In response to recent incidents in London where police have deleted photos that protesters or tourists have taken on their phones, a cool new remedy has been developed. According to Boing Boing:
“GandhiCam” is an application for post-8700-series BlackBerry devices that automatically emails you (or an address you set) the images, audio, or video as it is taken, with the aim to make it easy to get the data off the device before it is confiscated or destroyed…
There are other live broadcast from phones like Qik, obviously, as well as phone-to-Flickr or email gateways, but there’s something to be said for a no-click solution.
Where governments are willing to take more drastic measures to squelch dissent, however, such technology may not prove to be useful. During the 2007 Saffron Revolution in Burma, for example, the authorities disconnected the entire country from the internet and turned off cell towers to stop the flow of information about the nonviolent uprising to the outside world. After the clampdown, the Burmese were forced to resort to accessing cell service from across the Thai border, and smuggling information out of the country the old fashioned way – on CDs and thumb drives.