Camera with drive encryption?

[Lothar]

  Anyone know if it's possible to set the drive on a camera to encrypt, on the fly, to protect the data from thieves who would destroy it?

  I read somewhere that running a program in the background is on the way to iPhones.  I was thinking that a video recording app, or Qik, in the background, on a password protected iPhone might be effective.  I imagine it would be both funny, and sad, to watch thieves bumble with the phone, either not realizing it's recording, or trying to bypass the password protection to stop it, all while behaving professionally, I'm sure.
  I assume this is likely possible now with cell phones/computers.  I am wondering, though, if there is a camera that would not only take higher quality pictures, &/or video, but also appear more like "legit" media equipment to some.

[fatcat]

How would encrypting data stop thieves from destroying anything?

If you're looking to encrypt images because of legal issues, you shouldn't be taking photos of that shit in the first place.

[Alex Libman 14]

I don't know anything about smart-phones / cameras, but...

(1)  Everything that your eye can see is worth photographing.

(2)  If you're worried about your data being lost, what you need is to offload the images as soon as they are captured to a remote location.  That remote location can be a regular PC programmed to archive or distribute the captured images, perhaps after doing some fancy deep encryption / steganography on them first.

(3)  Encryption makes sense to offload those images securely, but if you're worried about the camera falling into the wrong hands - why not just have a panic button that securely deletes everything on the camera?  Then people who've captured you have no rational basis to torture you to get the decryption key, and even if you have the key to decrypt the offloaded files they can be re-encrypted with a key you don't know by your friends who know you've been captured.

[Manuel_OKelly]

If you want to keep someone from viewing the tape, then encryption is good. The thief will not destroy it because he has an interest in finding out what's on it. In fact you have an interest in keeping it from being copied.

But if the thief steals to protect himself he wants one copy, destroyed in an unrecoverable way. He will destroy the platter of the harddrive. You have an interest in making thousands of copies, and spreading them.

You can have the best of both worlds, by copying encrypted file systems.

[Bill Brasky]

https://www.ironkey.com/demo

I donno about all that, but I want one of these. 

Encrypting images might take too long on the fly.  Google 'encrypted camera' and it seems everything that does this is far out of the norm, and into the realm of spy gadgetry for wireless video surveillance they scramble/encrypt the wireless signal - not the actual image on the drive.  I think if you want something encrypted, it has to be done by a third party in a hardware sense, like you import the image into an encrypted device such as the key shown above.   

I'm sure the quality of the images is shitty for anything that encrypts on the fly, if its in the product pipeline at all.  You need a drive with some speed, something small devices just don't have.  Even an iPod Touch, for as slick as the aps it runs, would probably not be even close to the necessary processor speed to handle encryption on the fly at any sort of frame rate.  You'd probably get one frame every thirty seconds, and fill a 8Gig drive with grainy looking garbage.

[Coconut]

Pull the battery off the camera and throw it into the woods....

then they can't get the tape out

[Alex Libman 14]

https://www.ironkey.com/demo

Looks like a good product, but probably overpriced.  Self-destruct is an important feature.

then they can't get the tape out

Do not underestimate the bad guys.  Governments can be competent when it matters, that is when defending and expanding their grip on power.  Otherwise they wouldn't be in power in the first place.

[blackie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_digital_camera

[Bill Brasky]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_digital_camera

Based on that, I'd say they are more conceptual than available commercially.  Watermarking is no big deal, but encryption seems to be an offline thing.  Theres no references to any specific manufacturers or tech specs.  I just spent the last several hours reading about that IronKey, theres all sorts of road tests, bit speed jargon, product comparisons.  Encrypted camera gets zero results.  No such animal.  I found a very few references from a beta product by Cannon (I think) that got cracked in about two seconds. 

[Lothar]

Thanks for your thoughts.

  Perhaps using something like this http://mediamentalism.com/2008/10/02/hitachi-goes-wooo-with-wifi-streaming-hd-camcorder/ and having the footage stored in more then one place is the best bet for theft protection.  Thieves may steal, or destroy, the camera, but the data would be backed up in a less then obvious place.

  I realize that this is possible with services like Qik on a cell phone, but I like the idea of both being able to use a camcorder, and not having to rely on Qik, or available cellular service.  I could backup the data from the camera in my hand to the iPhone in my pocket, a drive in a nearby vehicle, or perhaps a friendly network.

  If I knew where I was going to record ahead of time, I could setup a drive remotely with something like one of those "pringles can" type wifi antennas.  If I was compelled to record abruptly while driving down the road, I might be able to park within range of one of a few hotspots (even better might be within range of a friendly camera, but that's another concept).

  I like the idea of being able to secure my camera in whatever mode I want it to be in.  As long as a thief wasn't willing, or able, to destroy the drive, and if I could ever get it back, I could access the footage. It might be easier to just backup the footage in an obscure way, though.  I can think of a lot of neat functions for a programable camera, which leads me to believe that an iPhone, or some similar device, would be the way to go.  Maybe something like this http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/12/30/magnetically-attacha.html or http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/01/24/telescoping-lens-for-iphone-camera-why-the-hell-not/ would result in better quality, & function.

[blackie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_digital_camera

Based on that, I'd say they are more conceptual than available commercially.  Watermarking is no big deal, but encryption seems to be an offline thing.  Theres no references to any specific manufacturers or tech specs.  I just spent the last several hours reading about that IronKey, theres all sorts of road tests, bit speed jargon, product comparisons.  Encrypted camera gets zero results.  No such animal.  I found a very few references from a beta product by Cannon (I think) that got cracked in about two seconds. 

Encryption isn't much harder to do than the video compression. You just use a dedicated encryption ASIC.

There are products out there that claim do it, but not like he is asking for. There isn't much of a market for such animal.

http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/213011517/4_channels_2_4G_encrypted_IR.html

Video signal is encrypted disposed completely via digital scan, and wireless signal is encrypted completely, so there is no way to intercept incepting or uncoil encryption.