I remember a while back Apple filed a patent that allows concerts to disable iPhones cameras if a certain signal is emitted from the stage. Apple never implemented this, but my pessemistic ass always try to think of worse case scenarios, like being used by government. Do you think this could occur in the future?
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36672001
You can search “Apple Concert Disable Camera” and find more about it.
This seems like it would probably be trivial to defeat either via legacy tech or simply by removing/disabling the receiver, interrupting the signal itself, hacking the firmware, etc.
Police could try to counter this by using lights (either visible or anything a camera’s sensor can pick up) to blind the cameras, but then people could also start doing stuff like using polarizing filters to minimize this, hiding cameras, or some other more clever method I’m not smart enough to think of.
Doesn’t need to be 100% bullet proof to be highly effective at suppressing accountability though. Yes people will be able to get around it but the benefit of everyone having a phone is that it’s ubiquitous. Everyone has a phone so if there’s anyone in the vicinity of police committing a crime it can be recorded. With all those extra steps you listed, the number of people who will go through the trouble will be a small fraction of the current phone user base now.