Is there a need for recording to encrypted storage media?

[Christian Spaeth]

Think outside of the box (=recorder). Always carry a "dummy" card with ambience and test recordings that you can always hand over if asked to, e.g. when travelling abroad and working on sensitive topics. The "real" card should never travel in the recorder, rather in your shoe or something like that. If you're "caught" while shooting quickly switching out cards should be possible except maybe at gunpoint, and in that case you have probably bigger worries than your recordings.

[Constantin]

IS is not the best example here, as they would insist on accomany you anyway (like with Todenhöfer) and already know what you shoot. The scenario is rather, that some local official does not like you filming there and seizes all your stuff (and maybe has you deported). Of course this is a loss to you, but if your material is encrypted, maybe the dissident you have interviewed does not loose his life, after your stuff makes it up the chain and someone takes a closer look.

It really does depend on the scenario (IS could capture you as opposed to going on an authorized trip with them) and we don't need to consider them all. Your strongest point is the protection of a dissident, but also your weakest: in a totalitarian state (and those are most likely to have dissidents) it doesn't matter if you get caught by the police or by the terrorists. It doesn't matter to you who tortures you. However, these examples show to a degree how incredibly small the potential market for such a product would be. But solutions are there, even with technology available today, as others have said. It's just a matter of developing a workflow

[JackHenry]

I think if you were caught with an encrypted device in an unstable country, you'd be MORE likely to be arrested for spying.

[Todd Weaver]

I see nothing but problems:

a: the delay in encripting before writing to "disk"

b: problems with data recovery if a coruption happens

There probably wouldn't be a delay. It's digital and the digital data is written in a form that would require the proper description to decode. Shouldn't take any longer to write to media.

[johnpaul215]

If I was captured by IS, the least of my worries would be if the encryption on my CF card is stronger then their hacker skills.

[Constantin]

Something like this might work relatively easily.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B007JGB0BQ/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?qid=1426964589&sr=8-5&pi=AC_SX110_SY165_QL70&keywords=Encrypted+drive&dpPl=1&dpID=41-0f3-erzL&ref=plSrch

Use it as an external drive on your recorder and have some dummy files on your internal drive. Just make sure they match the camera's dummy files. And think of where to hide the drive

[Jon Gilbert]

It's not necessary, simple as that. To think it is, is paranoia. I've worked on hundreds of contentious current affairs docs, crossed countless borders with hard drives full of files governments of various countries might take a dim view of, and never once thought I'd sleep better knowing my files were encrypted.

[Philip Perkins]

I think we're talking abuo two kinds of safety here: 1: typical doco type where a 3rd party might want to supress a shoot by taking the recorded media--for that making clones and spreading out where they are hidden/travelled works well, I bet that's what L Poitras did, I've done this too.   Then there's 2: where the actual content puts people in danger if certain 3rd parties access it.  I haven't been on this kind of shoot, and if media from such a shoot were encypted then that might be cause for immediate torture of the makers, since the encryption would arouse the paranoia of the torturers.   Meanwhile they would be bringing the full weight of their techno establishment to bear on the encryption.  I think a better route is stealth in shooting and the appearance of normalcy.

 

philp

[chrismedr]

i fully agree with philp:

 

in scenario 1, just send copies of your media home by mail.

in scenario 2, i wouldn't want to be caught with encrypted media in dangerous parts of the world. i don't fancy working under these conditions to start with, but if for some reason it became necessary, i'd probably opt for backups to hidden microSD cards and again ship it off as soon as possible (if the shipment could be intercepted, then encryption could make sense in this case though, but i'd do that on the backup step).

 

chris

[Todd Weaver]

Back in the days when I had the patiences to carry a bag I did a bus tour with a major hiphop artist. One of his busses was dedicated to recording his next album while proceeding down the highway.... I can't speak to how well it sounded, but it sold millions... The back of the bus engineer told me that their data was attacked by hackers on a constant basis pretty much every day... Usually our workflow doesn't involve us loading our files to an easily accessible wifi network, but stuff happens. The stealth strategy is great. Big movies don't let their data go anywhere but on a harddrive protected possibly by security streight to the dailies house.

[johnpaul215]

Back in the days when I had the patiences to carry a bag I did a bus tour with a major hiphop artist. One of his busses was dedicated to recording his next album while proceeding down the highway.... I can't speak to how well it sounded, but it sold millions... The back of the bus engineer told me that their data was attacked by hackers on a constant basis pretty much every day... Usually our workflow doesn't involve us loading our files to an easily accessible wifi network, but stuff happens. The stealth strategy is great. Big movies don't let their data go anywhere but on a harddrive protected possibly by security streight to the dailies house.

It's odd that their recording computers were left online. Seems like a simple fix.

[Todd Weaver]

The studio was a bus. The bus was probably sending data out to the mixing or mastering guys working for the label over Internet. Not secure internet.. Was an interesting story. True or not...

[Tom Duffy]

Coming late to this:

 

The TASCAM HS-4000 has encrypted recording as a paid upgrade.   called "WAVLOCK".

This is currently only marketed in Japan, and was developed at the special request of a major TV broadcasting company.

 

The "password" can be imported to each unit from an encrypted file on a CF card, so even the operators don't know what the corporate secret is.   The password can be changed at any time in the same manner.

A companion app on Windows / Mac allows for de-encryption (and re-encryption) when importing the CF contents.   Again the password is supplied in a pre-encrypted form, so operators don't know it, only that it matches the units in the field.  Once set up, messing with the registry or attempting to copy the app to another machine garbles the password.

 

The main reason for this is less first-amendment, more accident prevention.

If someone walks up to a machine being used on location, pops a CF and walks off with it, all they have are WAV files that no audio software can play back.

 

Tom (TASCAM)

[DanieldH]

Today, I've stumbled over an aspect, so trivial, that my initial question might matter way more to the general public than to some film industry person roaming around dictatorships in whatever scenarios.

A friend of mine is a youth psychologist in training. She needs to film patients for evaluation/supervision ("supervision" in the health industry meaning).

Their system is (as far as I understood) to record on some SD card with some consumer grade camera and put it in a "special" computer that copies the files to an encrypted thumb drive and erases/overwrites all content stored on the thumb drive before and currently on the SD card.
Technically, the thumb drive has a Truecrypt FS and the "special" computer presumably some sort of script that does the copy&overwrite stuff.

How well implemented one thinks this system is or not, there are way more people that carry around sensitive video/audio data beyond our industry. And it's simply a good practice to be aware of potential data breaches and carrying sensitive data in sufficiently encrypted ways. A/Vrecorders that implement such a feature preferably with open source code will do good for their customers. 

[daniel]

Encrypt-able CF cards would great (or something with the form factor of a SD to CF card adapter which encrypted the data to the inserted SD card). I see you can get 'lockable' USB drives so not out of the realms of possibility. 

[NBJersey]

Out of interest, I asked a friend that is a psychiatrist.  Apparently the most common solution is that the camera/dictaphone and any cards are just kept locked in a fire-rated filing cabinet when not in use.  I doubt most medical practitioners know what encryption is, so there probably isn't a huge market there either.