We had been approached by a client (a friend of mine) who wanted to make a security center for neighborhoods, that we could sell. And for a long time, I had the idea that video encrypted as close to the camera as possible could be very useful in solving crimes where otherwise you'd only have personal testimony (e.g. cases of alleged rape etc). But the keys would have to be produced only through a valid subpoena and court putting together their BLS signatures to group-sign something etc. Each minute and each camera would be encrypted with its own key.
I wanted full accountability and transparency: whoever is accessing the video would have to access limited amounts, and there would be a log of the reasons why.
We called up IBM and they had some interesting AI stuff that would work at the edges to detect potentially dangerous activity (knives, mobs etc.) and flag it for the operators of the system. Such a flag would be a valid reason to decrypt a few cameras for a few timeslots. The people with access would decrypt only what was needed, and the investigation itself would be logged -- why was this or that minute or camera decrypted. To decrypt too much would require greater authorization.
What I wanted to avoid is a panopticon where all the feeds are piped to some center. Sadly, the current social media companies have created such a panopticon with our willing participation, and we don't understand that better, far more accountable and auditable systems can exist, where we don't have to rely on centralized actors.
If you're curious, we can do a lot more than security cameras, this is just one possible application. Here we use it to earn credits for watching podcasts, live or recorded:
And we are also using it for students to be taught by teachers remotely, and know whether they are attending or not
Here is our overall ethos and approach: https://qbix.com/blog/2017/12/18/power-to-the-people/
PS: What I described here would be a potential solution to Apple's Client Side Scanning. What they're missing is accountability and transparency on the side of the people decrypting the footage: essentially a system of warrants, logs, same as doctors use to explain why they ordered this or that test. And furthermore they are missing the decentralization element: you just have to "trust Apple" because they won't give you their backend software. We do. That's why open source is superior. So you can run it yourself, and there is no concept of trusting a large centralized corporation. It's just software that runs on hardware you bought and own. No one is extracting rents, gathering your data, except your own community and by whatever agreement that is set up locally etc.