Buried in the press release regarding the Samsung and CNN International deal about a nice rich (Java) CNN application on the Samsung 810 was something really interesting.
CNN’s global audience can also submit iReports to CNN’s citizen journalism website by sending still images or video from their mobile handsets via a built in bookmark.
As several photojournalists have said, “The best camera is the one you have with you.” Well a phone equipped with this software should make it very easy to capture that police beating or airplane crash and get it to the world. Governments, beware: mobile phone proliferation plus cameras plus efficient mechanisms to get content elsewhere (Flickr, YouTube, and now CNN) is very dangerous. I wonder whether Raul Castro will find this out, or if he will be a more benevolent leader than his brother.
Related reading: how to take down a dictatorship
This news comes at the same time as more and more corporations are giving up some of the control over camera phones at their facilities. (Don’t try that at a Chinese mobile phone R&D facility. They will be Not Amused.)
How privacy concerns evolve over the next few years will be interesting.