While I agree that the fear of your scenarios is reasonable, the way the patent is described doesn't seem to really support that use scenario - they'd have to have an infared emitter pointing towards the camera presumably with enough juice behind it to be detectable by the camera from a variety of distances, and I don't think that you can power a mobile emitter like that easily right now. Maybe attached to squad cars, but it still appears directional from my understanding.

And all things being equal, it seems more likely that the police would take a much more practical approach of "take recording device" if they wanted to suppress information reliably.

I'm not saying no scrutiny should be given to apple on this, but it is a bit important also to keep discussions rational and free of emotional outbursts, if only to keep focus on the subject at hand.

Stuff like "nail in coffin" is just kind of overly dramatic for very real fears and concerns.

http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...