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."
Rogue-like (Score:5, Insightful)
It'll be sold as a security device, so that no one can attack you without being recorded.
Except when getting stabbed in the back.
Re:Rogue-like (Score:5, Interesting)
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Or with a sniper rifle.
Or poisoned.
Or run over with a stolen car.
Or rolled in your bedsheets and defenestrated.
Or by injecting your significant other with a deadly STD.
Or releasing anthrax on your ventilation system.
Or bombing your car.
hmm What exactly does this protect you against? And, more importantly, does it protect you more than the extra danger of wearing expensive hardware wherever you go and being a potential witness of every crime that ever happens near you?
Re:Rogue-like (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it just me, or do you live in a really, really bad neighborhood? Most people in my town just die of heart attacks, cancer, or car wrecks, with the occassional random act of violence. Not that this device is a good idea (unless you are the one selling them) but most people tend to die in ways that are less worthy of a James Bond movie plot.
As for being a witness for "every crime that ever happens near you", how many felonious crimes do you personally witness in the average day? I'm not talking copyright infringement, but about muggings, rapes, murder, burglary, robbery, etc. If your answer is > .009, you need to move. Soon.
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most people tend to die in ways that are less worthy of a James Bond movie plot.
Most people don't need permanent recording of their lives to avoid being attacked.
So either you don't need the device, or you do and it's useless.
As for being a witness for "every crime that ever happens near you", how many felonious crimes do you personally witness in the average day?
How many muggings happen near enough that the criminal may think I had recorded his face?
How many people may think I had recorded their face somewhere they shouldn't be?
If I stay in the center plaza of my current city, Madrid, with an omnidirectional camera I assure you I'd record several dozens of pickpockets.
If I crossed that same plaza, alone, with the recordin
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Change your thinking from "how many do you see per day" to "how many happen near you that you might have unknowningly recorded".
If you are in the area, and police are aware of your recording capabilities, they're going to ask you where you were. It might not be a court order, and you can probably refuse to answer, but if they are following every possible lead you're on the radar.
How would police know about you? Simple, you're going to look odd and they are going to ask questions at least once. Especially
Re:Rogue-like (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Rogue-like (Score:5, Insightful)
So not only do you get to have your life recorded, but your life is stored in the cloud! Fantastic isn't it??
Re:Rogue-like (Score:5, Funny)
If this is the case then why is storage relevant? It's the bandwidth necessary to get the data out; doing it reliably is necessary too. An attacker could theoretically just jam the frequencies that the recorder/transmitter uses, and then attack you, steal or destroy the device, and no one would be the wiser. As a security measure, this needs to be better thought out.
On top of that, what does Bruce Schneier need with protections from attack? I hear that behind his beard lives an inordinately large prime number of fists.
temp storage and important people (Score:2)
> If this is the case then why is storage relevant?
Connectivity can never be guaranteed, so you either need storage or you have the thing discarding all data whenever the wifi connection is bad.
> An attacker could theoretically just jam the frequencies that the recorder/transmitter uses
Yes, but no one will ever do that just to attack someone. Unless you're a president of something, in which case you won't be walking around with just a camera around your neck for protection.
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> If this is the case then why is storage relevant?
Connectivity can never be guaranteed, so you either need storage or you have the thing discarding all data whenever the wifi connection is bad.
And you need a year of storage for that? How long are you planning to stay on that bad wifi tunnel?
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If this is the case then why is storage relevant?
Because we need a reasonable technical excuse for these impositions not being deployed upon our beings. Either way I'm not worried because I have AT&T, so my 3G coverage will make my life look like a bad version of the Nixon Whitehouse Tapes.
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An attacker could theoretically just jam the frequencies that the recorder/transmitter uses, and then attack you
Which attacker? You mean the scab-ridden meth addict who's waiting over by that mailbox while I finish my ATM withdrawl? Or the drunken neanderthal at the bar who thinks I'm staring at his girlfriend and decides he needs to prove some kind of point?
... or did you mean the computer nerd who's going to come up out of his basement and attack me as a way of testing that his latest jamming device actually works?
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If these actually caught on, you'd be able to buy the $20 life camera jammer from the trunk of a car along with the $100 Hi-Point 9mm. Just because they need to be developed by geeks doesn't mean that, once developed, they can't then be made cheaply, even by morons. And there are plenty of geek criminals, too, it's not that hard to build a jamming device.\
Drunks and people on meth are notoriously bad at thinking of long term consequences. If a drunk is going to hit you, warning him that he might get arres
Pfft. you know nothing about hardware (Score:2)
you obviously have NO idea of the price of a trunk sold 9mm
Much more.. much much more...
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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
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What cloud? You mean like your home computer or a server under your control? If it's on the internet is that considered cloud technology now?
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Also, aren't those things only once every few seconds for photos? That'd let you capture people as they pass, but it won't stop someone getting right up to you and suddenly lashing out.
You're also a little dependent on it not being stolen/broken in the attack. Either that or you've got one hell of a good data plan on a "works everywhere" mobile connection!
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Or shot at any range. Hello, McFly--even a 360 degree view from four 640x480 cameras isn't going to help you identify someone 100 meters off. "Yes, officer. He was shot by this little blob in the lower right corner of the image"--and CSI-like enhancements are right out.
There are various (specious) reasons to purchase something like this, but "avoiding an attack" is just silly. Despite the media's fixation on crime, random attacks are quite rare. Only a really stupid mugger is going to attack some nerd weari
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You and Bruce both are thinking in a very depressingly straight-forward manner. This isn't for watching 9 hours of typing or to protect you against a theoretical pipe-wielding villain who doesn't know about disguises. You would use these to shore up a fallible memory, or for evidence in a lawsuit, or to save more images of your spouse before s/he passed away. The security implications are amusing, but trite. Ultimately, complete life recording is like the NSA's scheme with the Internet: Record enough garbag
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It's illegal in Illinois to record anyone without their permission, and nothing recorded without someone's permission can be used in court here.
I call it the "liar's law". But this tech won't help any Illinois crime victims.
Re:Rogue-like (Score:4, Funny)
It's illegal in Illinois to record anyone without their permission, and nothing recorded without someone's permission can be used in court here.
I call it the "liar's law". But this tech won't help any Illinois crime victims.
There is a good reason for such laws. I used to work for a guy who regularly recorded people (n violation of the law) and then egged them to say things that he thought he could use to fire them (he had two business partners, which limited his ability to fire people on a whim). He would delete where he had said inflammatory and demeaning things first. After the HR person told him that he couldn't use those recordings because they were illegal, he engineered a confrontation with her and fired her (she is now suing for wrongful termination).
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Why would anyone want to work for such a jerk?
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Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Judge: I'm sorry, Mr Smith, but your "Life Recorder" does not enjoy your 4th or 5th Amendment rights. Take him away boys!
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That should be:
Bake him away toys!
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Presumably they have two decryption keys: one that you own for use in retrieving stuff for personal use, and another held only by the state that can be obtained only with a court order.
On balance I'd say this prospect is a Good Thing, because it would make it vastly easier to prove somebody guilty or not-guilty. That, in turn, will pull the rug out from the more offensive aspects of our current justice system -- part
Hunny! (Score:3, Insightful)
"Hunny, I demand you have your life recorder on you at ALL times!"
Please don't try to make this practical.
Re:Hunny! (Score:4, Informative)
I'm pretty sure you are well past "She's not worth it" if you are having that discussion.
Can't use it in MD (Score:4, Interesting)
MD is a 2 party consent state - can't use it here!
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Re:Can't use it in MD (Score:4, Informative)
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Sure you can.
No, not as far as audio is concerned. You cannot tape conversations in MD - even in public - if you do not have consent of both parties. Police in Baltimore use and abuse this law on a regular basis when they are filmed in public. Fark or Slashdot had a story on this many months ago.
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Having a camera didn't work out so well for this guy in Maryland:
http://www.autoblog.com/2010/04/19/motorcyclist-arrested-for-recording-cop-brandishing-gun-with-hel/ [autoblog.com]
He ended up having his computers confiscated as recording the officer is considered a felony.
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It already exists (Score:5, Funny)
A little pricey, but you can already buy such a thing: http://wearcam.org/domewear/ [wearcam.org]
Copyrights? (Score:5, Interesting)
Good luck getting into a cinema wearing one of those.
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I believe that the law states that you have to mention that you're wearing a recorder before starting ANY conversation.
Also, confidential meetings and conversations would become more interesting.
In addition, I would turn the damned thing off a lot - because I like my privacy - and if I'd lose that recorder, it would all be out on the streets.
And I would probably forget to turn it back on if I'd take my little walk on the streets.
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Seth
The Final Cut (Score:5, Insightful)
And they can make a great highlight video of your life to show at your funeral. Whether you were a good man or a bad man is all in the hands of the editor.
Re:The Final Cut (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364343/ [imdb.com]
That one you mean?
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Yes. A very strange role for Robin Williams, though not as disturbing as One Hour Photo.
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.
Re:Law Enforcement Implications (Score:5, Insightful)
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Bicycling (Score:5, Interesting)
How about a bicycle-ride recorder, for the next time someone throws trash at you or yells obscenities.
Re:Bicycling (Score:5, Insightful)
How about a bicycle-ride recorder, so law enforcement can ticket bike riders for not obeying traffic laws like they are supposed to?
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Right, those two issues are balanced. One threatens the life of the bicycle rider. The other ... threatens the life of the bicycle rider.
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I know this is off topic but there are a lot of idiots on bicycles that give bicyclists a bad rep.
I used to ride a lot and have both a street and off road bike so I feel your pain but sometimes there are idiots that out there that cause big problems.
A good example is one day my wife and I where driving to lunch and our bumper was in the cross walk. Not our tires mind you just a bit of the bumper. An idiot on a bicycle yelled at her and told my wife that the crosswalk as for him!
The thing is that idiot was r
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If one had had a flat I would have had no choice but to hit them!
For future reference you don't have to wait for one of them to get a flat to hit them. Just do the speed limit and stay in your lane and you will hit them regardless.
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Obey the traffic laws and I won't yell obscenities at you. That includes riding on the road in the correct direction, passing me on the left unless I'm turning left, and coming to a complete stop at stop signs. I can't tell you how many people I've nearly hit because they thought a line of cars at a stop sign meant they could just speed past everyone on the right and blow through the intersection.
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No sir. I hate cars. I drive a beat up 15 year old honda accord with everything stock. I'd love to share the road. It's just that about half the time when I see a cyclist he ends up breaking the law in some way that endangers his safety and my driving record. As a result, when I see a cyclist the first thing that goes through my head is "uh oh, what's this guy going to try to pull".
One thing that I see all the time is passing on the right. I may pull behind a cyclist and be stuck going 10 mph for a few
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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.
Re:Bicycling (Score:5, Informative)
Bicycles are traffic.
There are restrictions, such as freeways, but this is true for most roads.
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You forgot the most likely scenario:
The drivers are malicious arseholes.
You know the ones.
The ignorant dickheads who think that cyclists have no right to be on heavily used roads.
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please stop thinking that you can force others to do what you want.
Stop trying to get people to do what you want and instead do what I want!!!
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A bike has every bit as much a right to the road as any other motor vehicle. As a bike rider, you are supposed to stay in the center of the traffic lane. It is a courtesy by the bike rider to move to the left and allow more room for passing. That said, if you can't drive in a strait line and refuse to obey traffic laws, you shouldn't be on the road. Most car drivers can't drive in as strait of a line as I typically bike and they utterly refuse to cede right of way as legally required to a bike rider and the
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!
Doesn't have to be that big (Score:3, Insightful)
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]. )
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I think it would also be exceptionally valuable for use with police. A camera system that records forwards and backwards could be used in court to dispute a cop's claim that a driver was swerving and might even refute a claim of speeding. It certainly could bolster a driver's claim that she fully stopped at a traffic signal. Because the co
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You mean that kind of pun [carjunky.com]?
Experiment now (Score:2)
Unless they mug you for your life recorder (Score:3, Insightful)
so that no one can attack you without being recorded.
recording a crime is one thing, still having the recording afterwards is another. Having a sufficiently high quality record of the assailant's voice or image is yet another. This thing might, just be usful as a "black box" in a car, but to have it strapped to your person? Nah!
I'm mounting mine on my glasses (Score:3, Interesting)
David Brin hits another one.... (Score:2)
For your protection, your life is being monitored (Score:2)
Opt me out on this one. I don't need anyone monitoring me 24x7.
Lapels? (Score:3, Insightful)
A "life recorder" you can wear on your lapel
Who wears jackets with lapels all day anymore? This is not an irrelevant question -- I'm not sure where I'd put this thing if I were wearing just a t-shirt.
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?
Too many legal issues for audio alone (Score:2)
http://legallad.quickanddirtytips.com/the-legality-of-recording-conversations.aspx [quickanddirtytips.com]
Ever seen a video of a cameraman in a fight? (Score:2)
"200 gigabytes/year for audio" is practical now (Score:2)
"200 gigabytes/year for audio" is not "still a few generations off" unless you particularly need the device to keep data locally for long periods.
200Gbyte/year is just over half a Gig per day. You could store nearly a fortnight on an 8Gb microsd card (which are not expensive and are very small even with the required read/write interface (see http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.25557 [dealextreme.com] for a small one, and this device would not need the physical USB interface so could easily be made smaller)). As long as
Great for self-incrimination (Score:2)
When the Gov force you to reveal the recorder's contents...http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10172866-38.html
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Yea I can see that now. "What where you doing on this date?" .....
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.
I don't even know where to begin. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you live in constant fear of being attacked, you either need counseling or you REALLY need to move somewhere else. This country is full of small towns, medium sized cities, and even larger cities where you will be quite safe.
umm (Score:2)
Ok, so you foretold a life recorder in 2006 on your blog. Some other guy has now suggested the same thing on his blog. The technology still isn't around. Is any part of thi
BS on 200GB/year for audio (Score:5, Insightful)
Regular telephone quality audio (from the "you can hear a pin drop" era) was considered to be about 8,000 samples per/second, which is in fact 64kbps for an 8-bit sample depth. This is uncompressed recording here. TFA can't beat uncompressed telephone quality audio? Really?
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
"Guardian angel" software (Score:2)
has been in SciFi for sometime.
It would also tie in very nicely with the ideas in the show "Caprica" where a persons experiences (including thoughts, diaries, emails, etc...) can all be datamined to create a virtual copy of the person.
I want one (Score:2)
This little bundle of technology has been shown to radically improve recall in Alzheimers patients. Here's the study: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/projects/sensecam/memory.htm [microsoft.com]
I've taken something like 200,000 photos over the past 13 years... and I've noticed I can remember almost everything about days that I have pictures from... and not very much of the rest.
I want one of these far more than I fear someone else having access to it.
robin williams made this movie in 2004 (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Cut_(2004_film) [wikipedia.org]
Security my ass... (Score:2)
"Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I present Exhibit B, the Life Recorder audio of the murder..."
(Bang!)
(Thud.)
"Clearly you can tell by the audio that my defendant is innocent."
too much obstacles in law (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it is probably very unlawful to do it. I like the idea, I wouldn't mind it at all, if only I had access to the recording and could switch it off.
Various people mentioned laws against it, and also need for explicit consent (as opposed to implicit disagreement with someone doing that, which would be an alternative in society where such device is commonplace). I see another problem - at work, I work as a programmer, and it would be illegal for me to videotape my work and take it away.
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.
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It seems that a Tech columnist posted a scantily detailed opinion piece on the subject last march. Our submitter linked to his opinion on the opinion piece.
http://www.darkreading.com/blog/archives/2010/03/is_it_time_for.html?cid=nl_DR_DAILY_2010-03-15_h [darkreading.com]
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It's a gargoyle rig as described in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, circa 1992.
It was a good idea. Not an original idea, but a good idea nonetheless.
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I have considered buying/building something like this for my bicycle, in case I die in an accident, but the battery/processor are still not there yet.
Why need an expansive battery when you have a viable source of power between your legs?
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I'm not worried about needing it.
http://www.rcfp.org/taping/ [rcfp.org]
But many other states have similar injunctions, and allow for civil action against the recording individual. And, there is a caveat that all audio portion of the recording can or does fall under the wiretapping laws of the state.