Post by elizabeth on Feb 21, 2014 21:43:22 GMT
This Tiny Wearable Camera Takes 'Spying' To New Heights
February 21, 2014 | Christine Pasciuti
Call it what you want… “life-logger”, “personal paparazzo” or “moment maker”, this tiny wearable camera has won the praises of the techno-elite since its debut on Kickstarter in 2012, where its Swedish founders received full funding in November of that year from 2,871 individual supporters. Kickstarter.com connects entrepreneurial creators with financial backers, helping them build community around their new projects. Originally called “Memoto”, the camera’s name was later changed to the Narrative Clip.
Since the product’s launch, it’s been reviewed, blogged about, and scrutinized on nearly every tech webpage from wired.com to slashgear.com to huffingtonpost.com. But once you take it on the streets, and people recognize it for what it is, reactions are a bit darker. “I didn’t sign a waver!” shouted one guy, passing by a journalist out on a test run. Friends of wearers have called the gadget “sinister”, a “concealed weapon” and “creepy”. Unsuspecting subjects captured digitally by each 30-second automated snap of the camera, later acknowledged its uncanny resemblance to Big Brother.
Here’s how it works:
The Narrative Clip is a 0.7 ounce tiny camera and app, housed in a discreet plastic casing (white, orange, slate gray or black) shaped like a Triscuit Cracker, and about the same size. A metal clip on its reverse side will attach to just about anything it can grasp.
Inside is a 5-megapixel camera that automatically shoots a 2560 x 1920 resolution JPEG every 30 seconds, about the same quality as an iPhone 4. GPS technology and a digital compass allow for geo tracking of your location in all photos, and an accelerometer “knows” which way is up in each picture, no matter the angle at which you clip the device onto your shirt collar, hat or backpack.
There’s a rechargeable battery (+/- 30 hours of use) and 8GB of storage, each good for about two days’ worth of recording. Leaving the Narrative on all day will record more than 2,800 images, and the camera’s 8GB of memory holds about 4,000 pictures total. On its side the unit has a micro USB port for synchronizing and charging, and four LED lights that indicate remaining battery power.
There are no buttons to push; double tapping the unit will fire off a manual photo or give you battery status, and laying the device face down or slipping it into a dark pocket will put it in “sleep mode”.
Uploading your photos requires using the company’s software, which works on Mac OS X and Windows, and logging in to your Narrative account. Once you connect your Narrative to your computer’s USB port, the thousands of pictures are uploaded to Narrative’s servers or backed up to your local hard drive, whichever you choose. The camera doesn’t mount as a regular USB drive, so strangers would not be able to see your photos if you lose it, but hopefully you won’t, given its $279 sticker price.
After logging in to the smartphone app, you’ll see all your pictures condensed into a flipbook-style format. Each photo is time-stamped and geo tagged, ready to be custom organized, or simply left in a chronological stack. The software also has some embedded algorithms designed to automatically pick out the “best” photos for you.
What’s the point? It’s an accessory that tracks everything we (or others) do, via photographic memory, providing technology-enabled total recall beyond where our porous, scattered minds fail us. While some users estimate that 95 percent of the photos taken are redundant because of duplicates, bad shots, or uninteresting ones, others praise the Narrative’s ability to effortlessly capture those fleeting moments in life without interrupting them.
Being in control of the personal data collected is one thing, but being unintentionally face to face with the camera lens is another. We either have no clue that we were just photographed, or we walk away knowing only that a stranger has just taken our picture. Either way, we are left utterly vulnerable to what they plan to do with it.
Most of us just want to have some good clean fun with our new interactive accessory, but it’s a good idea to understand the legal guidelines for snapping photos of people in public, without their knowledge or consent.
For the most part, the law is quite generous. While on public property, i.e., a street, sidewalk or city park, you can take pictures of what you see, even if it includes photographing private property, as long as you’re not trespassing to get the shot.
You can’t, however, photograph someone who has a “reasonable expectation of privacy”, even if you are on public property, which means no snap shots of people in a bathroom, a dressing room, or any other locale where you yourself would expect privacy.
Similarly, photographing others at strange angles with the intent of exposing covered parts of their person is off limits, even if you are in a public place.
And, if your photos could in any way interfere with national security (taking shots of military bases or nuclear facilities), don’t even think about taking the shot, even if you are not trespassing on government land. The government reserves the right to confiscate your photographs, and you would immediately invite suspicion of possible engagement in criminal activity…NOT a sound move.
Be polite if someone approaches you, unhappy about being in the firing line of your Clip’s automated camera lens. Your aim may have been directed at an historic landmark but it unintentionally also included the subject’s profile as they were passing by. Is the law on your side of the argument? Sure, but choose your battles; if a person is truly upset at being photographed, be courteous and briefly explain how the camera works, so the irritated party will understand that they were randomly snapped and not deliberately targeted.
The proliferation of tiny wearable camera technology will unfortunately usher in a much greater potential for breach of privacy. Will the temptation to step it up from mere innocent, recreational use, to intentional spying, illegal surveillance, intelligence gathering, and even voyeurism, be too great for human nature to withstand?
Once the photographs of unsuspecting targets exist, the potential for misuse is endless—particularly with advanced facial recognition technology coming right around the corner. If governments are already using (or misusing) this technology for surveillance of their citizens, one could argue that the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of photo uploads we are contributing into the Cloud will make their searches that much easier.
Crimes such as identity theft, extortion and pornography may be given a boost when there is infinite access to illegally obtained photographs, created from do-it-yourself operations.
Do these cute little cameras still seem harmless? Yes, in that utopian world where integrity is top priority. But here on earth we could sadly be standing at the precipice of a new era of grand scale privacy invasion, generating a new kind of nightmare for law enforcement, which will be unable to regulate what it cannot control.
Click Here
Fair Use For Educational or Discussion Purposes
February 21, 2014 | Christine Pasciuti
Call it what you want… “life-logger”, “personal paparazzo” or “moment maker”, this tiny wearable camera has won the praises of the techno-elite since its debut on Kickstarter in 2012, where its Swedish founders received full funding in November of that year from 2,871 individual supporters. Kickstarter.com connects entrepreneurial creators with financial backers, helping them build community around their new projects. Originally called “Memoto”, the camera’s name was later changed to the Narrative Clip.
Since the product’s launch, it’s been reviewed, blogged about, and scrutinized on nearly every tech webpage from wired.com to slashgear.com to huffingtonpost.com. But once you take it on the streets, and people recognize it for what it is, reactions are a bit darker. “I didn’t sign a waver!” shouted one guy, passing by a journalist out on a test run. Friends of wearers have called the gadget “sinister”, a “concealed weapon” and “creepy”. Unsuspecting subjects captured digitally by each 30-second automated snap of the camera, later acknowledged its uncanny resemblance to Big Brother.
Here’s how it works:
The Narrative Clip is a 0.7 ounce tiny camera and app, housed in a discreet plastic casing (white, orange, slate gray or black) shaped like a Triscuit Cracker, and about the same size. A metal clip on its reverse side will attach to just about anything it can grasp.
Inside is a 5-megapixel camera that automatically shoots a 2560 x 1920 resolution JPEG every 30 seconds, about the same quality as an iPhone 4. GPS technology and a digital compass allow for geo tracking of your location in all photos, and an accelerometer “knows” which way is up in each picture, no matter the angle at which you clip the device onto your shirt collar, hat or backpack.
There’s a rechargeable battery (+/- 30 hours of use) and 8GB of storage, each good for about two days’ worth of recording. Leaving the Narrative on all day will record more than 2,800 images, and the camera’s 8GB of memory holds about 4,000 pictures total. On its side the unit has a micro USB port for synchronizing and charging, and four LED lights that indicate remaining battery power.
There are no buttons to push; double tapping the unit will fire off a manual photo or give you battery status, and laying the device face down or slipping it into a dark pocket will put it in “sleep mode”.
Uploading your photos requires using the company’s software, which works on Mac OS X and Windows, and logging in to your Narrative account. Once you connect your Narrative to your computer’s USB port, the thousands of pictures are uploaded to Narrative’s servers or backed up to your local hard drive, whichever you choose. The camera doesn’t mount as a regular USB drive, so strangers would not be able to see your photos if you lose it, but hopefully you won’t, given its $279 sticker price.
After logging in to the smartphone app, you’ll see all your pictures condensed into a flipbook-style format. Each photo is time-stamped and geo tagged, ready to be custom organized, or simply left in a chronological stack. The software also has some embedded algorithms designed to automatically pick out the “best” photos for you.
What’s the point? It’s an accessory that tracks everything we (or others) do, via photographic memory, providing technology-enabled total recall beyond where our porous, scattered minds fail us. While some users estimate that 95 percent of the photos taken are redundant because of duplicates, bad shots, or uninteresting ones, others praise the Narrative’s ability to effortlessly capture those fleeting moments in life without interrupting them.
Being in control of the personal data collected is one thing, but being unintentionally face to face with the camera lens is another. We either have no clue that we were just photographed, or we walk away knowing only that a stranger has just taken our picture. Either way, we are left utterly vulnerable to what they plan to do with it.
Most of us just want to have some good clean fun with our new interactive accessory, but it’s a good idea to understand the legal guidelines for snapping photos of people in public, without their knowledge or consent.
For the most part, the law is quite generous. While on public property, i.e., a street, sidewalk or city park, you can take pictures of what you see, even if it includes photographing private property, as long as you’re not trespassing to get the shot.
You can’t, however, photograph someone who has a “reasonable expectation of privacy”, even if you are on public property, which means no snap shots of people in a bathroom, a dressing room, or any other locale where you yourself would expect privacy.
Similarly, photographing others at strange angles with the intent of exposing covered parts of their person is off limits, even if you are in a public place.
And, if your photos could in any way interfere with national security (taking shots of military bases or nuclear facilities), don’t even think about taking the shot, even if you are not trespassing on government land. The government reserves the right to confiscate your photographs, and you would immediately invite suspicion of possible engagement in criminal activity…NOT a sound move.
Be polite if someone approaches you, unhappy about being in the firing line of your Clip’s automated camera lens. Your aim may have been directed at an historic landmark but it unintentionally also included the subject’s profile as they were passing by. Is the law on your side of the argument? Sure, but choose your battles; if a person is truly upset at being photographed, be courteous and briefly explain how the camera works, so the irritated party will understand that they were randomly snapped and not deliberately targeted.
The proliferation of tiny wearable camera technology will unfortunately usher in a much greater potential for breach of privacy. Will the temptation to step it up from mere innocent, recreational use, to intentional spying, illegal surveillance, intelligence gathering, and even voyeurism, be too great for human nature to withstand?
Once the photographs of unsuspecting targets exist, the potential for misuse is endless—particularly with advanced facial recognition technology coming right around the corner. If governments are already using (or misusing) this technology for surveillance of their citizens, one could argue that the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of photo uploads we are contributing into the Cloud will make their searches that much easier.
Crimes such as identity theft, extortion and pornography may be given a boost when there is infinite access to illegally obtained photographs, created from do-it-yourself operations.
Do these cute little cameras still seem harmless? Yes, in that utopian world where integrity is top priority. But here on earth we could sadly be standing at the precipice of a new era of grand scale privacy invasion, generating a new kind of nightmare for law enforcement, which will be unable to regulate what it cannot control.
Click Here
Fair Use For Educational or Discussion Purposes