7 ms·

I'm very much in favor of these cameras, but there's one extrapolation that few have proposed: Why not encourage private citizens to record their public lives?

• DanBC 13y ago
  Most people haven't had the need to life-log. They don't get into the kind of situation where that evidence is useful very often. So they don't have the knowledge to setup a life logging device until after they've needed it. (A bit like backup software!) Storage and battery size and etc have all been a bit clunky until recently too. I guess a rolling buffer of a hour is fine; click a button to dump the peevious hour to long term storage? The few times where I would have benefited from using such devices I know the other people would have really really hated me using it. I'm interested in cheap / free (as in cost and rights) methods for life logging. I don't care about breaking surveillance laws.
  • pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    >The few times where I would have benefited from using such devices I know the other people would have really really hated me using it. // This is a potential problem. In the OP the officer waits until after the situation to upload. If it's not live streaming then you risk being attacked so that the video footage is prevented from being uploaded. This issue came up here in the past in relation to apps for recording audio using a smartphone. >I don't care about breaking surveillance laws. // This is especially interesting to me as you're effectively gathering evidence that could show you broke the law. I'd assume in the UK such evidence, if found, could be used against you. Would you need to wear a sign saying "video recording in operation"?
    • DanBC 13y ago
      I genuinely don't know what the UK laws are. I should have been clearer though. For my purposes the video / audio would have very limited use. "Hey! They did this thing that they must not do! That's why I did what I did". NHS (uk health service) complaints system is a bit broken and recording appointments would be useful for me.
  • objclxt 13y ago
    > The few times where I would have benefited from using such devices I know the other people would have really really hated me using it [...] I don't care about breaking surveillance laws It seems to me that those two statements are very much at odds with each other, unless the 'benefit' you're getting from life-logging is simply personal or emotional satisfaction. What 'benefit' are we talking about here?
    • DanBC 13y ago
      Imagine a meeting with a psychologist who gives a blatantly illegal reason for keeping my spouse detained under secrion of the mental health act. Without a recording my options are to write a nearest relative's letter of order to discharge, and face the wrarh of the psychologist who could then cause considerable trouble for me and my spouse. With the recording all the backlash from the psych is damped down when I let people know what actually happened. Recording that meeting has some ethical and moral problems and the other people in the meeting would be strongly against me recording it. And while there might be laws against it they tend not to be strictly enforced over here. There are a bunch of other "he said she said" situations where a recording might be useful.
• matteotom 13y ago
  I wouldn't have a problem recording my own life, or having others record theirs, if I knew for certain that the footage would stay on a secure hard drive owned by the individual shooting it, and the government (or anyone else) couldn't access it without a warrant. Unfortunately, and technically reasonable solution to people recording their lives would likely include automatic uploading, cloud storage, and ultimately government (and corporate) access to the video. I am not OK with that, for the same reasons I'm not OK with government surveillance.
  • ChuckMcM 13y ago
    In the US ... Unfortunately, those recordings would not be out of reach because while you cannot be compelled to testify against yourself, you can be compelled to testify against someone else if the prosecution has reason to believe you have testimony material to the charges. And that is why this sort of thing falls down.
  • DanBC 13y ago
    I genuinely don't understand why it's okay for people but not okay for governments? People who breach privacy do stuff with that information. Governments who breach privacy do very little with that information, and mostly not to me. That's not to say it is acceptable for governments to do it - they must not. But if find it weird to read on HN peoe saying that it is terrible for a government to breach privacy but then admitting they do it to their users.
    • gohrt 13y ago
      Parent poster wasn't condoning breaching privacy; parent poster was condoning an individual owning their own observatiosn.
    • baddox 13y ago
      One reason is that governments are funded by taxation, which is compulsory.
• devindotcom 13y ago
  They may simply have different ideas about what constitutes quality of life. Personally, I am not interested in any of the "perks" you mention, though of course the benefits when it comes to law and justice are pretty clear.
• stephenbez 13y ago
  I would love to record more of my life. Unfortunately the state that I live in (Illinois) is a two-party consent state. Even in cases where I know I'm going to be ripped off, such as cancelling a gym membership, I'm not able to record.
• jrlocke 13y ago
  If you record it, They will come.
• npizzolato 13y ago
  There is no inconsistency here. A desire to record the police stems from the fact that there is a huge discrepancy in power in any interaction between a police officer and a normal citizen and that the police officer is on duty to uphold the laws established by society at large. That is a drastically different set of circumstances than wanting to record any average person all the time. And personally, I don't want to have to live my life in a way where everything I say or do is on the record. I want the freedom to be able to make remarks and jokes that would be appropriate among friends but not to any random person. I don't want to have to phrase everything I say as PC as possible knowing that it will be stored forever.
  • ggreer 13y ago
    I didn't say we should require everyone to record themselves all the time. I said maybe it makes sense to encourage people to voluntarily record their public lives. I think power discrepancies between private citizens can be just as great. I'm 5'6" and 120lbs. Even unarmed, many people pose a threat to me. Heck, I've been physically threatened by strangers several times in the past month. Also, I think recording strangers in public would help curb antisocial behavior. There's a guy swearing loudly on his cell phone on the bus I'm riding. Maybe he'd tone it down a little if someone threatened to upload a video of him.
    • DanBC 13y ago
      I travel on buses that have CCTV and a big monitor so everyone can see what the 8 or so cameras are recording. People swear loudly (no audio recording but I doubt that is a factor); people prepare cannabis cigarettes; etc etc. Some people are just anti social[1] and do not care. [1] preparing a joint isn't anti social! They're not smoking it on the bus. But it is illegal in the UK.
    • kaliblack 13y ago
      > Also, I think recording strangers in public would help curb antisocial behavior. We have that ability already. In Australia last year there were several cases of racially motivated verbal abuse on public transport being caught on mobile phones. These made the evening news. I wonder if this, and other similar instances around the world, have made anyone think twice before being anti-social.
• JamieLewis 13y ago
  There is a great episode of Black Mirror (All episodes of Black Mirror are great, but this one is more relevant - Season 1 Episode 3) titled The Entire History of Us, it turns the figurative mirror on a world where people do exactly this...
• moultano 13y ago
  There are two primary argument for police to have them IMHO. 1. Police have extraordinary power over others. 2. Juries believe them by default. This gives them much higher requirements for accountability than most people. I do really like the idea though. Human memories are incredibly inaccurate, but we believe our own memories and can't really do otherwise. If we had the option of a surrogate memory that could be really transformational. Imagine what that would do to your perception of time and your discount rate if you could have perfect recall of your whole life?
  • stcredzero 13y ago
    1. Police have extraordinary power over others. 2. Juries believe them by default. There are many contexts where juries will believe one party prejudicially over another, and/or one party has some form of extraordinary power in defiance of facts or objective reality. (What these are, and their directions vary over time.) Up until now, it seems that our only and very crude solution has been to introduce a "correcting bias" in the direction deemed most likely to increase the amount of justice enacted in society. It seems to me that gathering more information in a more timely fashion and making objective and contextually relevant determinations is the rational and technically savvy direction to go. However, I'm not so sure that human beings are mature enough as a species to actually apply such informational power in a truly fair and rational manner. I rather think that we'd be prone to using such power to bolster the whims and prejudices of the status quo, at least in the short term.
  • vacri 13y ago
    What happens when the police enter private property? Information leaks happen all the time from law enforcement storage.
    • Crito 13y ago
      If there are police officers in my home, 99 times out of 100 it would be preferable for me if they recorded everything and uploaded it directly to youtube on purpose, than if they recorded nothing.
• millioncents 13y ago
  Just wait until Google Glass takes off, cloud storage becomes cheaper, wifi/mobile networks become faster... And those Russian dash cam/fail videos will hit a new high in no time.
• stcredzero 13y ago
  I'm very much in favor of these cameras, but there's one extrapolation that few have proposed: Why not encourage private citizens to record their public lives? Most of the arguments for recording police apply to everyone: Allegations are quickly discovered to be true or false. Here's a hardware startup idea: A voice recorder that reliably records only your own voice. This could be combined with a soundless video record to legally and automatically record your public life in almost any jurisdiction in the US. There are other perks to life-logging. Conversations could be transcribed and searched, eliminating many disputes as to who said what. Basically the same perks and drawbacks to small town or village life. Think Russian dash cams on steroids. People lie. A lot! And even people trying to be accurate and truthful are subject to all sorts of malfunctions. ...If you catalog all of the pernicious things humans do to themselves then Homo sapiens comes out worse than any "forehead-alien/warlike species" from any sci-fi TV or movie property. The Klingons or the Kzinti have nothing on humans in terms of cold, sadistic, or violent tendencies. The Ferengi have nothing on us in terms of greed-driven amorality. Even Sith Lords are amateurs at cold-blooded Realpolitik compared to actual historic figures. Humans are wonderful and horrible all at the same time. Maybe that's the solution to the Fermi Paradox. We're like the extremely interesting person you find so hot on okcupid, but you know way better than to even consider dating them, precisely because they're a little too interesting. When all is said and done, voluntary free-market self-surveillance is still preferable to the closed-minded doublethink of traditional religious/social institutions and their methods of controlling us unruly humans.
• Gustomaximus 13y ago
  What concerns me with lifelogging is the ability for 1) a one off event to detriment your life ongoing, as most of us have done or said something stupid or out-of-character at some point. 2) We create this society of bland interactions as people are afraid something they do or say being 'wrong' and made public 3) Having blanket coverage at the personal level it would be easier for people to grab/create moments that take things out of context. There is definitely some benefit there for the right environment, but always on blanket recording across the populations to me seems the downside would outweigh the positives.
• trhaynes 13y ago
  "The Circle" by Dave Eggers [1] is a good exploration of this future. [1] http://amzn.com/0385351399 http://amzn.com/0385351399
• stefan_kendall3 13y ago
  People have been arrested and worse for taking video of police officers. This is not a threat I need in my daily life. The legality of recording someone without their express consent also varies by state. I would love to record my daily public life. Laws and technology make that tricky.
• EGreg 13y ago
  You should see the movie Final Cut :)
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• MichaelGG 13y ago
  Same reason I don't keep a journal yet: I'm finding it difficult to have an easily-accessible, but definitely secured system. For instance, OneNote sounds great, until I realised using it multi-device means everything gets stored on MS's servers in plaintext, available to anyone in position (technically or legally).
• protl 13y ago
  One problem that comes to mind is that people who would choose not record themselves would be looked on with suspicion, having the police do the recording would eliminate this problem. Personally life logging is something I'm personally quite interested in, but mandating it, even socially rather than legally, is highly problematic in my eyes.
• masklinn 13y ago
  > Why not encourage private citizens to record their public lives? Most of the arguments for recording police apply to everyone: Allegations are quickly discovered to be true or false. Everyone involved is less likely to be violent. People are more cordial. Determining guilt or innocence is much easier. Was a shooting self-defense or manslaughter? Did the eyewitness really recognize the defendant on the night of the crime? Etc. This has already taken root in a bunch of countries, to an extent. Dash cams are ubiquitous in Russia, though it's this restricted to "when I'm in my car" (depending on make, dash cams can record only the outside — front — or both inside and outside)
• runamok 13y ago
  Most states have wiretapping laws and for anything to be admissible to court for instance I believe you need to notify them that you are recording. I'm actually surprised Google glass has not run afoul of those laws.