The Faces of Vietnam (Part 1)

I've just returned from Vietnam, on assignment with the organization Photographers Without Borders.  On this trip I was to document the work of "Hearts for Hue", a humanitarian NGO looking to help rebuilt one of the hardest-hit cities of the Vietnam war - a war that, apparently, is still going on between the North and the South.  My assignment was to tell the story of the positive difference the organization was making, via both stills and video.  There are a lot of stories to tell, and of course many of you are interested in the technical side (including why I rarely kept the camera on straight "Auto").  So I'm splitting this story into two blog posts - in this one I'll share with you my pictures and stories.  In the next post I'll talk about what the experience was like, the equipment I used, and what it's like working for Photographers Without Borders.  You can do this kind of work for them too!

The Faces of Vietnam (part 2)

In my last post, I showed you the highlights of last month's trip to Vietnam, documenting the humanitarian work of NGO "Hearts for Hue".  In this post I'll talk about the behind-the-scenes stuff, including equipment, technique, and what it's like to work with Photographers Without Borders.

In order to be considered for an assignment with them you have to first become a member; I was one for two years before I approached them about shooting for one of their advertised projects.  Several interviews ensued, and six weeks later I learned I had been chosen.  There's a fee to participate; plus travel expenses.  I was responsible for all of that.  Fortunately I've been able to offset some of those costs thanks to the generous donations from people like you, my dear readers. :-)

"Use your highest-quality, full-frame camera!" they said, and so I brought my Sony A7R III and a variety of lenses, plus a backup for everything because I know how things go.  Here's a picture of what I brought:

Encryption that Makes Everyone Happy

[Editor's note: This is a compilation of several posts I made over the years which discusses a solution to the seemingly intractable disagreement between law enforcement and privacy advocates over the encryption of personal data.  This has little to do with photography.]

I think I found a solution to the Apple vs. FBI stalemate that requires no back door, maintains strong privacy, and still provides for legimate law enforcement access when there is a warrant.  What do you think of this idea?  

1st Post - February 18, 2016

As often happens with politicized topics, there is much ignorance and lies being spewed by all parties when it comes to the encryption vs. privacy vs. government access vs. security debate.  I'm not advocating mass eavesdropping; rather I'm talking about legitimate law enforcement needs to solve murders and kidnappings in cases where a warrant has been issued.  (Traditionally, warrants have been the mechanism to keep power-hungry government officials in check.)

If you've been following this subject at all in the media, you'll be hearing two major arguments:

1) "Strong encryption prevents the government from preventing terrorism, therefore manufacturers must install 'back doors' to the encryption that the government can use to eavesdrop".  (This has been proven to be propaganda, as there are no demonstrated cases where not having access to an encrypted channel would have prevented anything.)

2) "We want to help law enforcement, however if such back doors were to be installed, hackers would be able to access it too, allowing no shortage of evil to take place.  Plus, the NSA and other officials have demonstrated that they're not as concerned about due process when it comes to overstepping eavesdropping authority.  It would be a public policy disaster and U.S. tech companies would lose international business as confidence in their security drops."

The above set of arguments is what's called a false dichotomy; it implies that these are the only two options available.  Throughout this argument, nobody - not even encryption experts - has talked about existing encryption algorithms which can meet everyone's legitimate needs without necessitating a back door.  It's called (m,n)-threshold encryption, and it works like this: Instead of having one key (that can both encrypt and decrypt), or two keys (one to encrypt and another to decrypt), you can encrypt anything using m of n keys, meaning you can have multiple keys floating around, and any 2 or 3 (or whatever combination you choose) of those keys can decrypt the contents.  You can also configure it to have just one of the keys lock but two of any of the other keys will be required to unlock.  It can be custom-tailored to meet specific use cases.

How would this work in the case of a smartphone?