On Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 6:40 PM, John Gilmore wrote:

Here's an example. Some thugs with a rented box truck broke into a cannabis dispensary storefront in a residential neighborhood near mine, some years ago. These thugs appeared to be hired or imported by the DEA. Their typical pattern had been to break all the glass, smash

I brought an ordinary pocket camera (pre-cellphone). my camera failed me by taking very blurred images.

People need to consider lenses when buying cameras. Other things equal, going with the fastest f-stop you can budget will get you less blur, 2.8, down to even 1.x for dim light. Image Stabilization gizmos will never beat a fast shutter. And for a lot of street use, fixed wide lenses with decent pixel count backs more 'dont have to think' useful than crazy range fidgety zooms.

Since these thugs had no legal leg to stand on, I would've welcomed intervention by local police When the thugs are violating their own laws, which seems to be a very common occurrence

Some Sheriff's don't take kindly to external forces doing improper things. In that case even a trouble call to them will hold up the thugs for a while.

...

2 and 3 are solved with remote storage, to a "safe" place, of the stills or video. Take it off the camera, fast.

Don't forget, open firmwares for some cameras do exist... http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK Don't know if that includes encryption or sigs or authentication in UI yet but it is an example that the camera maker isn't always right. Don't forget to transparent overlay your embedded serial numbers with noise.