a cheap 1080p camera with an 8+ hour continuous run storage capacity, with audio. How small and cheaply could it be made? Could we get the police to wear them? And get a load of them to civilians too, for wearing or for dropping for later retrieval in public places where actions are happening? The press might lose the air, but the ground game can expand. Turn the lights on, keep the lights on.
A higher quality version of this:
Autonomous time lapse with a video camera throwie
That folks could toss up on signs/etc.
Edit: this guy seems to have a lot of information on the cheap camera used in many devices – the 808:
808 Car Keys Micro Camera, Micro Video Recorder, Review
And don’t forget about drones.
Drones require control of the airwaves. Jammable.
Pre-programmed flight-path (with some limited algos for interest-deviation), comms-out on WiFi, BlueTooth, infrasound and laser-blinking?
Have to be cheap, to allow for likelihood of irrretrievability.
It would need to be sensitive in low light conditions.
Preprogrammed behavior is a good idea. Several possible communication channels are offering themselves for use; wifi and bluetooth are (lousy but cheap) off-the-shelf ways, but we also need some jamming-resistant low-bandwidth channel (the low-bandwidth requirement makes it easier) for control in case the main one is jammed. We have the whole TV range for us now; FCC wouldn’t like it but we don’t have to ask because this is war. And it allows using of the cheap TV USB dongles. Short pulses, frequency-hopped with some redundancy over large swath of the spectrum, can have negligible energy per spectrum slice in average, low potential of jamming anything, and with suitable receiver algo could be fished from below noise floor. Directional antennas are of great help as well.
We can get the thing to carry a GSM/3G modem for control over cellular network.
Then we have the possibility of shining a modulated infrared laser to the craft, and taking over in case radio is jammed below recovery. Needs direct visibility though. If the receiver can maintain the lens orientation towards the transmitter, instead of blindly looking to all directions, the link is virtually unjammable.
Remember we have a difficulty ceiling where physically shooting the thing down is easier than jamming it. The adversary won’t go into complicated high-energy-jammer schemes if a sniper rifle will suffice.
Then when even this does not work, the preprogrammed flight path (e.g. hover until battery low, then return to base) can kick in.
Definite yes on that. This puts another sort of ceiling to the control/data link complexity.
Similar but not so crippling set of restraints comes to the ground station. In case of the need of rapid egress from the base, the heavier parts of the equipment may have to be abandoned. In case of the enemy (not just an adversary anymore) overruns the command post, or does a home raid later, and seizes the equipment, the loss has to be affordable.
Seems like a tasty lawsuit in the making (every news media helicopter prohibited from the airspace over Ferguson) against the Ferguson PD and the FAA employees that allowed said illegal act!
The ‘officials’ involved with Ferguson just keep digging their hold deeper and deeper.
A complicated expensive flying device is one approach. Seems likely to draw the attention of the authorities, and they;ll likely triangulate you.
A low cost mass deployed camera on the ground, without many parts, without the ability to be jammed because it’s cheap and either retrieved or not. Drop 100 of these in Ferguson, and it takes exactly 1 in the right place, recording for a good long time, to break a story. No signal to find, no signal to jam. Get it back later. Or don’t. It was cheap.
You have to get high enough fast enough. For radio finding they would have to have the equipment, and would have to know how to use it. Provincial meat-head cops aren’t typically that good.
If properly concealed, and the changed battlefield tactical situation allows retrieval of the recording (and replacement of the batteries), it is a very valid approach.
Both ways have their tactical advantages and limitations. Best used together, or on the use-what-you-got basis.
It seems unlikely that any of them will get in any trouble over this. Unassailable authority.
Well, we can’t allow any more pictures, people. Pictures of black cops and white protestors contradict our agreed-upon narrative of purely racialist discord.
The rich and powerful need to make sure that the underlying system of economic disparities in Ferguson is fundamentally misrepresented, or something might change.
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