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Turning a Blind Eye to Big Brother
SiliconRedox writes: "An article in the NYTimes (user reg.) details what many of us who have worked with video or electronics have known for quite awhile: Shine a laser beam (or infrared, but the article doesn't get into that) at a video camera, and you can effectively blind certain viewpoints of the camera. The article follows one man trying to cope with the surveillence society by removing his own image from everyday video footage using this technique. The most interesting part? What kind of culpability does the individual or institution have in utilizing this kind of technology?"
A big bright spot would stand out a bit, wouldn't you think? And since there aren't that many people who regularly try to blind cameras, this guy may just be making himself stick out like a sore thumb!
I do believe that it is well within someone's right to not have their picture taken if they don't wish it to be. Or at least have a warning on the entrance of an establishment that you are being videotaped. I think the law that says you don't have to inform someone that you're videotaping them, but that you do for audio is bogus. The law needs to be changed, it's an invasion of privacy no matter how you want to look at it, if someone doesn't want to be videotaped, then they shouldn't be videotaped, there is no grey area. You should be informed before proceeding that you are under video survailence.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Good job moderators [/sarcas], but if you really want to get in, just remeber the NYT Random Login Generator. It won't work directly from the website anymore because the Times has blocked all requests from his site, but just download and run it from your machine, click the button, refresh once and you're in. Works like a charm.
Furthermore, it is very unlikely a bunch of you used a ruby laser. It is far more likely you used a semiconductor-based laser pointer.
Any use of my image with out my consent will be punishable to the full extent of the law.
Plantiff "We have here your honor is video tape footage of the defendent attempting to steal a Macintosh Computer worth over $3,000 from his local CompUSA a dozen video games also a leather chair, a box of M&M's and even the store manager's goldfish.."
Me "Your honor, those images are copyrighted 2002 Treeluvinhippy and they do not have written consent of the copyright owner. I motion that the video tapes be removed as evidence and returned to the copyright holder immediatly. If the tapes are allowed as evidence I will have to force to remmind your honor about the FBI warning agaisnt public viewings of copyrighted materials. Your honor is most certainly familar with such warnings
as it appears at the beginning of every purchased video cassete. You know the one with the blue background and white letters threating five years imprionment and/or a $25,000 fine, certain death and other such unpleasantries."
>
I've always thought it would be possible to construct license plate frames that bathe a license plate in infrared and/or ultraviolet light, thereby making it "invisible" to speed control cameras (or, for the truly criminal out there, tollboth cameras), or any other CCD device. Would such a scheme actually work? Maybe put some sort of "diffuser" over the license plate to better diffuse the energy...
If you do this, it's better to use a green laser than a red laser. In San Francisco pointing a red laser may be considered a weapons felony. A green laser doesn't scare cops into thinking your using a laser sight, so it's legal. Stupid but true law.
Of course the law is for pointed at people, not cameras, but why give them any reason to go after your ass.....
Why don't we just take screenshots from current movies and post them on our shirts, that way the cameras will be making pirated copies of movies and the MPAA will go sue them all. I would say use song lyrics, but the RIAA is busy suing all of the radio stations: http://www.theonion.com/onion3836/riaa_sues_radio_ stations.html
Try these: http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=l icense+plate+polarizer&spell=1
Also, states have varying laws regarding required visibility of license plates. IE must be visible from X feet. So when I get new ones, I lay them on the ground, and spray them from about 5 feet up with matte black paint. This puts a light misting of black on the plate. This in no way makes the plate unreadable. At night, however, they are much harder to read from 100 feet.
Also, in most southern states only one plate is required. Some states only give you one. Do not use more plates than are required..
You probably think that its perfectly fine to fly an airplane into the world trade towers too, so long as you don't get caught?
You, sir, are a fucking moron. You're not entitled to act in a socially irresponsible manner soley because the odds of getting caught are low. Nor is it reasonable to think that a physical human being is required to observe you breaking the law.
There is reason to have feelings against radar jamming; assholes like you are putting society at risk with your behavior. The ONLY reason to make use of radar jamming is to engage in dangerous activity more often, with a lowered risk of being caught.
However, I take issue with:
- We do NOT need machines [slashdot.org] tracking us or doing the job of the police. If the cop isn't paying attention, or isn't there when I blow by their hiding spot in the middle of the road at 105, tough.
Traffic monitoring is one example of surveillance I would vote for tomorrow, if it came up on a ballot initiative. Traffic fatalities happen when people are reckless, when you "just didn't see" the child crossing the road, or the deer in the dark; or you "didn't have time to swerve" out of the way of a drunk driver, or you lose control in a curve when you hit black ice you don't expect.There's NO reason to have feelings against radar jamming (the cops cheat to find out how fast you are going, why shouldn't we cheat and not let them know how fast we are going?), blocking out video taping in public places of people, etc.
Not to mention that traffic signalling systems are designed to work within traffic law. When people cheat, traffic systems break, traffic backs-up, more people cheat, the traffic gets worse (see a pattern here?)
If installing traffic surveillance systems would help enable the 5-0 to stop the sniper attacks on the east coast or child abductors or bank robbers, or any of the above reasons--it's in society's best-interest. Enforcing the law isn't cheating; cheating is robbing the taxpayers of the services for which we spend so very much in taxes each year. Yes, prevention is a service we pay for.
Don't complain to me about people watching over your shoulder, just make sure the public can watch over THEIR SHOULDERS too, and we can all be happy.
Besides, God can always see what you're doing, right? ;)
A normal laser pointer isn't going to cause any permanent damage, but having one shone in your eyes can certainly be distracting enough to cause a problem if you're driving when it happens.
Red dots appearing out of nowhere can also spook people into thinking that they're being targeted with a laser gun sight. And if you're a police officer (or the Maryland-DC area with the recent plague of random sniper attacks) that might not be an entirely unreasonable fear.
The main problem as I see it with the whole "put video cameras all over public areas" is that we as humans tend to judge the subjects in these recordings by a different standard than we judge ourselves. This is a well studied phenomenon. We do things all the time that when viewed by others are seen as worse than how we see those same acts.
How many times have you heard the words "I can't believe I did that!" or "I don't really do that, do I?" after watching themselves on a video tape.
It's pretty easy to judge others, but we almost never apply the same standards to our own behavior.
You could see the jurors in that child beating in the parking lot vilifying the woman and taking away their child, but going home and smacking their kids around. Not until someone tapes them and confronts them with it, would they realize how bad it looks. But I... I didn't mean... I uh, um, etc.
Did they hit their kids? Yes. Should we as a society start playing self-righteous Church Lady with video tape evidence at all instances?
Emphatically, No!!
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
Seams to be a terrible law to me.
That's nothing... some other Virginia laws of note:
18.2-361. Crimes against nature.
A. If any person carnally knows in any manner any brute animal, or carnally knows any male or female person by the anus or by or with the mouth, or voluntarily submits to such carnal knowledge, he or she shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony, except as provided in subsection B.
This means that oral or anal sex between consenting adults is illegal. About 25 states have similar laws.
18.2-322. Expectorating in public places.
No person shall spit, expectorate, or deposit any sputum, saliva, mucus, or any form of saliva or sputum upon the floor, stairways, or upon any part of any public building or place where the public assemble, or upon the floor of any part of any public conveyance, or upon any sidewalk abutting on any public street, alley or lane of any town or city.
Any person violating any provision of this section shall be guilty of a Class 4 misdemeanor.
18.2-344. Fornication.
Any person, not being married, who voluntarily shall have sexual intercourse with any other person, shall be guilty of fornication, punishable as a Class 4 misdemeanor.
Christian bias:
5.1-136. Free passes or reduced rates.
No air carrier subject to the provisions of this chapter shall, directly or indirectly, issue or give any free ticket, free pass or free transportation for passengers, but nothing in this section shall apply (1) to the carriage, storage or handling of property free or at reduced rates, when such rates have been authorized or prescribed by the Commission for the United States, state or municipal governments, or for charitable purposes or to or from fairs and expositions for exhibition thereat, or (2) to the free carriage of homeless and destitute persons and the necessary agents employed in such transportation, or (3) to mileage, excursion or commutation passenger tickets.
Nor shall anything in this section be construed to prohibit any air carrier from giving reduced rates or free passage to ministers of religion, or regular traveling secretaries of the Young Men's Christian Association or Young Women's Christian Association, whose duties require regular travel in supervising and directing Young Men's Christian or Young Women's Christian Association work, secretaries of duly organized religious work, or to indigent persons, or to inmates of the Confederate homes or State homes for disabled soldiers and sailors, or to disabled soldiers and sailors, including those about to enter, and those returning home after discharge; nor from giving free carriage to its own officers, employees, and members of their families, representatives of the press and members of the Department of State Police or to any other person or persons to whom the giving of such free carriage is not otherwise prohibited by the law; nor to prevent the principal officers of any air carrier from exchanging passes or tickets with other air carriers of any air, motor vehicle, steamship, or electric railway companies for their officers, employees and members of their families.
18.2-314. Failing to secure medical attention for injured child.
Any parent or other person having custody of a minor child which child shows evidence of need for medical attention as the result of physical injury inflicted by an act of any member of the household, whether the injury was intentional or unintentional, who knowingly fails or refuses to secure prompt and adequate medical attention, or who conspires to prevent the securing of such attention, for such minor child, shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor; provided, however, that any parent or other person having custody of a minor child that is being furnished Christian Science treatment by a duly accredited Christian Science practitioner shall not, for that reason alone, be considered in violation of this section.
So, in Virginia, it's OK to let your kids die from preventable infections, so long as you have some Christian voodoo doctor pray over them.
There are plenty of other fucked up laws that need to be repealed. This is just a taste.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Indeed. The temporary blindess (the same as if a flash bulb had gone off in your face) can cause issues when controlling all sorts of vehicles.
One of the major fears of law enforcement is precisely this problem. I've written about this before on /., but the scheme goes like this:
- Terrorists (or your bad guy of the day) purchases a 3watt solid state YAG laser (yours for only $12,000) and a pair of scanning galvos. Now he has a powerful, portable rig than can run off an AC inverter or other portable power source. Lets say this rig is mounted to a van.
- Go park your van at the end of a runway and proceed to scan the laser back and forth across the cockpits front window. With a tight scan pattern you are highly likely to scan across the pilots eyes.
- This won't blind the pilot for any long period of time... but final approach and near touchdown are critical stages in a landing. Startle or distract the pilot and you might be able to crash the plane.
- While everyone is responding to the crash you drive away... leaving no evidence.
Nasty, nasty thought.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
My variation is to attach a number of small IR LEDs to the underside of the bill of a baseball cap, aimed so as to direct the light towards your nose and cheekbones, to confound facial-recognition camera systems.
In the winter this could provide some minimal added protection against frostbite :)
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I find it offensive if someone is trying to record everything I do. I like my privacy. I don't commit crimes, I don't even download mp3's. Why should I let the government treat me like a criminal when I haven't even been charged of a crime. And they would be treating me like a criminal if they used cameras because that constitutes surveillance! Surveillance is defined at http://www.dictionary.com as:
1. Close observation of a person or group, especially one under suspicion.
2. The act of observing or the condition of being observed.
So if I am under surveillance, I must be under suspicion. What am I under suspicion for? I haven't committed any crimes, no one has even accused me of anything. Why am I upset? I guess you could say that I don't like being treated like a criminal when I have done nothing wrong.
A camera tapes you. If one tape-reviewer doesn't know who you are, he can ask around until he finds someone who does. The tape can be matched with other tapes in the area to see where you were and where you're going. The tape can be stored so that, a few years from now, the 'eventually will be better than 50% accurate' facial scanning system will identify you.
Not insignificant differences, especially if you live in a large town where the chances that any individual officer knows you is vanishingly small
(1) People rewrite a memory each time they play it: the stronger the emotion involved in a memory, the more likely it is to be inaccurate. A recent study asked people about their 9/11 memories: a huge % of people remembered watching the one tape of WTC North being hit on 9/11 itself, even though that tape didn't come out until the next day. Similar research occured with Challenger: a professor had students write down their memories on the day after, and then two years later asked them about those same memories. Less than 25% of students remembered most or all of that day correctly. Most had at least one major detail wrong. Except for the very rare person, we don't have anything like a video camera in our brain. Or if we do, the video camera is run by a 5 year old- never stays focused on one thing for very long, and easily distracted by bright, shiny or chocolately things.
It appears that laser jamming of optical devices has some very interesting legal ambiguities.
Consider this situation:
My neighbor goes out and buys and X10 camera and puts it on the front of his house. My house is directly across the street. I don't want a camera contiuously looking at me so I buy a $10 tripod and a $10 laser pointer, and aim it right at his camera. I leave it on continuously, making the camera worthless.
Is this legal or is one of us doing something illegal? I'm sending unauthorized photons onto his propoerty. He's recieving photons from my property without authorization. Neither one seems to be explicitly ilegal.
Seems like a couple lawyers could have a lot of fun with this one. What who you do if you were either the neighbor or myself? What is instead of being a neighbor's camera it was a camera at a local park, across the street?
Of couse, in reality, they'd probably think the camera was broken, replace it a few times, and then give up.
Life is too short to proofread.
Quite interesting reading this discussion - in the UK we've had cameras everywhere for some time now and the excuse is always that it "would have prevented [insert recent crime]". Problem is they have been proven to not really affect the level of crime, but can seriously improve investigations.
If governments could get away with it, we'd all be subcutaneously tagged with GPS tracking devices with cameras in our homes, this, naturally would also "would have prevented [insert recent crime]" which is the generic argument that "they" use.
We've sadly had a few prominent child abductions and murders recently in the UK, and I predicted that someone would bring out some form of implanted child tracking device. Lo and behold the nutter Kevin Warwick has the same idea and uses it to get some publicity.
So we all get our kids chipped... now - how many people think that once it becomes "standard practice" to have children chipped at birth, how long will it be before it's illegal to remove the chips?
Oh hello Big Brother - you're late.
Go straight back to life without entering public places. Do not collect the bones.
Seriously, this is a real matter. "Collecting photons" is off the point like all matter being energy is off the point when it hits your body at 300mph.
When someone can analyze someone else's actions without risking the same, that gives the analyzer power over the victim. In a "civilized" society that power would be spread equally. Not sharing the power leads to despotism, which, in turn, leads to anger. Anger leads to things taking each other apart. Very much like in that 300mph example. Or "Fight Club" for that matter.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
As far as I'm aware, here in the UK you have a right to view any footage recorded of you on a CCTV camera so long as it's not a matter of national security or anything like that. The owner of the CCTV camera has a right to charge a fee for digging out the footage (around 10 UKP, I believe). Mark Thomas did a great job with this, forcing companies to dig through their CCTV archives, and found, not surprisingly, that most either claimed they had no footage of him (despite the fact that he had footage of himself being filmed by their CCTVs), or gave him incomplete footage (for example the company who had his removed with more-than-necessary force from their carpark, while in view of their CCTV)
Well, anyways. You have a right to see what they do, in the UK at least. Could be handy
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Does your church group print up pamphlets with "Tough Questions for Athiests" on them?
Obviously there aren't black and white issues. A parent not wanting to trust ritalin for their child based on a hurried diagnosis is different than one refusing a blood transfusion for a child who lost a lot of blood from a deep cut.
Just the same, abortion is an issue with no good hard rules. Even very pro-abortion people would dislike the idea of 9th month abortions and few reasonable anti-abortionists really hold to the view that every sperm is sacred, or that the instant a sperm and egg touch, that they are morally equivalent to a child.
If you've studied any biology it's hard to get worked up about first trimester abortions. They're probably reasonable later, but except for hidden health complications, there are few valid reasons for waiting this long so limiting abortions to the first trimester is a reasonable compromise.