Ask HN: Review our startup: Deniable Video

At most, this device seems trustworthy exactly to the extent that you trust that hardware hasn't been tampered with. Since there's very little information about how the tamper-proofing works, I tend towards skepticism.<p>At worst, they've implemented a cryptosystem that, having never been peer reviewed, is vulnerable to basic attacks. Since I can't find out who the authors are, and they use both AES and Serpent with listed key sizes instead of talking about how the design works, I tend towards skepticism.<p>Finally, I'm with everyone else wondering why deniability is something the market cares about.

My first impression: I love the idea, but I'd never give $6,000 to a site that looks like yours. I generally don't like criticizing without some constructive advice on what to fix, but in this case you don't need tips from random commenters, you need professional graphic design talent. A lot of startups could forego that at first, but not if they're selling $6,000 of equipment to an audience that's pre-selected to be paranoid. You'll need to look <i>absurdly</i> trustworthy just to get started, and that's going to be a tough hill to climb.

For most of the uses on your "Purposes" page, you don't need the deniability, only the encryption. So this is overkill.<p>For the journalism uses, the product does not seem to be enough. When the authorities ask you to show them what video you've taken, you need to be able to use a secondary key that reveals your interview with the Ministry of Information's Official Spokesman, but conceals your interview of an opposition leader and your video of an anti-government protest.

Glad to see more companies doing hardware. It's pretty intimidating stuff, but it's also really fun.<p>Site Design: Needs lots of work. It seems like an infomercial product. I think branding is key here, especially if you're looking to charge 6k.<p>Price: 6k is a nonstarter. If the equipment were expensive and margins were tight, I'd understand. Everyone wants hardware to be cheap and it's hard when you don't have economies of scale yet.<p>Implementation: Lots of different devices and I'm sure there's a certain level of complexity to this. I think you're on to something with the security aspect. I would try to make it a lot easier and a lot simpler. The 100gb of space is also way too low. I haven't looked through the specs, but SATA 2.5s with 500 are readily available. If you can somehow cram a 3.5 inch, you can get up to 2 tb.<p>Could this be done via the cloud? IP camera, sheeva plug, and encrypted recording to an overseas server? Require the private usb key to be used in conjunction with any software system its loaded on. You could charge a small up front fee for the camera+sheeva plug and recurring fee for recording. Kind of a TiVo for personal security.<p>&#60;/end ramble&#62;

Forgive me for being a bit blunt - but is that picture not just a painted mac mini? The edge has the inset line where the case turns from metal to plastic and the port area is the white plastic. Is this a Mac Mini + software + camera?

Ah, I see. They've separated the storage of software and the storage of video into two separate devices. The unit arrives with its video storage area filled with "random" data, and then the encryption process for the video writes into the video storage area.<p>As long as the encryption methods used produce data which cannot be differentiated from pseudo-random data, then it's impossible to tell whether there's any video on there at all.<p>Pretty neat. :-)

Generally when I hear the term "deniable" used with something security related, I think of something like the hidden volumes in True Crypt: something that I can't be proved to have.<p>Does your product provide this level of deniability? I would venture a guess that the answer is no (after all, there is a box with a big "DV" on it). If not, what do you mean by the word deniable?

$6000 is quite a fair amount of money and for that I only get one year of warranty on the hardware and one year of software updates?<p>Not sure what the software updates include but for the hardware I would expect live-time warranty or at least something reasonable, like 5 to 10 years.<p>Other than that. Nice product.

The layout is good, however, I have one suggestion:<p>Left align your text. Follow the advice of this book by Robin Williams:<p>"Find a strong alignment and stick to it."<p>"Avoid using more than one text alignment on the page (that is, don't center some text and right-align other text).<p>And please try very hard to break away from a centered alignment unless you are consciously trying to create a more formal, sedate presentation. Choose a centered alignment consciously, not by default."<p>- The Non-Designer's Design Book: Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=n1AuwXafMO8C&#38;lpg=PT42&#38;#.." rel="nofollow">http://books.google.com/books?id=n1AuwXafMO8C&#38;lpg=PT42&#...</a>.<p>Take a look at the chapter above she shows some good examples of how to integrate images into a layout.

Reminds me of a cool idea I once thought of. It's more a nerd-fantasy than something practical. A surveillance system that not only encrypts the video, but also digitally signs it, so James Bond-style thieves can't switch cameras.

I was pretty interested in the site and product, until I saw the price<p>$6k is a lot for what on 1st impression 'looks' to be targeting the lower end of the security imaging market. You can buy three HD Axis IP cameras for that money. Speaking of cameras, you don't show or give any specs which is really strange when you're asking for 6k<p>the more I read your site the more I can somewhat understand the price, but if I was just a customer - you would have lost me in 30 seconds; your landing page doesn't convey your product's 6k of value<p>Still, kudos for not coming up with yet another web app

It seems absurdly expensive and the site could use some polish.<p>I think a screencast would be good to explain what it does and how it works.

Sounds like it solves the "Oh noes they stole our sex tape" concern most celebrities seem to have these days...

Neat idea, but I think (certainly not) the <i>only</i> way you'll ever see a substantial return is if you were you marketing this to the obviously most vile demographic of pornographer(s) out there.

In the FAQ this question should be towards the top<p>Why would I need continuous audio/video recording?

It sounds like this is going to revolutionize the child-porn industry. :P

What happens to my video if the DV unit is stolen or destroyed?

No 'about us' page. I was confused for a moment when the 'contact us' page started with 'to view our company's website, click here'. I thought I <i>was</i> on the company website.<p>Having multiple languages seems a bit odd if large swaths of content aren't translated. "Cette page est disponible seulement en anglais" being followed by an entire page of English text doesn't help credibility.<p>Your logo seems like it'd fail pretty hard for individuals with red-weak color blindness.<p>The 'deniable video operation' flowchart is more complex than what I want, for understanding how it works.<p>If the thing is supposed to be deniable, I might prefer a plain black plastic, or aluminum enclosure to a giant DV logo'd one.<p>The targeting seems very broad... and some of it seems a bit misinformed. As an example, there are substantial SEC rules when it comes to communications and the records thereof, but you have two trading-related examples in commercial.<p>I'd like a clear example of how it is that:<p>a) if my wife asks me for my password, she will get the pictures of her and I... not of the woman I met on ashleymadison. (purely hypothetical, honey.)<p>b) if a government asks me for my password, they will get something plausible, but not everything...<p>I guess it's just not clear to me what it's really good at, except that it's a camera, and a hard drive, and it uses ogg vorbis and chunks to... do something.<p>edit: It also conflates what appear to be the two major features (encryption, and data hiding), and it's not obvious to me what quality the resulting video will be, nor what I'd have to do if I wanted to use it in broadcast.<p>Also, I felt like I had to read a <i>lot</i> of the website to know what the product really did. I might've got the gist faster if the front page said something like: Deniable Video. * Records, Encrypts and Hides Your Video. I really didn't know what "personal video security that's loyal to you" meant.

$5000 is a lot of money for this... isn't it?