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Hackers Rebel Against Spy Cams
Wired is running an article looking at the little ways in which Austrian technology users are striking back against surveillance. From the article: "Members of the organization worked out a way to intercept the camera images with an inexpensive, 1-GHz satellite receiver. The signal could then be descrambled using hardware designed to enhance copy-protected video as it's transferred from DVD to VHS tape. The Quintessenz activists then began figuring out how to blind the cameras with balloons, lasers and infrared devices. And, just for fun, the group created an anonymous surveillance system that uses face-recognition software to place a black stripe over the eyes of people whose images are recorded."
This is civil disobedience and hacking at its best. Good for them.
Looks like someone can't tell where this is happening. FTA:
BERLIN -- When the Austrian government passed a law this year allowing police to install closed-circuit surveillance cameras in public spaces without a court order, the Austrian civil liberties group Quintessenz vowed to watch the watchers.
Okay, so how is this about "Berlin technology users"? Or am I missing something?
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
This is a scary as the survaliance system is to me. If we do live in a democroacy then the people who put the survalence systems in were elected officials who we have decided are compenant to make improtant decisions. So a vigilante group has decided that they don't like this decision and have taken action themselves instead of organising a grass roots political oposition to the decsion. That is scary. We have as much to fear from vigilante groups of hackers as we do from overzelous goverments. I know I'll get the typical responses pertianing to the failure of democroacy and the lack of properly educated voters in the system, but on sheer principle its still scary. I also suppose that I could throw in a terrible potential if acts of this nature continue, but I think thats obvious and my example would be either too far fetched or too plausible, giving other people with a lower moral standard another idea.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Christ, even the comments are dupes these days.
Mr. Skippy,
EYES are one thing. Cameras that record, and software that analyzes are quite another! This combination allows authorities to do all sorts of things that EYES alone cannot, allowing for a much greater potential that this information can be abused.
I suggest you dial your paranoia up a notch. You seem to have entirely too much faith in the system.
Make a hat that has eyes painted on the top, the damn thing can't handle two sets of eyes. Two dots that look like eyes may work too and not get you busted so easy.
Want to know why intersection cameras are everywhere?
If you are going to track someone you need to aquire them first, probably near where they live, then it's easy to follow them from there because they can only go a few ways from there.
Now you know why the cameras are in places where there's hardly any traffic, like near homes way out in the boonies.
The way to get these taken out is to track or let the politicians know that they can be tracked this way, they hate it when we the people can track their bad habits even though they love being able to track ours.
As I said:
"... the article is about a conference hosted by the Chaos Computing Club in Berlin, where they describe the actions taken by a Austrian civil liberties group against recent legislation that enable police to install cameras in public places."
i.e. Austrian civil liberties group members are in a conference in Berlin, Germany, describing what actions they have taken to fight legislation that they see as infringing their rights in their homeland, Austria.
Lemme guess, you didn't read the article either, did you?
Let me spell it out to you, just in case:
1) Austrian government passes some law allowing police to put cameras in public places(IN AUSTRIA);
2) Austrian civil liberties group comes up with imaginative ways to screw with these cameras (IN AUSTRIA);
3) Chaos Computer Club from Germany hosts a conference in Berlin (IN GERMANY);
4) Said Austrian hackers are invited to come to Berlin (IN GERMANY), and talk about the methods they used to defeat these cameras' effectiveness (BACK IN AUSTRIA).
Now, is that better?
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
Yes, it is a 'big deal'. Just as with all these vehicle tracking plans...it logs everywhere you go, everything you do, everyone you talk to. And by inference or assumption, what you are doing.
Logged on someones server, forever.
5 years from now, J. Random Asshat, whom you just pissed off by beating him out of a promotion, can, for the price of a case or two of beer, ask his idiot cop buddy for your log. Have fun explaining to your (future) wife that, "No dear, I did NOT have sex with that hooker. I was only asking her for directions."
Everywhere you go, everything you do, everyone you talk to. Forever .
Think about it for a second: a surveilance system like this requires vast capital and labor to implement. Generally speaking, vigilantes (or rather anti-vigilantes, since they're preventing vigilance!) are small groups with relatively few resources. At best, they'll only be able to destroy infrastructure, rather than create it, or they'll only be able to manage small things. In fact, if the activist group gets big enough, they'd be able to just elect themselves into office or overthrow the government entirely, and get rid of the problem that way.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Consider these scenarios:
VonSkippy, I'm afraid we have to decline your application for health insurance. We've monitored your travel habits via public cameras and determined that you spend too much time at your local pub. Furthermore, the records from your grocery-rewards cards indicate you purchase foods that are too high in fats and cholestorol.
VonSkippy, I'm afraid we can't offer you a job. From your the records of the license plate tracking system, we see that you spend a significant amount of time at the republican headquarters. Clearly your political activities are not in alignment with those of this corporation.
VonSkippy, I'm afraid we must deny your application for a home mortgage. From tracking your cellphone travel, we see that you are often speed to work because you are late and are likely to lose your job or die in a traffic accident. We cannot assume that risk.
Get the idea? All public information - all things that the casual observer could see. Do you really want it aggregated so it can be used against you?
You can easily avoid being recorded by a speed camera. Don't speed. I know, it is a difficult trick to figure out.
Whenever you try a serious conversation about surveillance cameras an idiot like you bring up speed cameras and instantly show that only criminals are afraid of cameras. Nice way to cloud the issue.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's less an issue of someone, somewhere, knowing where you are at some time. It's more of an issue of the fact of where you are is in a single stream of data all the time.
If it's okay to take pictures of people who run red lights with automatic cameras, then it's okay to keep those cameras on at all time, then it's okay to install new cameras all over, then it's okay to track people and flag them for investigation if they deviate from normal patterns, then it's okay to preemptively arrest them if they display patterns normal to people about to commit a crime... are you ready for the knock on the door at two in the morning, announcing the men who say you need to be detained based on information only they can have access to? You might think this is overly paranoid, nothing like this could actually happen. You might also be a fool.
Something else: this information is obviously insecure. If you're okay with the government knowing all this, are you okay with the local criminal organization(s) knowing all of this? Do you think it's actually possible to perfectly secure any data?
(by the way, whoever modded parent flamebait is a jerk)
"Quoting yourself is stupid." -Me
The rich, powerful or corrupt have always had the power to invade our privacy because it's just an illusion and will alway be so. Privacy laws just protect the powerful from being watched by the masses.
Instead of fighting a lossing battle to stop this technology we need to ensure that it will be available to everyone and that the information will be open to the public. Put cameras on the streets, in the police stations and in government buildings. I don't mind being watched as long as I can watch everyone else. Living in a fishbowl can be a wonderful thing. Imagine a world where everyone is equipped with their own personal cameras and recording devices... with so many eyes spreading their light everywhere the world might become a more peaceful and civilized place.
But they aren't physically covering features. It's basically a joke or an artistic statement, depending on how you look at it. They are taking footage from their cameras with the face revealed, and digitally covering the faces with the black stripe. It's a philosophical comment, not a technological one.
... and then they built the supercollider.
The reason is pretty obvious. Take a look at the search query and notice how it requests a list of sites that host a specific CGI program. Then read the text and let your gray matter work for the first time this year. Google is telling you that some current worm/virus/whatever is doing automated queries on Google to find new victims for a specific exploit in Axis webcams.
This is a Good Thing (tm)...
Hazen: That's a nice scary story to keep your kids frightened, but it won't play out in the real world. What you describe is self regulating in the long run. NO ONE is a perfect person, if the government, or big business, or your neighbor wants to set the "standards bar" that high, they will soon realize people like that don't exist. People need to stop worrying about their own little peccadillo's and focus on the real problems. I keep a tin foil hat handy (just in case), but I really don't think the sky is falling on this one.
Nod, his point was that enforcement of the law was selective. If he wears a costume and wanders around, the police come a running. But their constant surveillance was not deterring actual crime. The police were choosing which laws to enforce and enforcing social norms instead. Or just gawking at the 'interesting' disturbances.
Comments about self-regulation aside, are you actually arguing that it's a BAD thing for more people to be encouraged not to drink so much, to eat healthier, and not put people's lives at risk by speeding all the time?
Heck, maybe if you weren't always hungover you'd be able to get up on time for work...
Here's a thought: if the idea of people knowing what you do is so upsetting to you, then perhaps you shouldn't be doing those things.
But it has played out in the real world before, but then it was people keeping notes in logs that they passed to the government not videos. China, North Korea, East Germany, and many other places had/have huge files on every person, East Germany went as far as to have a smell sample of every citizen on file just in case they need to track them down with dogs. To assume that it couldn't happen again when it has happened before without the assistance of technology is just plain foolish.
The government isn't your mommy, why do you want it to act like it is?
Don't get me wrong. It wasn't the hackers that failed to impress me. Good ingenuity on their part.
It was the security system that the Austrian people probably spent a few hundred thousand tax dollar-equivalents on.
Never happen. And if it did, the first lawsuit by the guy whose wife used the cameras to track his indiscretions would shut it down. And if a pedophile ever used one to track a kid back to their house... OMG.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Because I'm not a criminal and therefor should not be treated as one.
Artist will always make art.
The cameras they are protesting is police surveillance cameras, hidden in a public place to monitor the activities of "suspects". They are locating the general area with signal monitors, then tapping into the picture to get an exact fix. So it is significant.
Now comes the moral question. These cameras seem to be the legal equivalent of a "police stakeout" without the suspicious looking van. Disseminating information on how to locate them is roughly equivalent to spray painting "surveillance van" on all the police vehicles, putting black bars on the faces is perhaps more equivalent to standing infront of the van to block their view. Which brings up the moral questions, and doesn't seem to be useful in accomplishing the hackers claimed goals:
A simple media campaign would be far more effective.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Yeah, the 85% of men in the world who haven't been cut are dropping left and right from penile cancer. And all those men who are in monogamous relationships are at such a great risk from HIV and other STDs. And all those men have such difficulty getting laid because they have a foreskin. Americans are so dumb about their own penises. And yes, when you cut off skin from your penis, it means you have less penis. Your foreskin was part of your penis.
Check the American Cancer Society website. They don't recommend circumcision as a preventative for penile cancer. In fact, the only type of penile cancer that circumcision prevents is basicly skin cancer of the penis - the non-fatal, easy-to-treat one. Also, an intact man is more likely to get BREAST cancer than penile cancer. How many male breast cancer patients to you know? Not to mention that women's breast cancer rates are like 1 in 8. Are we going around preemptively amputating baby's breast tissue? Following your logic, it sounds like a good idea!
And my wife would prefer I had my foreskin and she's a 5th generation Irish/French-American.
All I can say is I just tried to renew my U.S. driver's liscense, which is harder than entering the country with a U.S. passport. You need for example a passport, proof of billing address, social security card (which nobody I know even has), old college photo ID, etc. totalling 6 points or more (that is 7 points I think above) where different kinds of documents are assigned different point values. I believe this is because the driver's liscense is likely a major the key to surveillance across databases, you know what used to be illegal. This struck home when I realized the EZ Pass system used for automatic toll payment in your car is quite useful in tracking where you move and when linked to gas station payments, credit cards, and photo ID it comes full circle and is perfectly enabling for facial identification over the innumerable security cameras you come across even in suburban life.
Personally I just wanted to update my liscense so I can rent a car when I come back home (I live overseas most of the year) and get a local driver's liscense to rent a car here. It is not impossible but obviously the country takes it much more seriously to be able to track people's movements than actually entering the country per se. As far as I can see every U.S. driver now has to supply these various documents each time he or she wishes to renew a driver's liscense.
It was not so clear to me how well this in fact would catch a terrorist especially one who was planning a suicide attack, and only hope it is just one of the more visible ways they are trying to make the country safe and not in fact the key to the whole strategy.