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

[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.