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."

Comments

Black stripe

[megrims]

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?

Use the Aliens method.

[forgotten_my_nick]

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.

Nothing hacks a camera

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Veils

[Alioth]

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.

Re:Excellent!

[TallMatthew]

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.

Re:Living in a surveillance society

[Frogg]

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)