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.

[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.)

[eredien]

It appears that we are living in Transmetropolitian.

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

[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.

[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.

[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...