[Ssc-dev] draft blog post

[Sam Gregory]

Hi Nathan,

Some notes on the blog post. Excited to see this getting into the hands of
people, and see what they think! (more blurry babies?)

- We capitalize WITNESS (so something like ' a partnership with WITNESS (
www.witness.org), a leading human rights...'
- We should think through a little how we want to use the phrase visual
privacy. I've been using visual anonymity more recently since it seems to go
more to the questions of freedom of expression that are coming up (and where
anonymity can often be what permits free expression). Basically what I say
in this post:
http://blog.witness.org/2011/02/human-rights-video-privacy-and-visual-anonymity-in-the-facebook-age/in
the middle section.
- Can we add in the word 'consent' somewhere in the intro para to flag up
that eventual direction? and maybe flag up in the description of moving to
apps, that it's also about empowering the people filmed to have informed
consent and visual anonymity?
- Re '`cameras everywhere' - can you cut the word 'themselves' - hopefully
we're asking more people than just ourselves ;)
- I think the Visual Privacy definition from Wikipedia (that came out of the
Berkeley Respectful Cameras project) is a little dated, and not quite what
we're doing since its much more focused on surveillance cameras etc vs
peer-to-peer or social-networked based surveillance. Maybe we should
emphasize more that we are updating this? Or focus on visual anonymity as
well? I.e. someone may want to say something critical on camera, but want to
be anonymous. Its sort of a question of 'protecting privacy' and 'enabling
anonymity', or challenging reductions in visual privacy and enabling more
visual anonymity when needed?

best,
Sam




On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 1:20 AM, Nathan of Guardian <
nathan at guardianproject.info> wrote:

>
> We are waiting to publish this, but we've mostly got the text down for
> our V1 announce blog post. The actual post has lots of pretty pictures,
> links and formatting, but here is the raw text below.
>
> Comments are welcome!
>
> ****
> We're very happy to announce the beta release of ObscuraCam for Android.
> This is the first release from the SecureSmartCam project, a partnership
> with Witness.org, a leading human rights video advocacy and training
> organization. This is the result of an open-source development cycle,
> comprised of multiple sprints (and branches), that took place over the
> last five months. This "v1" release is just the first step towards the
> complete vision of the project.
>
> Our collective goal is to design a new type of smartphone camera app,
> that makes it simple for the user to respect the Visual Privacy (more on
> this below...) of the people they are photographing or recording, while
> also increasing their own ability to control the personally identifiable
> data stored inside of that photo or video. Also, we think an app that
> allows you to pixelize your friends, disguise their faces and otherwise
> defend their privacy just a little bit, is a lot of fun and helps raise
> awareness about an important issue.
>
>
>
> Quick Download Links
>
>  For those of you who just want to get to it, head over to the Android
> Market to grab the latest version of the app. You can also scan the QR
> code to the left, and it will take you in that direction.
>
> For those without access to the Android Market, you can also grab the
> ObscuraCam.APK file from our public builds folder. Be sure to check back
> for updates, because it will not auto-update itself.
>
>
> The "Cameras Everywhere" Initiative
>
> In January, Witness launched their Cameras Everywhere initiative, in
> which they ask themselves:
>
> As more and more people film people speaking out and taking a stand
> against human rights crises, how can we protect victims and witnesses
> and ensure informed consent as much as possible? As more and more
> footage circulates from human rights crises around the world, how does
> powerful footage reach audiences in comprehensible ways that move people
> to action? And how do we know how to trust that footage?
>
> ...
>
> Critical issues to address in this realm include safety and security in
> the use of video; ethical questions raised by the widespread capacity to
> shoot and circulate human rights video; challenges around the
> authenticity of video and the preservation of evidence; and the need for
> effective documentation around the use of video in advocacy.
>
> Through our collaboration, Witness has decided to move beyond just
> awarness, training and advocacy, and instead actual help design a next
> generation of Camera app software, that is not just intended to share
> more, and capture more, but is meant to allow its operator to stop,
> think and be empowered to control the media they are capturing.
>
> A Primer on Visual Privacy
>
> As Wikipedia puts it, Visual Privacy is the relationship between
> collection and dissemination of visual information, the public
> expectation of privacy, and the legal issues surrounding them. It
> relates particularly to the increasing presence of large-scale still-
> and video-camera networks in everyday life. The combination of
> escalating security concerns of corporations and governments, coupled
> with the increasing affordability of electronic surveillance equipment,
> has resulted in a proliferation of such networks. Simultaneously, face
> detection and recognition technologies have improved considerably while
> policy regarding the privacy and fair usage of such systems, as well as
> the rights of those imaged by such systems, are topics that have not yet
> been resolved.
>
> Some examples where visual privacy is being diluted in the name of
> features or security:
>
> Facebook's opt-out feature for auto-detection and tagging of faces
> British Columbia's privacy watchdog OKs the use of facial recognition
> technology to identify rioters from video and still images of
> Vancouver's 2011 hockey riots.
> Viewdle's Social Camera automatically tags your friends in photos based
> on the social networking profile pictures they have published
> While these examples might seem harmless to some, or a useful feature
> for law enforcement to others, the main issue is that the subjects of
> these photos and scans, are never asked if they wish to participate in
> them, not to mention whether they want their photo published online in
> the first place.
>
> How ObscuraCam Helps
>
> Part of the problem currently surrounding visual privacy is the fact
> that many of the tools and applications that people use on an everyday
> basis do not have features built in to protect privacy. As a result,
> everyone with a smartphone, tablet or laptop - not to mention an actual
> video camera! - captures raw, unedited content that exposes the
> identities of participants and bystanders present at sensitive events or
> activities.
>
> ObscuraCam is a mobile application for Android that makes it easy for
> anyone to protect the identity of individuals or groups represented in
> their photos by building obfuscation and redaction directly into the
> app. It can be used on photos taken directly from the app itself, or on
> any photo that your mobile device has access to, including local memory
> card images or linked Picasa albums. By moving a usually cumbersome
> post-production process into the daily workflow of those capturing
> sensitive images, it's our hope that visual privacy will be respected
> when it really matters.
>
> Using ObscuraCam
>
> ObscuraCam features a simple, touch-based user interface for easy
> manipulation and redaction of images, as well as an automated removal of
> identifying metadata stored in the photo itself. The following steps
> walk through the process of capturing and sharing an obscured photo
> using ObscuraCam.
>
> >From the application home page, choose to either capture a new image or
> choose an existing image from your existing collections. These options
> just launch your standard Camera and Gallery application. When the photo
> is imported, identifying EXIF metadata stored in the file itself, such
> as GPS location, camera make and model or timestamp, will be removed.
> After you capture or open an image with ObscuraCam, it is automatically
> scanned to detect faces. Any faces detected are marked as tagged regions
> in an image, and the user is able to create as many additional tagged
> regions as they wish - either via the menu or by long-pressing the
> desired region. By default, tagged regions are set to be obscured via
> pixelation.
> Once a tagged region has been created, the user can interact with that
> region by simply touching it to bring up a contextual menu.
> Options available from the contextual tagging menu include:
> Edit - select to scale and move tagged regions
> Redact - select to fully redact tagged region and replace with black space
> Pixelate - select to selectively obfuscate identities of persons or
> situations
> bgPixelate - select to easily obfuscate everything BUT the tagged region
> Mask - select to pin a set of 'groucho marks' glasses on the tagged
> region - not only a bit of fun, but useful for quickly defeating facial
> recognition schemes.
> Delete - delete the current tagged region
> Once you're done selecting and obfuscating tagged regions, you can use
> the options from the main application menu to see a preview of the
> finished image, save it to your local memory, or share the picture with
> any application on your handset that is configured to accept images.
> This includes applications like Facebook, Twitter, or the default
> Messaging app.
> Share With Us and "Save Your Face"!
>
> As impediments of visual privacy continue to expand, help us get the
> word out that we can take back control over our online identities with
> ObscuraCam! We've set up a Facebook Page where you can share your
> creations with us, and with eachother!
>
> Source Code & Issue Reporting
>
> We're big fans of open source and living in public. As consistent with
> all our projects, source code for the SecureSmartCam project, along with
> the ObscuraCam release, is available online at GitHub.
>
> We also use GitHub to manage our development milestones and active bugs
> / issues. If you encounter any bugs or issues when testing out this beta
> build, please report them directly to us in the comments below or by
> filing directly on the Issues page.
>
>


-- 
Sam Gregory
Program Director
WITNESS
80 Hanson Place
Brooklyn, NY, 11217, USA
Tel: 718 783 2000, ext 309
Fax: 718 783 1593
Email: sam at witness.org
Follow me on Twitter: @samgregory, @witnessorg, #video4change
Blog: blog.witness.org/author/sam
www.witness.org

See It. Film It. Change It.

On the Blog:
- "Watch: Cameras Everywhere - Presentation at Re:Publica 2011":
http://blog.witness.org/2011/05/republica2011
- "Human Rights Video, Privacy and Visual Anonymity in the Facebook Age":
http://blog.witness.org/2011/02/human-rights-video-privacy-and-visual-anonymity-in-the-facebook-age/
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