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Hackers Rebel Against Spy Cams

Posted by Zonk on from the damn-the-man dept.

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."

24 of 390 comments (clear)

  1. Good going. by geminidomino · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Cracked by macrovision descramblers. Color me impressed.

  2. Black stripe by megrims · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What's the purpose of a black stripe over the eyes?
    How effective is it in preventing recognition?
    Or is the reason less obvious than that?

    1. Re:Black stripe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Where I used to work, we had magstripe cards. I actually laughed when I ran one through a card reader. All it had on it was the payroll number, padded with leading zeros to 10 digits, followed by a 01 (probably the card issue number). People's payroll numbers, of course, were printed on the front of the payslips placed every month in the departmental pigeon holes. And on the car parking permits (some parks were swipe to enter, and the parking charges were deducted from your pay).

      I had a nice collection of numbers harvested from payroll slips and car parking permits and used other peoples identities for years. I never had the nerve to charge my parking to the Dean's account, though.

  3. Big Deal by VonSkippy · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Yes, it sure would be terrible if someone knew I was walking down a certain street at a certain time. What is the BFD? It's a public road in a public place that anyone with a pair of eyes (or in case of spotting fat people, a single eye) can spot you. Should they start banning tourists with video cam's? Privacy is becoming the next big "lets all overreact" issue.

    1. Re:Big Deal by kripkenstein · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You present the negative cases. But how about if they REDUCE your health premiums because they see you go jogging every other day?

      You may reply that "they will only raise rates, not lower them." This may be true initially. But I presume that in the long run, the average insurance rate will even out (competition, etc. One of its only benefits). So, overall, some people will pay more, and other people will pay less. Importantly, people will pay more fairly - those that take more health risks pay more, those that take less - less.

    2. Re:Big Deal by Coulson · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I can assure you that they take their legal responsibilities extremely seriously.

      I don't doubt it. Their commitment to the law is laudable. However, there is precedent to suggest that law enforcement powers expand continually over time but never contract. As the law enumerates more and more things that the police are allowed to do, I'm sure they will follow those laws seriously as well.

      What concerns me is:

      1. Legislators will continue to expand the legal powers of the police until they can keep a record of everyone's movement at all times (to the extent technology allows). Even though the police are fastidious to never break the law, there is a chilling effect on liberty.
      2. Someone corrupt could come to power and abuse the authority of law enforcement (e.g., J. Edgar Hoover). When giving the government power, we must consider not what the best man could do with it, but how the worst could misuse it.

      Even if these issues were addressed, I do not want my government tracking my movements. It's none of their business.
    3. Re:Big Deal by Nephilium · · Score: 2, Interesting

      How about the idea of whatever the hell I do on my own time is no one's business but mine? If I were to spend every night at the pub, drinking until I can't stand up, what business is it of my employer? (Assuming that I'm not late to work, and my performance doesn't suffer.)

      My employer's hold over me begins and ends with the time I'm scheduled. What I do on my own time should be no concern of theirs.

      Nephilium

  4. Use the Aliens method. by forgotten_my_nick · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In the UK on one of the CCTV cop TV shows they have there was a good instance of dealing with cameras. Basically the owner of a house had complained that every night the camera was pointed at his house. One instance he had even seen a mugging take place outside (in London) and the camera was busy looking at the mugging but no cops showed up for some time. So one night he dressed up like what can only be described as a cross between a demon/predator (really cool looking). And he wandered around where the camera was pointing. Within 5 minutes the whole road was cordened off by numerous cops.

  5. Re:Turn the tables by bezuwork's+friend · · Score: 3, Interesting
    While I'm with you I would guess that this would only result in the politicians exempting themselves by making it illegal to do this to them. You know, like how it's illegal to threaten the president of the U.S. but generally not to do so to an ordinary citizen, at least if you can claim it's in jest.

    Semi related story - after 911, I had to go to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (patent appeals court) to get a brochure of pictures of the judges for a partner at a big law firm. They made me get a signed letter of request on firm letterhead before giving it to me - for security reasons. Silly - they're public servants after all, we have a right to know who we're paying.

  6. Re:Living in a surveillance society by HD+Webdev · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Interestingly enough, I used to use a saved google query to look for interesting Axis webcams.

    I hadn't used it in a while and had forgotten about it until now but now google responds to the query with this:

    We're sorry...

    ... but we can't process your request right now. A computer virus or spyware application is sending us automated requests, and it appears that your computer or network has been infected.

    We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your computer is free of viruses and other spurious software.

    We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'll see you again on Google.

    I'd like to see their excuse for limiting this query. All I am doing is looking to see what the watchers are watching.

    --
    This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
  7. Re:Living in a surveillance society by peterfa · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Here's the deal. On one hand, you have your civil liberties. On the other, you have your personal risk.
    You'll enjoy being able to be who you are in a society where there isn't widespread survalence, but if you were attacked you might say to yourself, "Where were the cops when I needed them?"
    The survalence will give you the confidence to go into places you would ordinarily be too scared of going. Now, you may be as tough as old boots, a ninja, Batman, or whatever, but not everybody is. Remember to be compassionate to those who aren't gifted with super-human attributes. A friend of mine was raped brutally. Three men attacked her. There was nothing she could do. She was beat, and luckily, she lived.
    The point is this, you might now think it's better to have your liberties, but you might regret not having the protection later. You won't always be a robust and healthy man. You'll become weak and vulnerable someday. I'm not saying that society should be under constant survalence. I'm just saying think about this more carefully.

  8. Re:Who decides? by mrchaotica · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Now, after they created a form of governemnt that allows us to make those changes in a peaceful way, there should be no need to perform such actions.
    That's true, if the government doesn't change in such a way as to preclude that. For example, using gerrymandering, huge campaign funds, and excessive election rules to effectively give most incumbents lifetime positions of office, and forming powerful political parties (with powerful corporate allies) to create a ruling class that's capable of ignoring and distracting the citizenry to furthur its own ends, could mean that violent revolution is justified even with a system that -- on the surface -- seems democratic and fair.

    Besides, the Founding Fathers did include a mechanism for such violence within the Constitution -- that's what the 2nd Amendment is for! You can also discover their stance on this issue by their writings, e.g. Thomas Jefferson:
    The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
    Interestingly enough, the more you read the words of the Founding Fathers, the more you realize that they would all be called Libertarians if they were still around. I'm sure they'd be spinning in their graves if they knew how both the Republicans and Democrats are wrecking the ideals they fought for today...
    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  9. Re:Who decides? by dangitman · · Score: 2, Interesting
    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.

    What if we don't?

    --
    ... and then they built the supercollider.
  10. Nothing hacks a camera by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    like a shotgun.

    Cheap. Effective. If the people really decide they've had enough of surveilence that's what will happen in urban areas too. It's why you don't see cameras in rural France or Spain, people just pop them and no society can afford to keep replacing a thousand dollar camera when a one dollar bullet will fix the problem.

    1. Re:Nothing hacks a camera by PrimeNumber · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Fire, dynamite or simply knocking them down also work.
       
      I am fascinated by the British phenomenon of Gatsos which are well hidden cameras that take pictures of speeding cars.
      These are of course justified by officials as needed for public safety, but are in reality revenue generation devices. There is a modern-day Robin Hood character in Britain named Captain Gatso who along with his merry-men have destroyed hundreds of Gatsos.
      This page displays some of their handiwork.

  11. Well, At Least... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    ...these guys actually did something imaginative. Most so-called hackers (as touted by the media) are mere skript kiddies.

    A few years ago an ISP tier-one support guy in New Zealand shared his staff login and password with his 13-year-old kid brother, who promptly shared it with one of his little friends. That friend then logged into the ISP with it and deleted a bunch of customer websites. The local media labeled the kid an "unstoppable genius hacker", interviewing him on talk shows with his face blacked-out and voice disguised, as if he was some Mafia kingpin or something. Pathetic. But the ignorant public lapped it up.

  12. Re:Veils by Alioth · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is exactly what's behind the "hoodie" fashion amongst British teenagers at the moment. A peaked cap with a hood over it can obscure most of the face from CCTV cameras, which are almost universally mounted well above head level.

    --
    Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
  13. Cross index ... by khasim · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Cross index the sale of new plasma screen TV's from local shops with the monitors showing people leaving those addresses.

    Now, you know every house that has a new, valuable TV that also doesn't have anyone at home right now.

    Cross index that with any sales of dog food to account for canine issues ... and you have the list of homes for a quick crime spree.

    The same with jewelry.

    Grand theft auto? Even easier.

  14. Re:Excellent! by TallMatthew · · Score: 4, Interesting
    News flash, dude: The people who work in government don't care about us. They don't sit around all day and worry about what's in our best interests. They sit around all day and worry about themselves, like 99.999% of people on the face of the Earth. You think your safety means a damned thing to them? All they care about is keeping their incredibly high-paying and powerful jobs. If your safety happens to help them do that, then OK, but that's the only reason. They just don't care.

    I don't know why people think politicians are such great guys. All they do is tell you what you want to hear; they don't understand you. Most of them are tremendously wealthy people, multi-multi-millionaires, who don't have a clue about what it's like to earn a real living or live a life outside of country clubs and fund raisers. How many people like that do you come into contact with on a daily basis? They are supposed to be civil servants, put in place to do the business of the country, pushing paper around, shaking hands, protecting the citizenry. Nothing special. We are supposed to define this country, not them. Instead we've made them demigods, leaders of our culture, and turned this country into not only a business, but a moneymaking machine. Stupid.

    And now people like this dope want to give them absolute power. Even more stupid.

  15. Two points. . . by Fantastic+Lad · · Score: 3, Interesting
    1. On the Fear side. . , people who rebel are among the first to be recorded as rebels and then collected when the hammer falls. It will fall.

    2. On the Light side. . , taxation is THE common denominator; it is the common woe and injustice felt across all racial and political/idealogical boundaries. Even Pro-Life and Abortionists both hate paying taxes to a corrupt government. This is one major spot where the mighty will begin to topple. --The growth of healthy community is where the elite begin to lose control.

    Without interference, people can quite easily build and maintain healthy community. I've witnessed it. Politics and divisive issues, media and the highly manipulative/manipulated economic forces are primarily designed and maintained to keep people disconnected. --To keep them in tightly controlled boxes so that they don't do exactly what the elite fear; come together to communicate rather than yell at each other, to solve problems and grow in body, mind and spirit. This kind of growth leads to real freedom, and real freedom leads to the elite loses their slave nation and status as the 'popular kids'. (Hm. It occurs to me that the elite really are like the popular kids in high school; they like the artificial environment where they 'rule', and they want to maintain it. It has always amused me how most popular kids are really upset when they graduate to discover their artificial power status dropped to zero and having to work on themselves in real ways like everybody else. --Usually several steps behind the curve because of the wasted years riding egotism bourn on their parent's money rather than working to actually improve themselves and learn skills beyond fashion sense and one-upmanship through gossip.)

    Anyway. . . taxes are the one area where the elite will simply not be able to let up, and it is the one area which hurts unilaterally across the board, and where people from all the different boxes can truly come together to form real community.

    Re-read the story about the British group destroying surveillance cameras. Their motives are not privacy related. They are destroying traffic cameras because they believe them to be an unfair form of taxation.

    "The more you tighten your grip, they more systems slip through your fingers. . ." (Or something like that. The princess said it better.)


    -FL

  16. Re:Living in a surveillance society by Frogg · · Score: 4, Interesting

    i tried the url in the original post, and it gave an error, as discussed... i then cleaned up the url, resulting in this google query, which is working just fine for me.

    hth? ;o)

  17. Re:Who decides? by DoctorFrog · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I think someone is trolling, or else someone needs to pay attention and think a bit. If the former, proceed to congratulating yourself for 'winning' your peurile little game; I really don't give a rat's ass.


    Assuming you were serious:

    Even taking only the single sentence you quoted, bereft of context, the grandparent still doesn't take the position you ascribe. Far from claiming that "there is no terrorist threat" the GP specifically acknowledges that a "chance of falling prey to a terrorist act" would still exist.


    S/he simply expresses doubt that the chance of dying in a terrorist act would be as high as that of dying in a car accident, even had nothing been done. Read it again, it's right there in the sentence you quoted.


    Car accidents have killed more than 3000 people and arguably may cause a chronic drag on the economy equal or worse than the acute impact of losing the Trade Towers. The rest of your comparisons relate not to the actual damage done but to the over-wrought perception of the threat, which is precisely what the GP is positing to be the problem.

  18. Indexing by inKubus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Actually, facial recognition software could be used to index the clips in real time and make entries into a very simple database (camera 12812, frame 20060102110201, face 1828182) Then the authorites would just need to run a simple query on the index that says "select * from index where face=1828182" and they would have a list of all the frames from all the cameras where that face is present. After that it's a simple matter to extract one long video clip showing the face moving from camera to camera.

    Since the facial recognition software is doing this in "real time" as the video flows in from the camera, it is essentially "pre processed" at collection time, thus making it TRIVIAL to extract the information. And we've all seen news stories since '01 that show facial recognition software pulling 100 faces out of a frame in real time with desktop hardware........ sorry to say, brother, but you're spreading misinformation.

    As far as storing the video, you could use a simple decay algorythm that would decay the image over time in order to save space while keeping as much important information as possible. Say you have 30fps video at 1000x1000 resolution. Then, using the aforementioned index, you could assign a value to a clip based on the faces present. For instance, if there are no faces (IE, no index entries) the frame would get a value of 0. Ten faces would be a 10. Then you assign a "half life" to the clips (different half lifes for different cameras, of course) that determines how much raw information from the camera is saved and for how long.

    For instance, frames from camera A have a half-life of 10 days. That means during processing, frames that haven't been touched in 10 days are reprocessed. Based on their value from the facial recognition engine, frames are either kept or deleted. Also, you'd use a log curve to increase the value of adjacent frames to a very high value frames. For instance, a frame has 20 faces, the immediately preceding frame has only 10 faces, it should get a value closer to the 20 because of it's relation to the 20. Frames become more valuable as they are surrounded by more valuable frames. Anyway, the software decides the most non-valuable images, and then removes frames up to the point where there are half as many frames as before. Touch times are reset and the timer is set again for 10 days. The process is repeated until: all the frames are gone or only frames with a value of 1 or greater remain. The thing is that you are doing this over time so you will only require a maximum of twice the power of the real time processing running continously to degrade the images (and once they are at their lowest quality, they are no longer checked.). In addition, the less valuable images don't necessarily have to be removed--they can be more compressed or moved to some other storage medium yet they still stay in the index.

    When all of this is combined with GIS systems (as they are already using in those speed cams), it would be possible to (using only the index, not the imagery) generate a map showing a probable track of any one face either in real time or after the fact.

    Suspect A is suspected of posting a sign in front of the capitol saying something negative about the corporations. Suspect A is photographed by officers and is assigned a face hash of 0A3F901...0A3F9FF. Index is queried for possible matches. A number of hits come up. Camera One one block from the capitol has a possible match on the Face. 5 minutes later, there is another match one block in the opposite direction. A plot on the GIS mapping shows that in that five minutes, the suspect could have walked right past where the sign was found.

    Unfortunately, Suspect A did not commit the crime, he was merely a jogger who, at a party with a few friends, had mentioned something negative about the corporations and one of his "friends" decided to report him to the authorites, just to be "safe". The actual culprit made a simple rubber mask out of commonly available materials used in the

    --
    Cool! Amazing Toys.
  19. sousveillance & shootback by goon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    (sousveillance) '... watchful vigilance from underneath ...' [0] and (shootback) turn camera back on them

    Steve Mann [1] has a lot of intelligent things to say on surveillance [2], sousveillance [3] and the intersection of technology & privacy. The earliest I can find is in a 1995 paper [4]. In an article predating the Austrians, Mann advocates shooting back (with your own camera) [5].

    More links can be found here. [6]

    Reference
    [0] Steve Mann, 'definition from Sousveillance as an alternative balance':
    http://wearcam.org/sousveillance.htm
    [Accessed Tuesday, 3 January 2006]

    [1] Steve Mann, 'Cyberman':
    http://wearcam.org/steve.html
    [Accessed Tuesday, 3 January 2006]

    [2] Steve Mann, 'Identity Trail - Stream 3 - technologies that identify, anonymize and authenticate':
    http://idtrail.org/content/view/47/43/
    [Accessed Tuesday, 3 January 2006]

    [3] Steve Mann, 'Sousveillance: A Gathering of the Tribes':
    http://sousveillance.org/tribesissue/
    [Accessed Tuesday, 3 January 2006]

    [4] Steve Mann, 'PRIVACY ISSUES OF WEARABLE CAMERAS VERSUS SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS, Feb. 24, 1995':
    http://wearcam.org/netcam_privacy_issues.html
    [Accessed Tuesday, 3 January 2006]

    [5] Steve Mann, 'Shooting back article & pictures':
    http://wearcam.org/shootingback.html
    [Accessed Tuesday, 3 January 2006]

    [6] Delicious 'my delicious links on steve.mann':
    http://del.icio.us/goon/steve.mann
    [Accessed Tuesday, 3 January 2006]

    --
    peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup