Life Recorder 347
Bruce Schneier writes "In 2006, writing about future threats on privacy, I described a life recorder: A 'life recorder' you can wear on your lapel that constantly records is still a few generations off: 200 gigabytes/year for audio and 700 gigabytes/year for video. It'll be sold as a security device, so that no one can attack you without being recorded."
Re:Rogue-like (Score:5, Interesting)
Can't use it in MD (Score:4, Interesting)
MD is a 2 party consent state - can't use it here!
Re:Rogue-like (Score:5, Interesting)
Copyrights? (Score:5, Interesting)
Good luck getting into a cinema wearing one of those.
Law Enforcement Implications (Score:3, Interesting)
Cops do not like being recorded by civilians.
Expect to be harrassed, criminally charged with trumped-up charges, maybe even have illegal drugs or weapons planted on you, and in extreme cases possibly even get beaten up or even killed (depending on your location) as a result of recording any interaction with police.
Bicycling (Score:5, Interesting)
How about a bicycle-ride recorder, for the next time someone throws trash at you or yells obscenities.
Stealth as the only option (Score:5, Interesting)
I sort of use something like this today, in the gritty old present day.
In my car I've got one of my old PDA's mounted instead of a GPS device. It's rather firmly permanently mounted to the dash until you take all the bezels off and unscrew it from the back, so I consider its risk for theft fairly low. Also, it's not mounted in the usual look-at-me GPS area but down by the driver's side kick plate.
Anyway, I have it there because I use Pocket Excel (don't laugh) to keep track of all my invoices and orders for the day. I also have a mapping program installed, and obviously it uses GPS. I've successfully used it to defuse two frivolous traffic tickets by less-than-scrupulous police officers: Once by making it a policy to keep all of my GPS logs, and once by happening to have a hotkey for the note taker "record" function bound, so I could easily and silently (also legally, in this state!) record everything the lying police officer said.
I've also seen on DealExtreme and other places some always-on, rolling-record capable video cameras for mounting wherever, and I've been tempted to pick one up and mount it in my car, police car style. Mailing a CD-R every month to the local precinct with video of their police officers flagrantly breaking traffic laws would be optional, but probably a lot of fun the first couple of times.
Remember: Big Brother is only bad for you if you are not personally Big Brother!
Law enforcement implications (Score:1, Interesting)
Does wearing such a thing break wiretapping laws if you are being questioned by the police? Getting a speeding ticket for going 5 over the limit gets a lot more hairy if the cop finds out he's being recorded.
I want it - For My Car (Score:3, Interesting)
I want such a device, but not for my person. I'd want it on my car with 360-degree coverage, but no audio. I'd like to have a record of all of my interactions with traffic police. If there's no audio, then it doesn't fall afoul of recorder laws. It would also be dandy for catching people who dent your car in parking lots. Also, I've been in the occasional traffic accident and I know that people lie in that situation.
Of course, have it encrypt its content using RSA and randomly generated session keys, so that only I would be able to decrypt the recordings. (Even if an attacker hacks the hardware! You'd have to be able to read the RAM while the session keys were resident. You could even get around this with some judicious White Box encryption [kuleuven.be]. )
I'm mounting mine on my glasses (Score:3, Interesting)
Islands in the Net (Score:3, Interesting)
In Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net [wikipedia.org], the protagonist wears video sunglasses (1988). Streaming to the net live is seen as a shield. Even now, clearly it would be safer to stream it than carry the video on you.
No bets about quality of the recording. However a cue might be taken from the "smart bandaid" wireless health sensors that are being developed now, with enough power to reach a wristwatch or pocket device. What market opportunity (and perhaps technological advance) needs to be presented to camera manufacturers in order to get them to package small wireless audio/video sensors for the mass market?
Re:I want it - For My Car (Score:1, Interesting)
I expect we will see something like that on cars within 20 years.
Although with two caveats:
They will be mandatory on new vehicles
There will be a back door (no pun intended) for Law Enforcement
OMG!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's some footage of me taking a dump...
And it will only make it so much easier for every cheap whore celebutard to release a sex tape, or some other low-life publicity stunt.
Do NOT want.
A shame.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Then I realised it was conceived as anti violent crime device. Thats so depressing, Its not magic diary, its a bulletproof vest for daily life!
Why are Americans so afraid of violence?
How many good ideas get subverted in the name of personal protection?
I found that really sad.. Andrew
Re:Rogue-like (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, but locking them up will reduce the number of violent stupid people on the streets.
Almost no security system beyond physical barricades works by protecting you. They work by raising the cost and consequences of committing crime in general.
And this article is 100% right. At some point, people will start transmitting audio and video of everything they do, hopefully to a server under their control.
At that point, when the number of people hit a high enough percentage that that criminals actually start running across them, crime will fundamentally change.
Sadly, it will probably change in a pretty crappy way at first, as criminal start going after poor people, who don't have such devices yet. (Criminals tend not to rob poor people much now, because, duh, they don't have any money.) In much the same way that all installing cameras does is that criminals avoid their line of sight.
But, eventually, it will work where security cameras failed, because a) it goes where the people are, and b) it unlike random security cameras, actual victims (Or surviving family members.) of crimes have an incentive to actually review the footage.
And that's not even getting into other aspects of this, like providing alibis. Yes, video footage can be tampered with, but that's when you look at your footage of yourself on the other side of town, find a guy who passed you, and get the police to track down him and his footage with your clearly in it. (And while video footage can be faked, it's a lot harder if it doesn't have endpoints. If it shows you wandering around your house for two hours, including past a mirror, and then the police coming in to arrest you...that requires a technical skill level that would be hard to pull off for the NSA, much less some random guy, and it would be somewhat absurd for you to do it to be able to be out robbing someone's house.)
And eventually, we're going to get smart enough computers to actually parse the scene, and realize there is a crime in progress, and alert the police, or, for even more fun, all surrounding people. (Who can now respond in relative safety because they're wearing such cameras also.) Imagine a flash mob, armed with streaming cameras, and probably a gun or two, showing up at a mugging.
At some point, crimes are going to be limited to 'crimes of passion', where an argument gets out of hand or whatever, and incredibly well plotted crimes like something out of a murder mystery movie, where people are undetectably poisoned, or an action TV show, where hired assassins snipe people. The vast majority of crimes, at least violent ones, in the middle are going away.
I'm not sure what will happen to things like cons and pickpocketing. The criminal can be photographed much easier, but I'm not sure if that will help. And I expect a rise in blackmailing.
Re:Bicycling (Score:3, Interesting)
See, this is the kind of stuff that gives cyclists a bad name. I suggest you follow the laws, and I get threatened. You're not going to garner much sympathy from anyone that way.
My suggestion that you follow the laws is as much for your safety as my convenience. I *really* don't want to hit someone because he decided his momentum was worth more than his safety.
Motto "Life-recorder. Better than a pre-nup." (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, lots of guys / cops / teachers falsely accused of various shit could rent these at a thousand bucks a month, and still end up way ahead on money alone, plus they'd keep their jobs and reputations.