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The trouble with any such footage is that it can be used against you ("as the the defendant's own records show, they were present in the murder area") but they

The trouble with any such footage is that it can be used against you ("as the the defendant's own records show, they were present in the murder area") but they generally won't extricate you when produced by you, since you clearly have a motivation to use it selectively. So you showing a picture of yourself reading a book during what you claim is the murder night is not an alibi, because it could have been produced at any other time, and you will have a massive uphill battle in the court to authenticate that image, and risk even sink you further if you fail ("the defendant even prepared an alibi"). The only way I would accept a commercial product performing this always-on archiving is if: 1. It's encrypted by default with a strong key that can't be subpoenaed or circumvented. 2. The encoder generates its own random key upon installation which I don't know (recoding effectively random, undecodable data), and I then have to manually change the key if I expect to ever read the recording. Number 1 allows me to review and footage and only release it if it's in my interest, and number 2 affords me plausible deniability, if I don't release the key I can claim I did not know you need to set it manually. Sure, as long as you are the only nerd doing this, you don't need this complex setup, and you will probably get to use it the unencrypted footage only in your favor. But when it becomes widely accepted as a social norm (say, everyone wearing Google glasses), you can expect law enforcement will become aware of it as a cheap source of self-incriminatory evidence.

twobitshifter 4y ago
I‘d be interested in knowing of any cases where someone who recorded their own activities used it as an alibi. Right now it's all theoretical. Dash cams are really strong evidence in traffic court, but this isn’t criminal so it has a lower bar. From the other end, body cam footage is powerful when worn by police, and cell phone evidence by bystanders are also strong evidence.
- manholio 4y ago
  The body cam footage is a good example, it's deeply hated by the police and a frequent source of incriminatory evidence against the wearer. Since "you got nothing to hide", as the old saying goes, why not bodycam yourself and offer the authorities a great source of evidence they can use against yourself?
  - twobitshifter 4y ago
    I think that’s right, it’s a double edged sword. You would have to ask if you’re more likely to be wrongly accused or to be caught doing something wrong by your own recordings. This guy has been recording himself publicly since 2002 after ending up on a no fly list. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasan_M._Elahi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasan_M._Elahi I think that’s taking it too far and would rather encrypt than publish it publicly, but doing it publicly does strengthen the alibi
    - iudqnolq 4y ago
      You're missing an option: Wrongly accused on the basis of your own recordings. Imagine this real life situation occured, but it was your own recordings instead of surveillance cameras > A key piece of evidence in the case is video surveillance footage showing Williams’ car stopped on the 6300 block of South Stony Island Avenue at 11:46 p.m.—the time and location where police say they know Herring was shot. > How did they know that’s where the shooting happened? Police said ShotSpotter, a surveillance system that uses hidden microphone sensors to detect the sound and location of gunshots, generated an alert for that time and place. (The defense argued ShotSpotter makes up data and hides behind opaque AI they refuse to rigorously test. Instead of responding, the prosecution dropped the case.) https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-shotspotter-to-alter-evidence-from-gunshot-detecting-ai https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-sh...
      - twobitshifter 4y ago
        If I follow, the police would need access to the recordings to make the case, which would mean at least probable cause for a warrant. If Herring had a camera or mic on him running at the time of the shooting wouldn’t that contradict shotspotter? It seems more likely any data you have would create doubt rather than bolster the police case. In general, the shotspotter and surveillance cameras already exist, so what do you have to counteract that? Doing things like leaving no paper trail because you pay everything in cash, or no location data because you keep your phone in airplane mode, leaves little crumbs for your defense, and may create the appearance of hiding something.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Time is really critical. Alot of police investigative work is about stitching camera footage together in a timeline. I served on a jury where a case was built around camera evidence immediately before and after an event. Of about a dozen relevant data sources, only one had verifiable, correct time. The defense was able to impeach that evidence, and the whole case collapsed. A dude got away with manslaughter.
  - Ylpertnodi 4y ago
    "A dude got away with manslaughter." He got away with it only if he did it. If the presented evidence failed to prove his guilt (brd), then he didn't so much 'get away with it', as sufficient proof was not presented to prove his guilt. Sorry to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you thought he did it? Which, isn't necessarily a bad thing, as there are balances in the system that prevent you from being the sole judge, jury and executioner regarding the situation.
    - Spooky23 4y ago
      Absolutely true in theory and I accept the outcome, although it bothered me for some time. It didn't meet the standard of proof; however the family successfully obtained a civil judgement later. But there is no doubt in my mind that the guy was guilty of hitting a fallen pedestrian, probably by accident, and driving off. The thing that broke the case was a rhetorically talented defense attorney breaking down a (poor) expert witness who was inexperienced and unprepared. Certain traffic control devices use NTP to set their clock, and the expert wasn't able to articulate responses to the questions competently... so the video was admitted into evidence, but the metadata was not. The loss of the time source placed events depicted on a series of cameras from different sources, all with incorrect clocks, into a 10-minute window (as opposed to a 2 minute window), which broke the case and led to a dismissal. The attorney did a good job by her client, I'd hire her in a second.
- lazide 4y ago
  I was falsely accused of some serious crimes and abuse. It turns out, having security camera footage of the entire period of time showing that not only did you do nothing of the sort, but fundamentally could not have done anything of the sort, and was actually just playing with your kids the entire time, and the accuser had to have known so, changes the dynamic of such a case quite quickly. Unfortunately, no one seems to take Perjury seriously in California, at least when the accuser is a woman. Despite it being a felony with penalties of 2,3, or 4 years in prison, and airtight evidence of multiple repeated occurrences.
  - jimmySixDOF 4y ago
    That works now but it won't be long until they can find someone to deepfake an alternative camera showing you red handed and then the court has two conflicting stories backed up by conflicting proofs.
    - lazide 4y ago
      Possibly, but chain of custody and credibility of claims matter. In my case it was all originally stored on a cloud security video storage system which I had emails going back years documenting existed, evidence the video came directly from it, and that it had been installed years before. Also, the footage I provided was not showing anything unusual or hard to believe. I also had significant history available showing that this was normal and par for the course for me, not that anyone asked. Their claims were quite extraordinary, and they had zero concrete evidence to back them up. It still took awhile for the case to resolve, and they tried to make all sorts of other claims - including that the footage was from cameras that were installed without anyones knowledge and was illicitly recording, and was therefor illegal and inadmissible. so I dug up the email where the accuser had asked me for my permission if it was okay if they had it installed because it recorded audio too. That said, it was visibly, blatantly, and obviously installed in the open, and there were witnesses who could testify that had always been the case, so they had no leg to stand on anyway. Even if I had the opportunity to fake it (which I could have, I guess, or at least edited it or something) it’s pretty hard to fake all the other circumstances which support the validity of it. They never tried to impeach the video itself. If someone provides an unsourced security video showing the person murdering the president, and the other person shows security video from a confirmed third party using a system that had existed for years, showing they were at home watching TV at the time - and the president appears to still be alive at the time and unharmed - it’s not hard to figure out who is faking it. I’m having a hard time imagining how they could have produced a video supporting their claims with the same level of even apparent credibility where it wouldn’t have fallen apart immediately with any investigation. The courts already have to deal with people lying all the time and being disingenuous - it’s why the procedures exist and everything is so painful, IMO. Knowing the rules and keeping documentation does work, generally. I would recommend being careful to avoid situations which could be easily twisted or misinterpreted from the evidence however, especially after this situation. And never proactively provide data or show your hand to someone trying to attack you this way, as it can provide them more means to try to twist things and make life harder. Good attorneys are key here.
Jach 4y ago
Why not just have the device occasionally send sha256 sums of chunks to a third party service, like Twitter tweets, where it's clear you can't forge the date of the message? If you need to produce some chunks, the matching hashes provide an independent time stamp showing you didn't just produce the content at any time. This sort of trick is already commonly done to demonstrate prior knowledge of something at a later point in time without having to reveal it just yet (if ever).
- ramblerman 4y ago
  Great idea, but are courts tech savvy enough to accept this already? Even with a tech expert to explain it, I worry the opposition would just get their own expert and make a whole mess of it, confusing both the judge and jury enough to cast doubt. Perhaps I have a very wrong view on how both such evidence is presented and accepted though.
  - Jach 4y ago
    Courts are generally more tech savvy than techies like to give them credit for. But it's worth mentioning that in recent years several US states have already passed legislation expressly forbidding courts from denying such evidence (even/especially if put on Blockchains rather than a more traditional non-decentralized network/database), and you can find similar stuff in other countries around the world (even China). And of course in lower courts (like small claims) or even mediation the standards are a lot looser, there's not even a jury. If you want a more thorough view of the rules in the US (which states deviate from to some extent), you might like to browse https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre
- xyzzy123 4y ago
  You could queue it up to send chunks of reassuring alibi video (or checksums of same) while you are doing your murders or crimes. Put another way, the possibility that you could have done that renders the timestamping useless.
  - Jach 4y ago
RobRivera 4y ago
I had an awful breakup with a woman with tortuous tendencies and a false sense of how to abuse personal injury law and she keeps google home devices and car devices recording practically every moment of her life. as well as apple watch broadcasting her location at all times. I observed she would always accuse me of things i never did in front of these cameras to get me to give false confessions. thankfully i am as blissfully honest to all people i meet, sometimes to my own detriment, so i never admit to fabricated stories. given that context, can you point me to judicial precedents where plaintiffs had their self provided footage weakend due to the idea of fabricating false narratives with devices, selectively natrowing contexts etc.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  > can you point me to judicial precedents where plaintiffs had their self provided footage weakend due to the idea of fabricating false narratives with devices, selectively natrowing contexts etc. I was part of an organization that had communal space we wanted to install a camera in because one of our members was leaving a mess and we wanted to know who. I’m not a lawyer, nor a judge, nor an expert but I’ve hired a lawyer about the above cameras before installation. First of all, there’s no “selectively narrow contexts”. If you can submit footage into evidence, the courts incl the other lawyers can request different moments in time if you have it (eg for surveillance cams). Our lawyer advised us to never start/stop the camera, never delete footage or generally mess with it in any way without a paper trail of why. Any footage should auto delete after a period of time, and not be manually done ever. Basically any manual manipulation of the footage could be suspicious if a crime were to occur where people might suspect the footage to have captured it. I assume if our lawyer warned us that much, there’s probably a case history of trying to plant a narrative with footage.

twobitshifter 4y ago

I‘d be interested in knowing of any cases where someone who recorded their own activities used it as an alibi. Right now it's all theoretical. Dash cams are really strong evidence in traffic court, but this isn’t criminal so it has a lower bar. From the other end, body cam footage is powerful when worn by police, and cell phone evidence by bystanders are also strong evidence.

manholio 4y ago
The body cam footage is a good example, it's deeply hated by the police and a frequent source of incriminatory evidence against the wearer. Since "you got nothing to hide", as the old saying goes, why not bodycam yourself and offer the authorities a great source of evidence they can use against yourself?
- twobitshifter 4y ago
  I think that’s right, it’s a double edged sword. You would have to ask if you’re more likely to be wrongly accused or to be caught doing something wrong by your own recordings. This guy has been recording himself publicly since 2002 after ending up on a no fly list. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasan_M._Elahi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasan_M._Elahi I think that’s taking it too far and would rather encrypt than publish it publicly, but doing it publicly does strengthen the alibi
  - iudqnolq 4y ago
    You're missing an option: Wrongly accused on the basis of your own recordings. Imagine this real life situation occured, but it was your own recordings instead of surveillance cameras > A key piece of evidence in the case is video surveillance footage showing Williams’ car stopped on the 6300 block of South Stony Island Avenue at 11:46 p.m.—the time and location where police say they know Herring was shot. > How did they know that’s where the shooting happened? Police said ShotSpotter, a surveillance system that uses hidden microphone sensors to detect the sound and location of gunshots, generated an alert for that time and place. (The defense argued ShotSpotter makes up data and hides behind opaque AI they refuse to rigorously test. Instead of responding, the prosecution dropped the case.) https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-shotspotter-to-alter-evidence-from-gunshot-detecting-ai https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-sh...
    - twobitshifter 4y ago
      If I follow, the police would need access to the recordings to make the case, which would mean at least probable cause for a warrant. If Herring had a camera or mic on him running at the time of the shooting wouldn’t that contradict shotspotter? It seems more likely any data you have would create doubt rather than bolster the police case. In general, the shotspotter and surveillance cameras already exist, so what do you have to counteract that? Doing things like leaving no paper trail because you pay everything in cash, or no location data because you keep your phone in airplane mode, leaves little crumbs for your defense, and may create the appearance of hiding something.
Spooky23 4y ago
Time is really critical. Alot of police investigative work is about stitching camera footage together in a timeline. I served on a jury where a case was built around camera evidence immediately before and after an event. Of about a dozen relevant data sources, only one had verifiable, correct time. The defense was able to impeach that evidence, and the whole case collapsed. A dude got away with manslaughter.
- Ylpertnodi 4y ago
  "A dude got away with manslaughter." He got away with it only if he did it. If the presented evidence failed to prove his guilt (brd), then he didn't so much 'get away with it', as sufficient proof was not presented to prove his guilt. Sorry to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you thought he did it? Which, isn't necessarily a bad thing, as there are balances in the system that prevent you from being the sole judge, jury and executioner regarding the situation.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    Absolutely true in theory and I accept the outcome, although it bothered me for some time. It didn't meet the standard of proof; however the family successfully obtained a civil judgement later. But there is no doubt in my mind that the guy was guilty of hitting a fallen pedestrian, probably by accident, and driving off. The thing that broke the case was a rhetorically talented defense attorney breaking down a (poor) expert witness who was inexperienced and unprepared. Certain traffic control devices use NTP to set their clock, and the expert wasn't able to articulate responses to the questions competently... so the video was admitted into evidence, but the metadata was not. The loss of the time source placed events depicted on a series of cameras from different sources, all with incorrect clocks, into a 10-minute window (as opposed to a 2 minute window), which broke the case and led to a dismissal. The attorney did a good job by her client, I'd hire her in a second.
lazide 4y ago
I was falsely accused of some serious crimes and abuse. It turns out, having security camera footage of the entire period of time showing that not only did you do nothing of the sort, but fundamentally could not have done anything of the sort, and was actually just playing with your kids the entire time, and the accuser had to have known so, changes the dynamic of such a case quite quickly. Unfortunately, no one seems to take Perjury seriously in California, at least when the accuser is a woman. Despite it being a felony with penalties of 2,3, or 4 years in prison, and airtight evidence of multiple repeated occurrences.
- jimmySixDOF 4y ago
  That works now but it won't be long until they can find someone to deepfake an alternative camera showing you red handed and then the court has two conflicting stories backed up by conflicting proofs.
  - lazide 4y ago
    Possibly, but chain of custody and credibility of claims matter. In my case it was all originally stored on a cloud security video storage system which I had emails going back years documenting existed, evidence the video came directly from it, and that it had been installed years before. Also, the footage I provided was not showing anything unusual or hard to believe. I also had significant history available showing that this was normal and par for the course for me, not that anyone asked. Their claims were quite extraordinary, and they had zero concrete evidence to back them up. It still took awhile for the case to resolve, and they tried to make all sorts of other claims - including that the footage was from cameras that were installed without anyones knowledge and was illicitly recording, and was therefor illegal and inadmissible. so I dug up the email where the accuser had asked me for my permission if it was okay if they had it installed because it recorded audio too. That said, it was visibly, blatantly, and obviously installed in the open, and there were witnesses who could testify that had always been the case, so they had no leg to stand on anyway. Even if I had the opportunity to fake it (which I could have, I guess, or at least edited it or something) it’s pretty hard to fake all the other circumstances which support the validity of it. They never tried to impeach the video itself. If someone provides an unsourced security video showing the person murdering the president, and the other person shows security video from a confirmed third party using a system that had existed for years, showing they were at home watching TV at the time - and the president appears to still be alive at the time and unharmed - it’s not hard to figure out who is faking it. I’m having a hard time imagining how they could have produced a video supporting their claims with the same level of even apparent credibility where it wouldn’t have fallen apart immediately with any investigation. The courts already have to deal with people lying all the time and being disingenuous - it’s why the procedures exist and everything is so painful, IMO. Knowing the rules and keeping documentation does work, generally. I would recommend being careful to avoid situations which could be easily twisted or misinterpreted from the evidence however, especially after this situation. And never proactively provide data or show your hand to someone trying to attack you this way, as it can provide them more means to try to twist things and make life harder. Good attorneys are key here.

Jach 4y ago

Why not just have the device occasionally send sha256 sums of chunks to a third party service, like Twitter tweets, where it's clear you can't forge the date of the message? If you need to produce some chunks, the matching hashes provide an independent time stamp showing you didn't just produce the content at any time. This sort of trick is already commonly done to demonstrate prior knowledge of something at a later point in time without having to reveal it just yet (if ever).

ramblerman 4y ago
Great idea, but are courts tech savvy enough to accept this already? Even with a tech expert to explain it, I worry the opposition would just get their own expert and make a whole mess of it, confusing both the judge and jury enough to cast doubt. Perhaps I have a very wrong view on how both such evidence is presented and accepted though.
- Jach 4y ago
  Courts are generally more tech savvy than techies like to give them credit for. But it's worth mentioning that in recent years several US states have already passed legislation expressly forbidding courts from denying such evidence (even/especially if put on Blockchains rather than a more traditional non-decentralized network/database), and you can find similar stuff in other countries around the world (even China). And of course in lower courts (like small claims) or even mediation the standards are a lot looser, there's not even a jury. If you want a more thorough view of the rules in the US (which states deviate from to some extent), you might like to browse https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre
xyzzy123 4y ago
You could queue it up to send chunks of reassuring alibi video (or checksums of same) while you are doing your murders or crimes. Put another way, the possibility that you could have done that renders the timestamping useless.
- Jach 4y ago

RobRivera 4y ago

I had an awful breakup with a woman with tortuous tendencies and a false sense of how to abuse personal injury law and she keeps google home devices and car devices recording practically every moment of her life. as well as apple watch broadcasting her location at all times. I observed she would always accuse me of things i never did in front of these cameras to get me to give false confessions. thankfully i am as blissfully honest to all people i meet, sometimes to my own detriment, so i never admit to fabricated stories. given that context, can you point me to judicial precedents where plaintiffs had their self provided footage weakend due to the idea of fabricating false narratives with devices, selectively natrowing contexts etc.

vineyardmike 4y ago
> can you point me to judicial precedents where plaintiffs had their self provided footage weakend due to the idea of fabricating false narratives with devices, selectively natrowing contexts etc. I was part of an organization that had communal space we wanted to install a camera in because one of our members was leaving a mess and we wanted to know who. I’m not a lawyer, nor a judge, nor an expert but I’ve hired a lawyer about the above cameras before installation. First of all, there’s no “selectively narrow contexts”. If you can submit footage into evidence, the courts incl the other lawyers can request different moments in time if you have it (eg for surveillance cams). Our lawyer advised us to never start/stop the camera, never delete footage or generally mess with it in any way without a paper trail of why. Any footage should auto delete after a period of time, and not be manually done ever. Basically any manual manipulation of the footage could be suspicious if a crime were to occur where people might suspect the footage to have captured it. I assume if our lawyer warned us that much, there’s probably a case history of trying to plant a narrative with footage.