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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: 4, Insightful) by zocalo on Friday December 16 2016, @07:01PM
Well, you *could* has a system that let you review the image before you commit it to encryption and storage, or take some test shots that are not encrypted to review, but that premise is flawed. Believe it or not, photo-journalists didn't typically cart around a processing lab so they could check their images in the field before digital came along; they checked their settings, took some pictures and hoped that when they got back to the office with the film and got it developed they hadn't screwed up. Most competent photographers don't actually *need* to chimp with digital either; it's just an additional safety net to confirm the camera settings are good, especially in challenging conditions, or to pass a bit of time when there's a gap in the action.
Couple of issues with that. Firstly, the idea is presumably that the camera would do the bulk of the work - even entry level DSLRs let you load settings via files loaded via memory card/USB or to configure up some basic IPTC data to be applied to each image already, so it's not that much of a stretch in complexity to enable loading encryption keys to higher end models. Secondly your premise is again flawed; a modern photo-journalist working in the field typically *is* very technical and highly IT literate, as they often need to be be capable of troubleshooting and resolving non-terminal issues with cameras, laptops, phones, and getting connectivity in some extremely challenging environments and situations. They typically tend to be well versed in the use of data encryption tools, VPNs, getting around government Internet filtering systems, and so on, so this wouldn't be a new concept in the slightest - they are definitely not "non-technies".
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!