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This sounds like a great unmet opportunity to create a camera for journalists that encrypts every picture to a public key that only your editor (presumably in a

This sounds like a great unmet opportunity to create a camera for journalists that encrypts every picture to a public key that only your editor (presumably in a safe location) has the private key to decrypt.

marcosdumay 12y ago
And instantly uploads it (or at least, as soon as the camera is plugged to a phone).
- vidarh 12y ago
  That part you can handle with a Transcend or Eyefi wifi-enabled SD-card. The Transcend cards have also been thoroughly hacked so they can be fairly easily customized.
gglitch 12y ago
Excellent idea. For journalists - or just for citizens who happen to be standing around in the wrong place at the right time.
MichaelGG 12y ago
Some cameras have open-ish firmware so it sounds easy enough to add. Unfortunately, the big SLRs from Canon and Nikon have terrible firmware run by an organization that's stuck in the 80s or worse with the typical poor level of software hardware companies are known for.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Actually Canon makes their SDK freely available and while they don't let you fork the operating system there's an open-source alternative called Magic Lantern that works very well on most of their DSLR range and adds a lot of functionality (as well as providing a lot of reverse engineering info on their hardware through the site). Canon hasn't officially blessed this, but they haven't obstructed them in any way. The main problem with adding encryption would be that photos and video can consume a lot of bandwidth, and the bandwidth inside a digital camera is limited, as is the processing power. It would make more sense to put the encryption directly on the media card, similar to the fashion in which Eye-fi cards include a tiny CPU and web server to automatically offload the content to a trusted network.
ShinyCyril 12y ago
Rather than an entire camera (which would have incredibly high R&D costs and likely not be on the same level as professional cameras), why not just an SD card which encrypts the data before it writes it to flash?
- scott_karana 12y ago
  If the SD card stores the encryption key inside itself, how is it even remotely secure?
  - ShinyCyril 12y ago
    I would envision more of an adapter form factor, where the hardware encryption is done on an SD-card shaped device which has a removable MicroSD slot in it for the actual storage.
    - scott_karana 12y ago
      That offers only marginal improvement. If you were arrested with your camera, the police would take possession of both the adapter and microSD card, rendering your encryption a mere annoyance (if they even noticed it!)
  - warble 12y ago
    it would just store the public key only.
    - scott_karana 12y ago
      Fair point: that should work. I'm just worried that could confuse the camera, though: image preview wouldn't work, checksumming wouldn't work...
pauldino 12y ago
Presumably you could just write an Android app for that and run it on a Samsung Galaxy NX.

marcosdumay 12y ago

And instantly uploads it (or at least, as soon as the camera is plugged to a phone).

vidarh 12y ago
That part you can handle with a Transcend or Eyefi wifi-enabled SD-card. The Transcend cards have also been thoroughly hacked so they can be fairly easily customized.

gglitch 12y ago

Excellent idea. For journalists - or just for citizens who happen to be standing around in the wrong place at the right time.

MichaelGG 12y ago

Some cameras have open-ish firmware so it sounds easy enough to add. Unfortunately, the big SLRs from Canon and Nikon have terrible firmware run by an organization that's stuck in the 80s or worse with the typical poor level of software hardware companies are known for.

anigbrowl 12y ago
Actually Canon makes their SDK freely available and while they don't let you fork the operating system there's an open-source alternative called Magic Lantern that works very well on most of their DSLR range and adds a lot of functionality (as well as providing a lot of reverse engineering info on their hardware through the site). Canon hasn't officially blessed this, but they haven't obstructed them in any way. The main problem with adding encryption would be that photos and video can consume a lot of bandwidth, and the bandwidth inside a digital camera is limited, as is the processing power. It would make more sense to put the encryption directly on the media card, similar to the fashion in which Eye-fi cards include a tiny CPU and web server to automatically offload the content to a trusted network.

ShinyCyril 12y ago

Rather than an entire camera (which would have incredibly high R&D costs and likely not be on the same level as professional cameras), why not just an SD card which encrypts the data before it writes it to flash?

scott_karana 12y ago
If the SD card stores the encryption key inside itself, how is it even remotely secure?
- ShinyCyril 12y ago
  I would envision more of an adapter form factor, where the hardware encryption is done on an SD-card shaped device which has a removable MicroSD slot in it for the actual storage.
  - scott_karana 12y ago
    That offers only marginal improvement. If you were arrested with your camera, the police would take possession of both the adapter and microSD card, rendering your encryption a mere annoyance (if they even noticed it!)
- warble 12y ago
  it would just store the public key only.
  - scott_karana 12y ago
    Fair point: that should work. I'm just worried that could confuse the camera, though: image preview wouldn't work, checksumming wouldn't work...

pauldino 12y ago

Presumably you could just write an Android app for that and run it on a Samsung Galaxy NX.