Kevin Baldeosingh

Last week, a video filmed by a police officer during a police exercise went viral. The officer decided to use his smartphone to record certain residents giving “talk” to the police and, as soon as he started, everyone started walking away quickly. Given the calls for police officers to be given body cameras, so that any disputed stories between police and citizens have a better chance of being settled, this was a funny turnaround. There is no doubt, though, that the ubiquity of phone cameras have made facts easier to establish. One key demonstration of this is related to oncepopular topic: Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs. Until the 1990s, UFO sightings and stories were very common, and even the subject of bestselling books in the United States. One of the most popular TV series, The XFiles -), was based on this premise. But, since the dawn of the 21st century, talk about UFOs (and alien abductions and so on) have become virtually non-existent, and that’s most likely because of cell-phone cameras. According to the online technology magazine Digital Trends (www.digitaltrends.com), the first cell phone with a built-in camera was the Samsung SCH-V200 which was released in South Korea in June of 2000. Its camera had 0.35-megapixels, but you had to hook it up to a computer to get your photos. Later that same year, Sharp produced the J-SH04 with 0.11-megapixels, which allowed you to send your photos electronically. These cameras compare to standard 5 megapixel nowadays, with Xiaomi planning to release of a smartphone with a 48-megapixel sensor later this year. The point is, anyone who claims to have encountered a UFO or alien will immediately be asked: “Did you take a selfie with it?” Which is why nobody makes such claims anymore. Given the state of technology now, though, cell-phone cameras could certainly substitute until police body cameras become official wear, whether in the hands of officers or citizens. As The X-Files used to say, “The truth is out there”. And camera phones will often reveal it.