Idea: Gorgon Baby Strategy

I spent a good amount of time Saturday night in the night-vision-green haze of the Oakland debacle. A lone citizen journalist hollering at arrested protestors for their names. Footage of battle-gear sporting plump policemen milling about outside the kettling cordon, pausing to eat chinese food off the back of a police cruiser, arresting journalists. It’s part of the ambient video playlist for the next decade, so you may as well get used to it.

Ignoring the political hubbub, what’s clear is that there is an information problem. Mainstream media is, of course, by and large not serious in its coverage of anything, much less OWS. That little which is, finds itself susceptible to arrest. Citizen media is all niche. The bad apples in police are literally taking advantage of the opaqueness to hit and hide.

The solution is to provide better, clearer information streams. Best way to do that? Take a page from the Air Force.

You could, of course, do this with drones. There’s already been a a little work in that regard. Another option is to birth a litter of gorgon babies. Protestors with wearable cameras that stream over a mesh network.

A server to aggregate, then use some pretty sophisticated software (some funded by an interesting VC) to process the collective feeds. But here’s the key, pair the data with something actionable: a legal team.

Not unlike the ubiquitous traffic camera, they watch for infractions – mace to an unsuspecting face – then launch lawsuits. They shouldn’t be altruistic. They should see this enterprise as a profit center. Hell, they should buy and give out the cameras. And they shouldn’t skimp, the return on this investment would be insane.

Off the shelf, something likeequipped with an Eye-fi should work, though multidirectional would be better.

Update: Dale has a much better option for the camera. The Looxcie.

-Shlok
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mmicire (@mmicire)
Jan 29, 2012

Idea: Gorgon Baby Strategy http://t.co/odkRBZOz

Dale Asberry
Jan 30, 2012

I personally like the idea of the looxcie. Combine with mesh networking clients running on smartphones and the motivational aspects of gamification. Since revenue stream provided by litigation, software can be open sourced and easily picked up by other entrepreneurs, say bailbondsmen, or anyone else finding a valuable niche.

AR Herald (@ARherald)
Jan 30, 2012

#ARNews Idea: Gorgon Baby Strategy http://t.co/7nT1sFpK (by @shloky) #OWS #occupyportland #AR #augmentedreality #g5w http://t.co/wug1B6Xy

Adam Rothstein
Jan 30, 2012

We’ve tried using Eye-Fi for Occupy Portland’s media coverage, and had pretty lackluster results. Best case is being able to use a smart phone to peruse photos before uploading to a service, like Picasa or Flickr. However, lack of interface on the Eye-Fi sometimes becomes a pain, like when the card finds a previously used Wifi network and automatically connects, rather than connecting to the one you want it to. Also, it can get bogged down on video files, and will refuse to skip until it is finished. In effect, it often locks it up and becomes useless in the heat of the moment. Livestream isn’t perfect, but it’s ubiquitousness in app form on 4G/3G smart phones makes it a winner with us for now.

Livestream also has the ability for a mod to control a “channel”, switching back and forth between many feeds, including mixing the audio. http://www.livestream.com/occupyptown uses this often. Working on this model, improving on the ease with which people in the feed can send video and stills to a single sorting point, seems to be the best direction for progress, currently, in my opinion. Twitter hashtags, Flickr feeds, Ustream “crowds”… all of these are moving in the right direction, but we’re not quite there yet.

Shlok Vaidya
Jan 30, 2012

Interesting that you guys tried using eye-fi. Sounds like Livestream needs to get into the hardware space. A cheap phone mount at least, if not an open alternative to eye-fi. (Both of which lend themselves to Kickstarter campaigns pretty easily.)

Then, instead of generic Tweets on the right side, show companion content. They’ll probably need some pretty smart software to make that happen.