"All pictures you transfer to Memoto’s cloud service are stored encrypted. The pictures are only visible to you: only you can see them and only you can change them."
Is this real client side encryption, or is it Dropbox/Hushmail style encryption where they can do a little server side trickery in order to obtain your encryption key if the US government compels them to?
I'm just thinking how useful it would be to law enforcement if they could just specify a location, date and time and go through pictures taken there for evidence.
I hate this whole idea. It's inevitable that it will happen, but I hate it nonetheless. You wont be able to go outdoors without being constantly recorded by strangers. My only hope is that the popular services manage the technology such that we don't end up with databases that governments, or organisations can read private data from.
Our goal is that all your data will be encrypted and completely secure from the point that they leave your camera until you view them in the app/website/etc. The images would only be your to decrypt and we would have no access to your key, only you will be able to view your images, unless you share them ofc.
Our biggest concerns at the moment is partly how we can implement effective encryption/decryption that won't drain the battery life of your phone or decrease the user experience.
Another concern is what will happen if the user loses their password? If we have no possibility to access a users encrypted data then their data would be lost in this case. We would also need to decrypt and reencrypt all data if the user changes password, something that would be very time/battery consuming if done on the device, instead of our servers.
These concerns are something that we are evaluating solutions to as we speak, our goal is to make it impossible for anyone but you to access your private, aka. not shared, data.
If you have any suggestions we are of course happy to hear them.
I think the best to hope for is the opposite: that all the databases are publicly available, so at least we have equal access, and high-ranking politicians are just as exposed as everyone else.
The world is changing. When it's this easy and cheap to record everything that happens in public and put it in a searchable database, people will do it. You can't stop the tide.
The life recorder is inevitable. I mean full video and audio. I've been talking about it for decades. The social and psychological shift is going to be huge. Are you self conscious when somebody is following you around taking pictures ? This thing will bug everybody out. The first adopters will be security and police (who already do it with their car based video). Then narcissists and people who want to have their own vanity tv show 247. And annoying tech dudes who wear it at parties.
many people will realize how boring their lives look from the outside and they will stop wearing it because it's depressing.
Anyway, the tech isn't the hard problem, it's the analysis, information overload and personal search engine industry. Many companies including my own are skating towards that puck.
As far as I know, no academic research or even rumored corporate research is going into useful, consumer-oriented (meaning able to provide meaningful value to the user with minimal curation and/or improving their quality of life), management of life-recording amounts of video. Most aren't even touching audio.
Audio recording is usually legally restricted under wiretapping laws. Video recording is even dicier, not just with laws varying wildly from state to state, but also with individual privacy and image rights laws coming into play. It's why all the researchers are sticking to photography, unless you're the military, when the rules don't apply to you.
The only researcher who's done any work, as far as I know, into handling that much video and audio is Deb Roy, with his timeworms visualizations, and that's only because it was his own household that he was able to clear an IRB. And it's still not useful by my previous definition.
Wouldn't it be easier to modify something like the already incredibly cheap (~$10) available key chain cameras? There are already quite sophisticated discussions on these out there http://www.chucklohr.com/808/index.shtml.
But this has a social app! This is a kickstarter project! This gives you the amazing opportunity to upload automatically every single moment of your life to a server on which you have absolutely no control! But they will be marked as private so totally safe! /irony
From a hardware standpoint, completely possible. The problem is trying to write that code for a non-standard architecture. These cheap Chinese processors often completely lack even minimal documentation. See this great post:
The good thing about being with someone is that : being with someone ALONE. Not someone analyzing what I did with my wife one month ago, where, how, why.
The idea is not new, Justin started http://www.justin.tv/ recording everything in his life with a video camera.
I don't want anything I say or do being recorder by someone else(I know this camera only takes pictures, by now), and I don't want other people(smartphone manufacturer and the US government) to know what I did Thursday at 3:00 pm.
One of the worse things about living in a small village is all people controlling what others do, gossip here and there. In cities people were free of other people trying to control them, with cameras everywhere and web social services it is becoming rural village again.
It is big brother´s dream. In the future the government will use cameras on the street, face recognition and servers to track anybody at any time.
Depressing. This is like that movie with Robin Williams "The Final Cut". http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364343/ A total privacy nightmare. Your government is gonna love it though.
Yeah, this is a really cool idea, but only if you have full control of your data. Ironic that they should mention "full control" as an argument in favor of storing the data on someone else's server.
You're only a subpoena away from having every intimate detail of your life revealed to the authorities, unless you manage to turn the camera off whenever something potentially suspicious happens (this is also called circumstantial evidence).
It has a "privacy button" that stops it from taking photos for a few minutes and records other information along with the images (like temperature, for example). Also, all of the images and data are stored locally on the device.
Another lifelogging camera, with better specs, about to hit the market (Nov 2012 according to the register/buy page) is Autographer, from the Oxford Metrics Group:
Looks cool... but... Does this have a long-term future? Soon (I hope) we will all be wearing glasses with cameras in and I wonder whether that will render this obsolete?
It costs 249 bucks for the later batches and 199 dollars for the early version. Expensive. I guess I'll have to wait for product evolution to make stuff cheaper.
On the other hand, the application for lifelogging is pretty long. An employed programmer(or indeed, anybody who makes money) should be able to justify the expense of 249 bucks no problem.
2000 pictures per day doesn't sound like much (a bit more than 2 pictures on average per minute) but this really adds up even at the resolution of this camera, they claim about 1.5 TB / camera / year. Uploading and storing that much data for a large number of users in a reliable and cost effective manner is a non-trivial exercise.
So the big question is what their monthly fee is and I think this project should disclose those (projected) fees and not just the price of the device because it could very well be that those monthly fees will be the large component.
I guess I'd rather have less photo quality and less space requirements. For this specific use case, I guess 3 Megapixel would be sufficient, and then save it not as jpeg but in jpeg2000 or another wavelet compression, at best with a solid compression rate.
I'd rather see someone create really, really disruptive technology like a "personal privacy bubble" I can activate when I choose to. Something that will auto-blurr and auto-jam all video/audio. THAT is something people would like. "Want to film me? I opt out!"
As cool as this is, I'll be interested once we have always on audio, video and GPS, with-- while we're day dreaming-- a post-process that analyses the data and reduces it to a day summary complete with transcribed conversations, things you saw and people you met.
You can assume the Memoto team is having an ongoing conversation with the (Swedish) authorities discussing privacy issues for a device that only saves images.
Adding sound and video moves the privacy concerns to a whole new level. Are we, as a society, even ready for such a device?
Also, you add a lot of complexity both in terms of usage and in terms of manufacturing and support.
Hi all, sorry to come late to this thread. I'm one of the founders of Memoto and a long term HNer. FWIW, Memoto would never have reached this stage without HN.
Of course we are very happy about the results of the Kickstarter campaign. Personally I am also very happy about the healthy concerns raised here on HN, to continue to inspire us to never settle for mediocrity. We have a great team of engineers working on both hardware and software. It is a challenge to handle such a long tech chain but we feel it is manageable with the team we have.
The geotagging of events, plus all the wonderful image recognition and categorizing (plus automatically judging photos as interesting or valuable) are the selling point of this camera. It'd be pretty hard to get shots of yourself though, maybe they could introduce some sort of opt in feature where other users of this kind of camera that were in a close by position at similar times would contribute to your feed? (Or did I just invent Color?)
“To recharge the camera’s batteries, you connect the camera to your computer; at the same time the photos are automatically uploaded to Memoto’s servers”
What? I can’t just keep the photos without putting them on Memoto’s servers ??
I don't get it. I'm not going to wear this to work, partly because my boss would think I was a spy and partly because my work life simply isn't worth recording at that level of detail.
So then I take it with me places on the weekends. But, I already take a high quality camera with me most-places (courtesy of my smart-phone) and it takes pictures at EXACTLY the right moment, it doesn't miss the shot because of a poor-angle, bad light, bad composition or bad timing. At least when it does, it's my fault.
To me this seems way too niche to ever succeed. I expect I'll be wearing one though in a few years time :-)
There's some interesting psychological research that suggests "random" photos taken at fixed intervals are better at triggering memories than posed photographs.
The cloud model would seem problematic for this
much data, given the bandwidth constraints of many users.
For my DSL connection (3Mbps/0.8Mbps) I would need to
saturate my outgoing bandwidth half of each day
to upload 4GB. And I think that these numbers aren't
far off from the global average.
If this is going to be a viable product, I don't
understand at why the developers wouldn't provide
a local storage model. Without that, I for one
would have zero interest in the service as described,
particularly given all the other concerns of handing
over this much intensely personal data.
2000 geotagged pictures a day, every day of my life, automatically uploaded to their servers, and no word on how would one set up their own private server? Let me think about it... #not
[+] [-] mike-cardwell|13 years ago|reply
Is this real client side encryption, or is it Dropbox/Hushmail style encryption where they can do a little server side trickery in order to obtain your encryption key if the US government compels them to?
I'm just thinking how useful it would be to law enforcement if they could just specify a location, date and time and go through pictures taken there for evidence.
I hate this whole idea. It's inevitable that it will happen, but I hate it nonetheless. You wont be able to go outdoors without being constantly recorded by strangers. My only hope is that the popular services manage the technology such that we don't end up with databases that governments, or organisations can read private data from.
[+] [-] jadzhor|13 years ago|reply
Our biggest concerns at the moment is partly how we can implement effective encryption/decryption that won't drain the battery life of your phone or decrease the user experience. Another concern is what will happen if the user loses their password? If we have no possibility to access a users encrypted data then their data would be lost in this case. We would also need to decrypt and reencrypt all data if the user changes password, something that would be very time/battery consuming if done on the device, instead of our servers.
These concerns are something that we are evaluating solutions to as we speak, our goal is to make it impossible for anyone but you to access your private, aka. not shared, data. If you have any suggestions we are of course happy to hear them.
/Dan Berglund, Software Developer @ Memoto
[+] [-] lmm|13 years ago|reply
The world is changing. When it's this easy and cheap to record everything that happens in public and put it in a searchable database, people will do it. You can't stop the tide.
[+] [-] crucialfelix|13 years ago|reply
Obscurity.com -- disorganizing the worlds information
[+] [-] hk_kh|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] crucialfelix|13 years ago|reply
many people will realize how boring their lives look from the outside and they will stop wearing it because it's depressing.
Anyway, the tech isn't the hard problem, it's the analysis, information overload and personal search engine industry. Many companies including my own are skating towards that puck.
[+] [-] vitovito|13 years ago|reply
As far as I know, no academic research or even rumored corporate research is going into useful, consumer-oriented (meaning able to provide meaningful value to the user with minimal curation and/or improving their quality of life), management of life-recording amounts of video. Most aren't even touching audio.
Audio recording is usually legally restricted under wiretapping laws. Video recording is even dicier, not just with laws varying wildly from state to state, but also with individual privacy and image rights laws coming into play. It's why all the researchers are sticking to photography, unless you're the military, when the rules don't apply to you.
The only researcher who's done any work, as far as I know, into handling that much video and audio is Deb Roy, with his timeworms visualizations, and that's only because it was his own household that he was able to clear an IRB. And it's still not useful by my previous definition.
You've been able to do all-day life-recording for under $1000 since the mid-2000s: http://www.eyetap.org/wearables/wear-hard-06/2006420.html and http://www.eyetap.org/wearables/wear-hard-06/2006423.html for mailing list posts I wrote on the subject.
You can do it today for around $200, but the six years since I wrote those posts, we still don't have the tools to process that much data.
I'd be interested in learning more about your work, and may be able to share some of my own.
[+] [-] stfu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duiker101|13 years ago|reply
http://blog.ryankearney.com/2012/10/never-give-your-informat...
[+] [-] jonmrodriguez|13 years ago|reply
http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipermail/arm-netbook/2012-March/0...
[+] [-] est|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joesb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forgottenpaswrd|13 years ago|reply
The idea is not new, Justin started http://www.justin.tv/ recording everything in his life with a video camera.
I don't want anything I say or do being recorder by someone else(I know this camera only takes pictures, by now), and I don't want other people(smartphone manufacturer and the US government) to know what I did Thursday at 3:00 pm.
One of the worse things about living in a small village is all people controlling what others do, gossip here and there. In cities people were free of other people trying to control them, with cameras everywhere and web social services it is becoming rural village again.
It is big brother´s dream. In the future the government will use cameras on the street, face recognition and servers to track anybody at any time.
[+] [-] pirateking|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] true_religion|13 years ago|reply
Isn't this a case of if you don't like it... don't use it?
[+] [-] digitalengineer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xabi|13 years ago|reply
http://www.tvrage.com/shows/id-30348/episodes/1065121884
[+] [-] marvin|13 years ago|reply
You're only a subpoena away from having every intimate detail of your life revealed to the authorities, unless you manage to turn the camera off whenever something potentially suspicious happens (this is also called circumstantial evidence).
[+] [-] wtrk|13 years ago|reply
http://www.viconrevue.com/product.html
It has a "privacy button" that stops it from taking photos for a few minutes and records other information along with the images (like temperature, for example). Also, all of the images and data are stored locally on the device.
Another lifelogging camera, with better specs, about to hit the market (Nov 2012 according to the register/buy page) is Autographer, from the Oxford Metrics Group:
http://www.autographer.com/
They are advertising 8GB of internal storage, so it would seem that they're storing the images locally too, though the device has bluetooth.
[+] [-] alexchamberlain|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kiba|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kiba|13 years ago|reply
On the other hand, the application for lifelogging is pretty long. An employed programmer(or indeed, anybody who makes money) should be able to justify the expense of 249 bucks no problem.
[+] [-] mdonahoe|13 years ago|reply
Though a programmer might be able to hack the software to intercept the photo uploads and just store locally.
[+] [-] tisme|13 years ago|reply
So the big question is what their monthly fee is and I think this project should disclose those (projected) fees and not just the price of the device because it could very well be that those monthly fees will be the large component.
[+] [-] terhechte|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digitalengineer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digitalengineer|13 years ago|reply
And a non-portable options is for purchase http://www.jammer-store.com/uv30-uhf-vhf-jammer-blocker.html (no connection with this site).
[+] [-] hellweaver666|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SCdF|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erikstarck|13 years ago|reply
Adding sound and video moves the privacy concerns to a whole new level. Are we, as a society, even ready for such a device?
Also, you add a lot of complexity both in terms of usage and in terms of manufacturing and support.
Plus the battery drain.
[+] [-] martinkallstrom|13 years ago|reply
Of course we are very happy about the results of the Kickstarter campaign. Personally I am also very happy about the healthy concerns raised here on HN, to continue to inspire us to never settle for mediocrity. We have a great team of engineers working on both hardware and software. It is a challenge to handle such a long tech chain but we feel it is manageable with the team we have.
[+] [-] diziet|13 years ago|reply
The geotagging of events, plus all the wonderful image recognition and categorizing (plus automatically judging photos as interesting or valuable) are the selling point of this camera. It'd be pretty hard to get shots of yourself though, maybe they could introduce some sort of opt in feature where other users of this kind of camera that were in a close by position at similar times would contribute to your feed? (Or did I just invent Color?)
[+] [-] rplnt|13 years ago|reply
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/09/arma-iii-developers-ch...
[+] [-] hk__2|13 years ago|reply
What? I can’t just keep the photos without putting them on Memoto’s servers ??
[+] [-] stkni|13 years ago|reply
So then I take it with me places on the weekends. But, I already take a high quality camera with me most-places (courtesy of my smart-phone) and it takes pictures at EXACTLY the right moment, it doesn't miss the shot because of a poor-angle, bad light, bad composition or bad timing. At least when it does, it's my fault.
To me this seems way too niche to ever succeed. I expect I'll be wearing one though in a few years time :-)
[+] [-] mdonahoe|13 years ago|reply
That's what this is for. Remembering the inbetweens. The moments you forgot to photograph because you were too busy living them.
Most of it will be junk, but so are most emails. The data is still worth having, for some people anyway.
[+] [-] lmm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimmahoney|13 years ago|reply
For my DSL connection (3Mbps/0.8Mbps) I would need to saturate my outgoing bandwidth half of each day to upload 4GB. And I think that these numbers aren't far off from the global average.
If this is going to be a viable product, I don't understand at why the developers wouldn't provide a local storage model. Without that, I for one would have zero interest in the service as described, particularly given all the other concerns of handing over this much intensely personal data.
[+] [-] gallerytungsten|13 years ago|reply
Are you kidding me? No option for just uploading to my own computer? This makes the whole thing a non-starter.
[+] [-] vibragiel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kiba|13 years ago|reply
Unless they had already provide this option.
[+] [-] ivanb|13 years ago|reply