Slashdot Mirror
To Counter Widespread Surveillance, Stealth Clothing
In Paul Theroux's dystopian novel O-Zone, wearing masks in public is simply a fact of life, because of the network of cameras that covers the inhabited parts of earth. Earthquake Retrofit writes with a story at the New York Times describing a life-imitating-art reaction to the perception (and reality) that cameras are watching more of your life than you might prefer: clothing that obscures your electronic presence. "[Adam Harvey] exhibited a number of his stealth-wear designs and prototypes in an art show this year in London. His work includes a series of hoodies and cloaks that use reflective, metallic fabric — like the kind used in protective gear for firefighters — that he has repurposed to reduce a person’s thermal footprint. In theory, this limits one’s visibility to aerial surveillance vehicles employing heat-imaging cameras to track people on the ground. He also developed a purse with extra-bright LEDs that can be activated when someone is taking unwanted pictures; the effect is to reduce an intrusive photograph to a washed-out blur. In addition, he created a guide for hairstyling and makeup application that might keep a camera from recognizing the person beneath the elaborate get-up. The technique is called CV Dazzle — a riff on 'computer vision' and 'dazzle,' a type of camouflage used during World War II to make it hard to detect the size and shape of warships."
Can't quite see it myself.
... and then you'll walk around with a cell phone? You've "chipped" yourself.
In Florida and other states it is illegal to wear masks or otherwise conceal your identity while in public. This may have been a reaction to the KKK during the civil rights period.
That's really going to go over well in August. Heat reflective clothing could be deadly.
Free Martian Whores!
His ideas seem practical - the IR cloaking and paparazzi-blinding ones, at least. But I think CCTV/Face Recognition is a problem that we should find a legislative solution for.
We, as privacy-loving people, should be able to come up with a convincing argument that the cost of deploying such a network is greater than the benefit.
We could then push to prevent the federation of wider networks (one network per police precinct, for example, so that police can still use them to prevent or prosecute crime, but noone could track movement over a whole city or whole country). Or, allow their use for investigation of crime after the fact, but not active monitoring: systems must be designed in a way that only lets them keep recordings for 48 hours and would not include any network connectivity equipment. If a crime occurs, police can go to the relevant camera and pull the tapes; otherwise, the camera dumbly continuously overwrites.
The surveillance implementations of modern computers are a problem that needs to be addressed in as many was as possible. While legal limits are only as good as the will to enforce them, they are an important way to codify the moral problems created by cheap computers.
As it is my pessimistic side thinks that the only way we'll have proper privacy protection is after a widespread systematic official program of surveillance against some group is revealed, and is proven to cause direct harm to that group's other basic rights and physical security. In other words, we'll only work to limit networked spy technology after it is abused, not before.
Draw attention to yourself with the most imaginative draft emails you can for your state, county, regions and wait.
Save them with one of the big brand accounts - the ones that have been in the news.
Suddenly take your cell battery out for hours. Save emails to the press as drafts and connect to at cafes in the CBD.
Local Feature Analysis (LFA) will get your face in a country with the population the size of the USA in a very short time.
If the CCTV cant get your face, you will noted and get to enjoy a nice random stop-and-frisk at an exit or park or street.
Welcome to the new world of gait signature if that fails.
http://rt.com/news/identify-walk-system-britain-668/
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Now made fashionable.
Blue jeans, tee shirt, baseball cap, wrap around shades, short beard. You'll look like everyone else.
That's not unique to this goal though. Almost anything I see touted as "fashion" looks fucking ridiculous. Maybe that's a sampling error, as someone who ignores fashion intentionally, I maybe only see the weird shit.
As far as job interviews, that's a weird standard. You wear a suit and tie or whatever it is women wear to job interviews. You hand someone a piece of paper with most of your identifying information on it. Stealth is not the goal there. You'd wear this stuff walking down the street to avoid targeted advertising like in minority report, not into a job interview, obviously.
From my understanding, the LEDs in question are infrared, invisible to the eye. They're meant to foil infrared cameras "night vision." Wearing them in the day would be pointless, and at night, you still wouldn't see the LED light.
The idea is similar to a zebra's stripes: one individual using such measures highlights that individual, which is counterproductive, however MANY individuals using it makes it hard to target a single individual. If everyone on the street is wearing the hip new hoodies, law enforcement would have to, I dunno, get a proper warrant with evidence to keep tabs on a suspect rather than just keeping tabs on everyone at all times.
This isn't really against law enforcement anymore than the bill of rights is opposing law enforcement.
When you are invisible, you have to be extra cautious around traffic.
The hoboroadie knows many things, for he walks by night. Mwahahahaha.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
From my understanding, the LEDs in question are infrared, invisible to the eye. They're meant to foil infrared cameras "night vision." Wearing them in the day would be pointless, and at night, you still wouldn't see the LED light.
This will still work during the day, mostly -- the majority of cameras out there lack IR filters and show it as purple. Bright enough LEDs would almost certainly be able to wash out a picture.
Simple rule based policy solutions (if the legal still system functions:)
Abuse of rights severe enough make you immune from conviction. This has been eroding but works quite well.
Proper rules regarding these new powers can curb their abuse. Say they do listen to everything you do; if they are never able to convict you on that evidence (inadmissible, no warrant) then they will still continue to do it but you will be protected to some degree. Obviously, more rules would be needed and no matter what one does you still could draw attention to yourself so then they can fish for something they can legally use against you.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
You can see this in the video. The subjects' heads and stomachs start glowing more brightly as the person dons the piece. The really buff guy's heat shifts to his face and arms almost immediately. So you have your program look for a shorter block with a beacon shining above it.
If facial detection programs that clip the hair off first aren't already out there, my guess is they're close at hand so I don't think the greasy twirls will do much for long.
The handbag gadget seemed functional though.
It will make somebody a bit of money though, because most people are clueless
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
In one of his books there is a special t-shirt that makes the wearer invisible to surveillance cameras.
yeah and they get automatic exemption to any current or proposed facecovering bans else the fucking religion card gets played.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I see the tin foil hats will be all the craze this fall.
Have gnu, will travel.
FTFA :- "'dazzle,' a type of camouflage used during World War II to make it hard to detect the size and shape of warships."
It was first used in WW1; pink, black, white, and lime green in jagged stripes and patches, together with rigged canvas jagged shapes between the funnels and masts to try to confuse enemy optical rangefinders. Another trick was to paint the profile of a smaller ship on the side of a larger one.
As I recall, the LED purse fires a pulse in response to a camera flash; as a result, the camera can't compensate by dialing down the aperture or exposure and giving you a grainy, but usable, photo. It also doesn't burn through thirty watts continuously, but only in response to an attempt at flash photography. This will do good things to your battery life, otherwise, plan on carrying around a big damn battery to run the thing for more than half an hour.
Dear NSA,
This is what you get when you think you know so much more and so much more deeply than Joe and Jane Average and feel like it's your privilege to unilaterally impose on them your secret interpretation of law ....and then they find out.
If you had asked , if you had been forthright and made your case honestly in the court of public opinion, supposing that people were convinced by your reasoning, these kinds of problems wouldn't be burying on you now.
In the event they weren't so convinced, then maybe that's telling you something, like, perhaps you're wrong in a direction and a magnitude that is a function of your unique job stresses.
If you had a little faith in the post -enlightenment, fuck that , the post Magna Carta view that the majority of people people have a right to due process and their understanding of complicated issues deserves to be addressed then the use of encrypted email and encrypted surfing wouldn't be skyrocketing right now, creating logistical and computing headaches even for you.
I have heard Snowden causally called "narcissistic" by commentators on TV who apparently barely grasp what that concept refers to. In fact, if there's a narcissist in the house, I humbly suggest to the individuals within your organization who have gilded themselves in this secrecy and who have sought for and found ways to deceive the American public "for their own good" that those individuals look in the mirror.
Because assuming you are inherently more competent, in fact uniquely and solely competent, to decide how these issues before us ought to be handled (the merely pro-forma, rubber-stamping flotilla of conservative cronies in the FISA court notwithstanding ) is pretty symptomatic of narcissistic personality disorder.
And deciding unilaterally that other people whose lives you effect have no right to know how you might effect them, whose highly personal information you gather and analyze and flag and then , with the blessing of same FISA court peer into are beneath a frank, thorough and truthful discussion of the wheres and hows and whys of same, well, deciding those things unilaterally and being dismissive of input from other sources is pretty symptomatic of narcissistic personality disorder.
And when asked about any of this, stonewalling and lying and attacking the truth tellers amongst us who point out what you're doing- when it comes right down to it, doing outside of the view of democratic process you're sworn to defend - is pretty symptomatic of narcissistic personality disorder.
I used to defend you, but even I am deciding you've erred; you've gone off the tracks at the very least, by attempting to unilaterally force down people's throats that which is necessary, without first making a case for it and worse, believing they could never understand.
You've failed utterly to engage the people whose consent you ultimately need, if not according to your secret interpretation of law, then in fact, in reality.
Whoever told you that to ask for forgiveness is a lot easier than to ask for permission lied to you .There may be no forgiveness in the hearts of people if "trust" is taken as the relevant form forgiveness in this case. Now THAT is serious and long-lasting damage to national security.
And what is all this costing you? And what is that going to cost you going forward? And what is that going to cost us all going forward?
I share your frustration about people. A lot people are reality-denying idiots, and sworn to it to the bitter end. But no democracy can survive acting as though the majority of the public is such.
And we cease to be a democracy when our officials not just mutter that amongst themselves in contempt disgust and frustration, but start to act on it.
Nothing gets you more attention than deliberately trying to hide yourself....
It is illegal to obscure your identity in a public place, because it is illegal to interfere with the investigation of a crime. Since almost all criminal investigations involve looking for a missing suspect, obscuring your identity prevents law enforcement determining whether you are the suspect, and therefore in doing so you are committing Obstruction of Justice.
At least, that will be the government's reasoning in arresting people as "terrorists" who wear masks in public.
The people you are protesting about, silly!
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
He's turned tin foil into clothing now?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Does this clothing have optional RFID tagging or is it mandatory?
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
I've read "To Counter Widespread Surveillance, Steal Clothing". Makes sense: if you enter in a phone booth with eyeglasses, hat and a dress, and you exit with your red underpants over your trousers, nobody will recognize you. If you enter in the phone booth and exit with a cape and a drawing of a stylized bat on the shirt, you'll be sure to totally confuse everybody.
I will sell anyone who'd like a space blanket and a sombrero. I will sign them in Sharpie for just a small surcharge.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Oh, eye scans? Phew -- eyes are a solved problem ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSQdEkcm6zs
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5