[extropy-chat] SING: recording our lives

[Hal Finney]

Kevin Freels writes:
> It seems the US military has revived the idea of logging
> everything a soldier sees and does in battle. I had wondered
> how long this would take. I would like one of these myself!
> http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,64911,00.html?tw=newsletter_topstories_html

I would too, especially in combination with Steve Mann's eyetap concept,
http://www.eyetap.org/research/eyetap.html .

> I wonder what would happen to the legal system if everyone had a solid
> copy of all of their own actions recorded. How would murder and other
> crimes be affected? WOuld it really be a violation of privacy if you
> had control over the information? Lots to think about here. Shouldn't
> we be able to get something similar to this in the next 5 years?

Robert Sawyer's Neanderthal society in Hominids, http://www.sfwriter.com/exho.htm,
has a simimlar concept.  Everyone wears a monitoring device which records
everything that happens.  This helps to keep crime low, although the
Neanderthal society was so utopian and unrealistic that I didn't find
it very convincing.

I see several problems with using the technology for preventing crime.
First, if it is supposed to incriminate the perpetrator by being captured
on the victim's device, that will just make sure that the devices are
stolen or disabled by attackers.  Second, of course the perpetrator would
not carry such a device of his own while committing a crime (at least,
most would not; there have been several cases where people got caught by
videotaping their own criminal actions).  And third, if the devices are
to provide an alibi for people falsely accused of crime, the problem will
be with people altering or fooling them into providing fake evidence.
Maybe they could be made tamper resistant but it is hard to stop all
forms of human ingenuity.

However if we move away from these interpersonal uses and just think
about recordings used by the person who made them, then that avoids most
of these problems.  There are still some big privacy issues though.  Many
people won't be too thrilled about being in somebody else's recordings.
And there's nothing to stop people from showing them around.  So there
are some tough issues there.

Just as camera phones are becoming widespread, places are starting to
ban taking pictures.  We may see a similar backlash against ubiquitous
personal recorders.

Hal