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The Freedom of the Press Foundation has called on professional camera makers to implement encryption in cameras to prevent governments from easily searching and seizing the contents:
An open letter written by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and signed by over 150 filmmakers and photojournalists calls on professional camera makers such as Nikon, Canon, Olympus, and Fuji to enable encryption to protect confidential videos from seizure by oppressive governments or criminals. The Freedom of the Press Foundation is a non-profit organization that has several noteworthy members, such as "Pentagon Papers" Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, and EFF's co-founder John Perry Barlow, on its board of directors.
[...] Filmmakers and photojournalists that film documentaries or shoot photos of abuses committed by governments or terrorists in dangerous parts of the world are constantly under threat of having their videos and photos seized and destroyed. The danger is even bigger when these bad actors can see what's on the cameras--it's not just the documentation of abuses that is exposed, but also the confidential sources that may have wanted to keep their identities hidden. Encryption would ensure those who seize their cameras couldn't see the contents of the cameras, nor the journalists' sources.
This won't necessarily ensure that the information collected by journalists is disseminated, since border agents and law enforcement officers can just destroy encrypted equipment. For that, cloud storage or live streaming features are needed, as well as reliable access to the Internet even during times of political crisis and network shutdowns.
Also at The Register, CNET, and TechCrunch (they also found a small cameramaker that is planning to ship on-camera encryption).
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Friday December 16 2016, @06:55PM
As an amateur (read: clown who bought a mid-range DSLR) photographer, I sometimes read articles from actual photographers offering tips. Most of them say to not spend too much time looking at the pictures on the screen, and to spend more time taking more pictures, from different angles and lighting, and look at the pictures later. Maybe that's crap advice. I can't say.
Perhaps a compromise is that after a period of time, say, 5 minutes, the photos become encrypted? Cameras have a pretty decent battery in them usually. Maybe leave pictures unencrypted, but have an "oh shit" button that triggers an encryption of all the photos taken that aren't yet encrypted? As the aforementioned clown who doesn't know what he's doing, I do know that pictures are generally very, very large, especially if you're taking pictures worth looking at later. Encryption after the fact would probably take a long time unless you had some processing power behind the effort.
I'm still kinda thinking that the best way to go is to pull the pictures off on your laptop, encrypt, and then put them on a sd card you toss into your shoe or something if you're that worried about it.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday December 16 2016, @09:03PM
To frustrate bad actors and authorities, the files should be encrypted before you run into trouble. Encrypting a 64GB card would just take too long.
An "oh shit button" can me useful for deleting symmetric encryption keys from memory. As has been pointed out, with Public Key cryptography, the decryption key may be on another continent.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Friday December 16 2016, @10:12PM
Actually, it's kind of a moot point, at least for the preview function on my T5i. I just popped the sd card out and gave it a few clicks. It will display the preview even with no storage, so it's pulling that from buffer, not the card. Surprised it will even try to snap the picture without a card, but it at least warns you on-screen (assuming you have the screen flipped out).
Of course, displaying AFTER that second or so initial preview might be tricky. I do agree that encrypting an entire card as whatever villain this scenario is worried about is walking toward you would probably be a bit too late though.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!