Cameras are about to get a lot smaller
economist.com
economist.com
"This is a video camera, and this is the precise model that's getting this incredible image quality. Image quality that holds up to this kind of magnification. So that's the first great thing. We can now get high-def-quality resolution in a camera the size of a thumb."
...
"But for now, let's go back to the places in the world where we most need transparency and so rarely have it. Here's a medley of locations around the world where we've placed cameras. Now imagine the impact these cameras would have had in the past, and will have in the future, if similar events transpire. Here's fifty cameras in Tiananmen Square."
...
"There needs to be accountability. Tyrants can no longer hide. There needs to be, and will be, documentation and accountability, and we need to bear witness."
...
ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN
-From "The Circle" by David Eggers
Also, there are obvious downsides to panopticons.
But none of that matters, I guess. We will have the cameras and the fakes.
Even better: what good is video evidence if few care?
Consider officers shooting black people. There are several videos of that, but does it show any sign of stopping? They even walk off without any repercussions at trial...
And, conversely, when people do care, no extra evidence is needed.
A dozen high-quality TLDRs and you've got the local, state, national and global scoop, as well as the latest dirt on politicians and movie stars.
I think that people would gobble that eagerly.
So a million little cameras = automated news.
In which trial was it unambiguous that the police broke the law and also demonstrated institutionalized racism, and faced no repercussions?
I'm all for police accountability, but when we do have video evidence it often ambiguous on if the officer was in the wrong in using force. And when it isn't ambiguous, the officer goes to jail.
however as a society are we willing to give up that much privacy the moment we step out the door, where anything and everything could be a recording device. then again if we are drowning in being observed do we in turn find more freedom?
I just reread The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter. Basically, they argue that group consciousness is the best option where there is no privacy.
Eventually the science fanatics (empiricists) will realize this or get defunded of their jobs.
It's easy to "fake" news, and has been since cameras were invented - just choose the way you frame the image, or the moment you press record. No-one will doubt the video evidence of police beating protestors, and no-one will believe the claims that just a few minutes earlier they were throwing petrol bombs, after all where's the video?
That basically sounds like the dream world of DRM people, though.
Maybe also cross-linking chains of trust with nearby devices. So devices corroborate each other.
(Canon had a "trusted" model as such. It was broken, IIRC by elcomsoft, shortly after release).
The important point is " making it harder " - but how hard is hard enough depends on the party in question, and for many important ones, the simple answer is "not hard enough".
Look at the TLS x509 PKI, its a total complete mess.
This is not a workable solution.
Works for a fair few countries.
And who tags the NGOs? Of which a great many are sponsored from other states...
Seems he missed the other side of the coin. We won't be able to hide from tyrants.
'1984' is more along the lines of not being able to hide with the 'TV' that watches you while you watch it.
No, scientists have developed a prototype which can take fuzzy photos of barcodes.
They then go on to tell you what would be necessary to have their device equal a present day sensor in a phone, but they haven't made one yet.
In fact, no estimate is given for when this technology might be competitive with CMOS sensors. The article just points to his previous work as proof he can get some of his ideas to market.
Relevant XKCD: https://www.xkcd.com/678/
I am excited by advances in camera technology, but this headline is peddling research as a pending disruption to the industry, and I don't see any evidence of that in the article.
There are also single-pixel compressed sensing cameras, which can be made lensless as well and are limited by the optical modulator specs.
The problem with lensless sensors is always the computing power required to reconstruct the final image.
"He concedes that there are challenges: improving the optical performance of the elements; suppressing spillover effects between different signals in the device; and honing the algorithms that calibrate the camera’s performance."
The line of "honing the algorithms" is the complexity orbital-decay is referencing. These types of sensors do need computationally expensive reconstruction to generate images we're used to seeing with traditional optics and sensors currently found in many consumer devices. The filtering and focusing work the lenses do still needs to happen. These sensors essentially rely on complex math to replace the finely ground glass.
And I'd take issue with the characterisation that they need "complex math to replace the finely ground glass" - what replaces the glass is the analogue photon detection, delay, and amplification channel on the front end. My suspicion is that the only "complex math" is done calculating the delays before capturing the image, not doing the reconstruction (again, unless I've missed something unique about moving from GHz to THz).
- Super cheap and gigantic capacity storage.
- Wireless network like 5G.
- Wireless charging.
- Nano cameras.
I think there was a Black Mirror episode about this.
Until recently the issue was that no one had technical and financial resources to analyze the data, except on court warrant, but once Big Data and computer vision technologies become cheap enough someone will definitely use that as real time surveillance tool.
:D
On edit: I should also point out that you don't get to escape fundamental optical limits with this stuff. You're still diffraction limited, so "lens" size still matters.
For sites like this, you can sometimes archive the URL to evade the ban.
Also here is my TL:DR summary of it if you're still trying to fight through the pay wall:
There is a thing called grating coupler that works like little high frequency antennas that receives light signals. When you put a whole array of them you will be able to do various scans of light signals to simulate the camera pointing at different direction, or fisheye, telephoto effects without the need of tilting or moving the surface of the array. The underlying computation relies on the ability to calculate and control the timing of signal travelled from each antennas, plus some classic signal interference and phasing issues. An 1cm x 1cm array will contain 1 million such couplers which would create a similar sized image as an iPhone 7 rear camera, but since there is no lens involved, the camera can be made a lot thinner.