I’ve been checking in on Portland the past few nights and can’t help but think people like youtuber Veterans for Peace (who otherwise is tough as hell and battle-hardened, and the police tactics being used should be studied from his high angle, high quality footage–especially with the Fed being deployed, these current strategies, tactics, and specific weapons and munitions will be seen more widely) are doing the pig a huge favor. Especially when filming people creeping around the courthouse. The cops cutoff inside–peeking through their trapdoors and dumping out gas, flashbangs, and firing pepper balls and rubber bullets–would have way less idea what was going on outside if these streamers delayed their streams. I can’t think of another way. Any ideas? They’re just giving up so much free, real-time intel :(
- Yes, there is a known problem of social media giving cops free information to incriminate protesters, and as you said, also just general information. BLM protestors have been arrested, harassed, and even killed by cops after they were identified by social media
- They do have other means of knowing what’s going on outside their fortifications (plants, surveillance cameras, even sometimes aircraft surveillance) and of identifying protestors (cell phone geolocation tracking, fake cell tower surveillance, etc.), but we should not be helping them!
Yes to both points. And, while they do have other means of intel, the Veterans for Peace streamer had such perfect footage of the building exterior, I guarantee it was being monitored and used. No need to even risk a plant.
This, I really think ppl shouldn’t live stream at protests… everyone from 4chan nerds to police will be watching the stream, and everyone whose face isn’t covered is now in a database. Waiting a few hours, uploading the most important snippets after blurring faces of those w/o consent, is the best way to go.
as for what your livestreamer could do: is there a way to censor video in real-time? A delay could be helpful, but my main concern would be the ability to watch the video to identify and arrest protestors after the fact.
Yeah a delay would only help in the moment. With current mobile tech, I think real-time facial blurring would demand too much cpu power to do on the fly.
Yeah it should be the streaming service. You upload in real time and the service delays and censors. If the mobile device was doing the delay, then if someone killed the phone no one would see even 10 minutes before that happens.
Good point.
