Personal Black Box Deliberation

[Karl]

I'm copy-pasting on mobile, so sorry about quoting differently.
Making something like the PBB project has been a major dream of mine
for some time.  I'm combining how-to-do-it with whether-to-do-it
below, might be good to separate those topics.


Jim Bell said:

*built, perhaps containing 4 or 6 component cameras, airming in the
horizontal plane,  able to record everything in a horizontal plane,
mounted on your head just like a 'propellor beanie', famous from the
early 1960's.  A cable will go down to a smart phone in your pocket.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxhzahiQshQ
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxhzahiQshQ%C3%82%C2%A0>   Maybe
something like this already exists? It certainly ought to.*

*The main question I have is whether a smartphone has the capability
to digitize (or at least record?) the output from as many as six HD
cameras at a single time*

My personal experience is that you run into all 4 limits of USB
bandwidth, video compression cycles, disk bandwidth, and network
bandwidth, streaming that much at once on a single commonly available
device.  You can of course compensate by dropping most of the frames,
maybe ones from cameras showing little activity, but in my opinion
that many cameras would be better done with more customized hardware
than an off the shelf phone.  I'd prefer to focus on phones because
anyone can buy/borrow/beg one, but make design choices that allow
adding support for customized setups too.

Punk-Stasi said:

*Keep preaching surveillance technofascism Jim, you're doing a great job.*

I reply more below, but it seems the second half of this sentence is
the truth.  A commonly-available tool is not fascim, and this is
already a technocratic list.  Jim is discussing empowering common
people to _fight_ surveillance technofascism via community
"souveillance" which is where masses are empowered to observe and
share evidence of authorities.

grarpamp said:

*Use the phone's USB port to attach the RTL-SDR GnuRadio etc
transmitter dongle, or use the phone's Wi-Fi to speak IP*

This sounds like a wonderful and important thing to support on both
the recording and sending side.

marcos said:

*All technology is a liability if there are no leaders. They amplify
the good and the bad equally.  Unless there are leaders.  Until then
they consume resources.*

This sounds incredibly intelligent.  We have leaders right now, we
don't want them, and the balance of technological privilege recently
swung toward them.

Punk-Stasi said:

*journos have been using 'technology' for a while...to serve and
proptect the private-government mafia.
The sort of propaganda you're trying to peddle here is infinitely
ridiculous. You pick ONE event that suits your 'narrative' while
IGNORING A MILLION*

Punk, it sounds like you know of a lot of suffering at the hands of
technology that may not have been included in this discussion.  In
america, we still believe we have a huge majority of hackers who
distrust the government: although it is true we are all misled by our
media and culture.  Could you be more precise about what we need to
know, or are you maybe looking for understanding that technology tends
to cause undiscussed genocide?  The million events you describe may
have never reached our news.
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