a non-fiction book covering this in more detail, The Transparent Society. The lynchpin piece of tech behind this was the ability to record everything that people saw during the day, and then post it online. Which was pretty forward thinking for 1990.

Today, jwz posted a link to this:

It has a five hour memory. It records all of the time, but only starts saving when you hit record - at which point it starts at the beginning of its 30-second buffer. In other words, you see something suspicious, hit the button, and get the thing that you saw recorded for later perusal.

If I was going to be somewhere the police were going to be, well, policing, then considering the death of Ian Tomlinson, and the intermittent bad behaviour which occurs, I'd be wearing one of these things. Heck, faced with a group of people all wearing recording devices, would you want to cause trouble?

Next up - software to take the output from a few hundred of these, map them together, and produce a 3D playback that you can then pan a virtual camera through...

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Dear gods, that's an awesome design. Currently, it has 4GB memory, & within a couple of years, 128 GB flash memory will be fairly cheap. At that point, you've got the capability to record continuously for 5 days (or given that no one is likely to record more than 12-16 hours - 7-10 days), if you can get the battery life up so that it only requires daily recharging. In any case, I'm betting we're only 3-5 years from life-logging being a significant fringe hobby practiced by at least several hundred thousand people or maybe even several million people. The future is indeed now.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Next up, very soon: police bring jamming devices to demos and take these devices off everyone before letting them out of the kettle. You never get the device back or see the footage again.

[andrewducker]

That would, in the UK, be hideously illegal.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Which part? Taking the devices off you would be illegal, but that would hardly stop them; they do that sort of thing all the time and are never called to order on it. If the jamming would be illegal, that's interesting, but I'd guess they'd act to change it - easy to see how you sell that one as an anti-terrorist measure.

[andrewducker]

Jam bluetooth devices at a distance? Jam all phone signals in the centre of London?

I'd put those down as causing so much disruption as to make them effectively impossible.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

No, you jam close to where the demo is.

[andrewducker]

Which, last time, would have meant taking out the phones and wireless internet of the headquarters of numerous banks.

They don't have the legal right to jam protestors, and nor are they likely to get it, as recording police activity is perfectly legal, and has been ruled so repeatedly. The occasional member of the police bashing someone is one thing, you're pretty much talking about widespread high-level conspiracy.

If we were operating a police state, then yes, I'd expect this. In our current society, it seems rather ridiculous.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

They wouldn't sell it as preventing themselves from being recorded; they'd sell it as preventing demonstraters from coordinating with each other. Last time it was on a Saturday; given that the various banks likely have perfectly good wired communications, how bothered would they be?

The police don't officially have the right to kill passers-by during protests, and it now seems that they unofficially do have that right. There seems to be very little political or judicial will for ensuring the police actually stay within the law.

Still, you may well be right about this and I hope you are - in which case I hope that future demos are covered in people using cellphones to upload video footage in real time.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Or you just don't admit to the jamming - everyone's cellphones and wifi networks stop working, but how do you prove it's the police? Sure, you gather absolutely rock-solid evidence that the RF signal your equipment just recorded could only be the result of deliberate jamming, and you put it on a web page. Would anything happen next?

[fj.livejournal.com]

They'd also kill all their own comms.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I thought jamming could be more specific than that.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Wear a hat or knit cap with a hole and 95% of cops won't notice it, even long hair would help hide it - this device isn't large. Also, jamming will affect both the police and any nearby citizens who aren't involved, it won't work. Also, given the 4 hour record time, you just set to to continously record when you go in, and you don't need a phone signal.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Yes, having such a device and successfully hiding it from police seems like the most reliable way to get recordings out.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

That would work the first time, but not once they knew there was likely to be such a device in any given crowd.

IME they'd be likely to claim any jamming was activists trying to bring down the police comms.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

If jamming doesn't work (and if you just set it to record, jamming does nothing), the cops are left with detaining everyone wearing a hat or with long curly or wavy hair - that sounds massively impractical.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

My god it's lie science fiction but with cheeky brand names and better design.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

BTW thought someone should use the word sousveillance here. Not to be confused with sourisveillance, which is watching mice. Or possibly mice with cameras.

[snarlish.livejournal.com]

The buffering is the magic 'omg living in the future' bit, but the 'auto-share' set up is what makes it much more powerful. set up to tweet with certain hashtags? emailed to news/activist organisations while at the same time putting up on flickr or youtube? oh boy.

[pgdudda.livejournal.com]

One thought that frightens me is that these devices - and especially if they get miniaturized even further so the camera can be worn as a boom attached to sunglasses - look exactly like my hearing aids. I don't want some random copper taking away my ability to hear just because I happen to be at a protest, ya'know?

(Edit to add: here via rm.)

[andrewducker]

Yup, absolutely. Unlikely to happen in the UK, but I know that some places in the USA are less than respectful of the right to protest.

[eredien]

It appears that we are living in Transmetropolitian.

(Hello, I'm here from rm's journal.)

[andrewducker]

Yeah - I'm looking forward to having these built into my glasses. Sadly, my girlfriend's allergic, so no two-headed cat for me!

(and rm is awesome)

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

I like it, (on me,) but I'm not so big on law enforcement wearing them.

When I was a member of ACT-UP the cops used to record our demonstrations, so I suppose this wouldn't be any different.

Funny though, they didn't like it when I took pictures of them.

[andrewducker]

I think it should be mandatory for cops to be wearing them, and for them to be active 100% of the time, so that when they do something illegal it's recorded to be used against them.

[arjache.livejournal.com]

Here in Seattle there's actually talk of a pilot program (http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/09/24/seattle-could-have-body-camera-pilot-by-next-year) to try out police body cameras, spurred on by a recent incident where a police officer shot a suspect who may have been having trouble understanding him.

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

I read the functionality slightly differently and it would certainly be more useful at demos: It constantly records with a 30 second buffer. When you hit the button it saves the _last_ 30 seconds.

"Looxcie is always on, continuously videoing – there's no record button. When you experience something you want to share, just click the Instant Clip button to save a clip of the last thirty seconds."

This way, you get to record stuff without having to know if what you're about to witness is worth recording. It's already being recorded, it just needs to be saved.

[andrewducker]

Sorry, that was what I meant by:
"you hit record - at which point it starts at the beginning of its 30-second buffer. In other words, you see something suspicious, hit the button, and get the thing that you saw recorded for later perusal."
But I clearly wasn't explaining myself well!

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, it _only_ saves the 30 seconds already in the buffer when you hit the button. Which is a shame for a device with a 5 hour recording memory.

[andrewducker]

That is a shame. Still, if it's at all popular then you'll see other models which can do more.

[meico.livejournal.com]

These will be a win all around when they have two things:

1. The ability to wireless upload continuously.

This is good for police as evidence can't get lost and they don't have to do any extra steps to upload their data.
This can be used with cops being required to wear them and to assure they don't "lose" or modify the device or data.
It can also be used by protesters so that when police try to take the device off them even that will be recorded and transmitted...

2. The ability to record to sim card like memory.

This way recordings can be taken even in RF jammed areas. The sim cards are so small they could be passed amongst a crowd, hidden in clothing, or even hidden at the site. Also good for cops when some criminals get smart enough to jam the cops...