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Filmmakers Ask Nikon and Canon to Sell Encrypted Cameras
- tombrossman 10y agoInteresting discussion of this idea on the Stack Exchange photo site (from 2013): https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/33902/do-any-dslrs-offer-in-camera-file-encryption https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/33902/do-any-dslrs...
- rlpb 10y agoFree Software extensions for cameras such as Magic Lantern http://www.magiclantern.fm/ http://www.magiclantern.fm/ exist. I wonder if it's possible to add encryption support there, before images are written to the SD card?
- Joeboy 10y agoMaybe, but I think the cameras are already working at full tilt just to encode the file. Also I don't think you can run ML on anything professional, and Canon's consumer range are increasingly poor value for video.
- dom0 10y agoThey'd have to add at least an AES engine to the chips, but that's really not a big factor in terms of transistors or power usage. (Although, if they're using some ARM cores somewhere, they probably already have one or two of these lying around).
- Joeboy 10y agoWe're talking about Magic Lantern, which is a third party firmware hack that's not supported by Canon, so they can't do anything to the hardware. I suppose it is possible the processor accidentally supports some encryption primitive(s).
- Joeboy 10y agoWith hindsight this was a slightly stupid thought as you could just encrypt the file after writing it. Although that could mean it stayed unencrypted if somebody seized the camera while you were still recording.
- zimpenfish 10y agoThe article references http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=10279.msg99214#msg99214 http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=10279.msg99... which is old, experimental, somewhat faffy, and a bit buggy.
- Joeboy 10y agoAlso looks (at first glance) like it's only for stills (".CR2 and .JPG").
- devb 10y agoCould this be accomplished at the storage level instead of at the camera level? Could an SD card have an onboard encryption engine? We have cards with built-in wifi already.
- heartbreak 10y agoWe also have professional cameras that can be tethered to a laptop and record directly to the encrypted disk. Encrypted camera storage sounds cool, but the filmmaker of Citizen Four could have just tethered to her MacBook.
- Edward16 10y agoYou need a savvy hacker,one who specializes in Expunging Criminal Records and Change of University Grades. Contact edwardsnowcare@gmail.com One who would be able to carry out and successfully execute hacks on your behalf while keeping it all discrete and under the radar.
- rlpb 10y ago> could have just I thought the days of wandering around with a camera while having a recorder on a shoulder strap were left behind in the eighties.
- Joeboy 10y agoExternal recorders are still normal for professional video work, but not so much for run and gun documentary stuff.
- falcolas 10y agoBut it wouldn't be locked out until the MacBook was shut down. Until then, the keys would be available in memory, and effectively unencrypted. Not much protection against immediate physical seizure.
- cuckcuckspruce 10y ago
- zdw 10y agoWhat's the point of encrypting a video data stream if it's going to local storage that could be destroyed or taken by someone else, effectively depriving whoever shot the video of the footage? Making encryption happen in the camera seems like solving the wrong problem - you really want to exfiltrate to secondary, offsite storage at high speed in a secure manner.
- klodolph 10y agoExfiltration in real time requires more bandwidth than you would have most of the time. It makes no sense to choose a "better" solution if it doesn't work.
- vidarh 10y agoSometimes not being caught having the video is more important than for the video to survive. E.g. you might lose the story but keep your life.
- Spooky23 10y agoPut some cache memory on the camera where the last X pictures are held in clear text. Or lose the functionality. Photographers lived for a century without a preview window.
- Johnny555 10y agoI think the point of encryption was detailed in the article -- she didn't want her sources to be revealed if the video was seized. Uploading it to offsite secure storage is much harder to solve for fieldwork since you can't be assured of having a high bandwidth connection to anywhere secure.
- jfindley 10y agoI'm not certain this has been thought through sufficiently. If an organization is in a position to confiscate the camera from a journalist, they're almost certainly ALSO in a position to extract the encryption password from the journalist. It would be far better if the cameras automatically uploaded these photos[0], and could be configured to upload them somewhere outside of hostile reach, such as servers owned by the magazine/paper they work for. A side issue is that being able to prove authenticity would be valuable, as the issue of faked news/images becomes more visible in the eyes of the general public. Having some sort of GPG signing of (image + gps time + gps position) would be valuable, although establishing the trust chain in practice would be quite difficult and requires some serious thought. 0: Yes, there's a question of how you get internet access in places such as the middle of a warzone, but something generic like wifi would allow individual papers to provide something like a satellite wifi bridge to enable uploads regardless of location (although the cost would obviously be large).
- vidarh 10y agoA decade or so ago I spoke to a tech guy at an environmental group, who told me about how the people he worked with during demonstrations had cameras that transmitted the pictures to a portable wifi hotspot that someone (often he did it himself) brought with them in a backback with a laptop and a variety of directional antennas to ensure they could have someone far enough away for police to be unaware of them. Said person would either have internet access or suitable storage and decent odds of getting away without interference if police decided to confiscate or destroy cameras. It's not hard to get some extra protection if you have the funds. A bigger issue is probably that a lot of the time even people operating in warzones often operate on shoestring budgets with little certainty as to whether or not they'll manage to sell their stories. Adding extra tech or a second person hiding in the distance isn't necessarily economically viable for a lot of people.
- jfindley 10y agoYeah, though it's often easier to expense assets than add more salaries, which is why I wonder if some sort of auto-wifi upload, which can be supplemented by a satphone <-> wifi bridge if required, might be more of a realistic proposition for warzone journos than an extra person hiding somewhere in the back of the convoy. And of course, these days, public wifi is much more widely accessible in many parts of the world, so it's only in the most remote or hostile environments that you'd need this.
- chaz6 10y agoThis is already possible on Samsung NX series cameras https://sites.google.com/site/nxcryptophotography/ https://sites.google.com/site/nxcryptophotography/
- rbcgerard 10y agoSeems like it would also make it really hard to view your photos - i.e. What happens to that little screen on the camera?
- peterbonney 10y agoNot necessarily - my iPhone is encrypted by default and yet still manages to show me a photo after I take it. Just like an encrypted phone (or any encrypted device), an encrypted camera would simply have to have a locked/unlocked state.
- rbcgerard 10y agoTrue, but password entry on a camera seems like a cumbersome process (especially for a strong password), and a bio-metric lock doesn't seem very useful in the situation where you are in custody with your camera. Edit: maybe the solution is a "panic button" assumes everything is fine until you press it, at which point it locks everything down until its opened by some much more cumbersome means
- peterbonney 10y agoYes, something like that is one plausible solution - people who care can e.g. map one of the function keys on their dSLR to perform this task, and no one else will be affected.
- mayaa 10y agoA hidden encrypted disk partition on SD card with sensitive content and a normal partition with tourist content on the same card. It is good?
- attilak 10y agoWell with many cameras people usually record 4k video to an external device, connected to the video output of the camera anyway (like Atomos Shogun). Adding an encryption to this external device might be a better approach. And also as mentioned before, just recording to an encrypted macbook or any other laptop might also work already, just the size might be a problem.
- wtk 10y agoTo piggyback this topic - I think cameras should feature an equivalent of iCloud lock. These are things worth thousands of dollars, and are dead easy to sell on once stolen. I would sign a petition that would convince camera makers to add a theft protection like above. Am I missing something here? The same should go for expensive lenses that should have a coded list of bodies they are permitted to work with.
- 3pt14159 10y agoMy friend went to Washington DC for a vacation and got mugged with a gun. The muggers made her enter her iCloud password (which she was having trouble remembering) so they could turn off the "find my iPhone" feature so they could sell the iPhone. When she stumbled for the second time, one of the two guys said "let's just shoot her and get out of here" the implication being that by the time the cops had come they would have offloaded the iPhone to someone else. Thankfully she entered it correctly the third time, but it kinda changed my opinion on remote bricking. I don't want someone to want to kill me just so they can make $400 before I can brick the device.
- discreditable 10y agoThat's still a little strange considering that once she reports it stolen, US carriers will blacklist the IMEI and make it unusable here.
- wtk 10y agoIn such scenario you should be able to have a secondary password. Once you type it in, your phone unlocks but is also getting flagged (should look exactly like normal unlock). I know it would be scarry thing when you're at gunpoint..
- 3pt14159 10y agoThe whole experience is just too real for me. Fuck up your password = death. I'd rather just have my thumbprint or something I can't screw up unlock it easily.
- 10y ago
- iansowinski 10y agoI think some kind of hidden, backup card slot would be also great feature for a number of photojournalists
- mayaa 10y agoWhen may tear the camera down to find a hidden SD card, it's even harder to explain your innocence.
- peterbonney 10y agoThis is a great idea for the public good, but unfortunately there just isn't much economic imperative for the camera companies to invest in it. Security-sensitive filmmakers and journalists represent a vanishingly small niche, not a meaningful market. For the rest of users, photos taken on stand-alone cameras are generally meant to be shared, not strongly protected, meaning encryption is at best a "nice to have" not a "need to have" or perhaps even a "want to have". And that means that if it comes at the price of even a tiny degree of inconvenience, consumers will refuse it. Having said that, it's not inconceivable that camera makers can solve this problem (a) cheaply and (b) in a way that is "off by default" for most consumers but available if needed. But I'm not holding my breath. I think it's far more likely that we'll see the quality of phone photo/video quality become "good enough" for security-sensitive users to abandon standalone cameras entirely than that we'll see camera encryption catch up in the other direction.
- mSparks 10y agoyeah, the great and the good of film and photography giving you their backing means nothing these days. at least that is probably what trump has been telling himself at night since everyone turned him down to perform at his inauguration speech. for everyone else. kinda a big incentive.
- jmde 10y agoReasonable point, but I'd argue that the purchasers of dedicated cameras are already not the general market, who will just be using their phone camera anyway. For purchasers of these cameras, I think the cameramakers going down this route would be a clear signal that they care about the users' freedom of speech and security concerns and are taking their use seriously. Also, my guess is compared to other features they work on this would be fairly trivial, or at least in the same ballpark. And I think it would immediately give the camera a certain cache that would signal "professional" or "serious" that would increase its value, regardless of whether or not the user really needs it. Without meaning to be dismissive of the large numbers of people who do need these types of cameras (I have close loved ones who are professional photojournalists who rely on having the best cameras), I think a large proportion of people who who buy them don't need them relative to what's on decent phones today. They're just a status symbol for them anyway.
- jdfellow 10y agoHow about an SD card in to which SmartCard, the size of a micro SIM card, can be inserted. The SmartCard holds a public key, and any files written to the SD card are signed and encrypted using that public key. Decrypting the files would be accomplished with the corresponding private key which is kept separate on a different hardware device and using a PC.
- teh_klev 10y agoI don't think you need new hardware for this. Just a place you can drop your public key on the camera. [edit] But then I hadn't thought about legacy devices. Minor nitpick: signed and encrypted using that public key You don't sign things with a public key, it's your private key you sign with.
- dogma1138 10y agoPublic key crypto for data is also pretty darn inefficient just have an FDE for the storage many cameras come with pcie based storage interfaces. You can also always plug the camera to a laptop and use it as a capture device basically.
- x1798DE 10y agoI don't know how inefficient it really is as implemented, I think generally you just generate an AES key or something, use it to encrypt the photo, then encrypt the AES key with the public key and flush it from memory. That's if you want "one-way" encryption (i.e. once the photo is taken you can't retrieve it again until the private key is present).
- dogma1138 10y agoYes, you usually have your symmetric key and your key encryption key, doing data at rest with public key isn't really efficient since then you need to store and protect the private key as long as the data encryption key is in use, so you usually use some key derivation algorithm for your kek which means that your kek is derived or otherwise protected by a password. The private key needs to be in memory as long as you are filming/camera is on since otherwise you can't really encrypt the data so you can't film.
- bluesign 10y agoI think with custom firmware on camera[1] it can be possible, although would be hard. Also there is an option for custom firmware on SD card [2] but probably kills the speed too much. [1] http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK_in_Brief http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK_in_Brief [2] http://hackaday.com/2013/12/29/hacking-sd-card-flash-memory-controllers/ http://hackaday.com/2013/12/29/hacking-sd-card-flash-memory-...
- pjc50 10y agoNext week: NSA Demands Back Door To Encrypted Cameras. Ironically I think the best way of getting this actually built would be to sell it as in-camera DRM. The requirement - no viewing without authorization - is almost identical. This kind of thing is a very tricky use case, because suddenly the camera is a safety-critical device. That is, if people are relying on their software to encrypt images, they may take photos that if revealed to the wrong people at the wrong time may get them killed.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- cbhl 10y agoWhy don't these filmmakers just use an iPhone to shoot their documentaries instead?
- ARothfusz 10y agoI wonder if, while they're adding encryption, they could also add user-controllable DRM. That way when you post a photo or video, you can specify the rights of (and prices for) those who download it. One of the things that's always felt evil about DRM to me is that it currently only protects the big guys. What if DRM could protect (and pay) everyone who creates content? So we have no more of this: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/jun/11/smith-family-photo-czech-advertisement https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/jun/11/smith-family-p...
- sowbug 10y agoThat's not really DRM. At best it's DRE (digital rights expression, a term I just made up). DRM controls the computer showing the content. The problem with the idea is that it works only if every single photo/video player in the world agrees to respect the metadata in the file, _in spite of the wishes of the owner of the computer running the player_. Be careful what you ask for. In theory, adding a copyright notice to EXIF is just as effective -- though everything is already legally copyrighted the moment it's fixed in a medium, regardless of notice. So you already have what you're asking for, and you can see how well it's working. See also RFC 3514.
- tormeh 10y agoThat's a strawman. The classic DRM solution is to create a new format with some secret knowledge required to play it. Only players that respect the metadata are given the secret required to support the codec.
- jijji 10y agomost of the android/ios devices that are out there have had this capability for many years. Typical resolutions of 16 - 41 megapixel are common today. Why not use these cameras?
- vorpalhex 10y agoThere's a huge difference in quality between a $200 smartphone and a $6,000 high end DSLR camera.
- jpablo 10y agoNot just image quality. But just very diferentes capabilities, like super telephoto lenses, ultra wide, instant focus, accurate focus tracking, easy manual exposure, external flash sync and the list goes on and on.
- kfreds 10y agoI'm developing a solution to this problem. Longer version: Since I last posted about this on HN (check my comment history), I put the project on ice, and then started it again a year ago. Follow @ZifraTech on Twitter for more information. Our website (zifra.tech) is not up yet.
- notyourwork 10y agoIts nice that you are promoting your project but instead of a clickbait title to encourage traffic to your site it would be helpful to add a few details here as to what the project is.
- kfreds 10y agoFair enough :) The product looks and feels like a memory card, and identifies as such to a laptop, camera, dictaphone, or other device. The biggest functional difference is that all files written to the card are automatically encrypted on-the-fly. Files written during the same session can be read back by the host device (decrypted on-the-fly). As soon as the card is removed from the host, or the power is turned off, all files are hidden and unreadable until decrypted by a private key, which is intended to be stored elsewhere, for instance the user's laptop. The crypto primitives used are Curve25519 and ChaCha20.
- alrs 10y agoCanon cameras already have ethernet ports. I'd much rather the camera support iSCSI so that I can mount a network block device and save to that. I wouldn't trust any consumer electronics crypto support. The form factor of an embedded Linux box with an Ethernet port, an SSD, and a hardware power switch would be pretty tiny. It could be done in the shape of an autowinder.
- mobitar 10y agoIf you're starting a new startup, it's now honestly unacceptable to not have encryption come standard. I'm building an open standard for encryption and ownership of notes. Would love any feedback/help. See https://standardnotes.org https://standardnotes.org for the full spec. Or follow along @standardnotes on Twitter. If you'd like to contribute, ping me.
- nawtacawp 10y ago"Encryption keys are generated by stretching the user's input password using PBKDF2. The resulting 512 bit key is then split in two - the first half is sent to the server as the user's password, and the second half is saved locally as the user's master encryption key. This way, the server can never calculate the encryption key." Can you link to the class on your github for this?
- mobitar 10y agoIt's handled by the client: https://github.com/neeto-project/neeto-web-client/blob/master/app/assets/javascripts/app/services/helpers/crypto.js#L29 https://github.com/neeto-project/neeto-web-client/blob/maste... I'm transitioning from using a standard of 3000 iterations of PBKDF2 to a variable amount per user (CryptoJS can't handle more than 3000, WebCrypto can, not universal yet though)
- chris_overseas 10y agoMagic Lantern has had some support for this for a while now: http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=10279.0 http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=10279.0
- Joeboy 10y agoIt's mentioned in the article and elsewhere in this thread. It looks to be just for stills, as well as being "old, experimental, somewhat faffy, and a bit buggy" according to another poster here.
- zczc 10y agoThe solution already exists: there are Android-based cameras like Samsung Galaxy NX which can use encrypted camera apps for Android with nice sensor and lenses.
- mayaa 10y agoprofessions seldom use cameras other than main Japanese brands.
- tn13 10y agoSounds like a bad bad idea to me. When authorities realize that you have outwitted them they are going to beat you up, torture you or simply kill you. In countries like Pakistan, Turkey, India or China you body might later be found floating in some gutter somewhere. A better idea would be to simply hand over the camera to cops and save your skin. There are two strategies of surrender when a defeat in imminent. Political surrender: You fight till your last breath and make it difficult for the other party to win. Military surrender: When defeat is imminent it makes sense to surrender without a fight and cut need-less losses. I think journalists when confronted with a certain defeat must embrace second type of surrender instead of first.
- brokenmachine 10y agoThe whole point is to use technological means so the situation is not "certain defeat". There have been many great options presented in these comments for hiding/exfiltrating/locking the data.
- alabamamike 10y agoI've seen self encrypting SSDs, and I'm wondering why SD Cards with hardware encryption aren't already available. Is there a technical limitation that would render it impossible to build a storage card that has the ability to encrypt/decrypt data transparently to the device it is installed in?
- mahyarm 10y agoIf you want to circumvent the adblock blocker, just disable js for their webpage. uMatrix is a useful extension for that.
- squarefoot 10y agoThey should also provide a way to upload the media in a safe place while keeping some non trivial photos previously tagged as innocuous on a visible partition so that there is some form of plausible deniability. An empty memory card would immediately raise alerts, as probably would do one containing nothing but kitten images.