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Next Up: the Jamming Wars
chicksdaddy writes "ITWorld has an interesting opinion piece on the next privacy battleground, which they say will be over citizens' rights to use jamming technology to (forcibly) opt-out of ubiquitous surveillance, as sensors pop up in more and more public spaces and private homes alike. 'Given the rapid pace of technological change, we don't know exactly what the future holds for us. But one thing is certain: personal privacy is going to turn from a "right" to a "fight" in the next decade, as individuals take up arms against government and private sector snooping on their personal lives.' The article mentions some skirmishes that have already occurred: employees using GPS jamming hardware to prevent employers from tracking their every movement, and the crush of new business for encrypted voice, video and texting services like SilentCircle (up 400% in the last two months). 'Absent the protection of the law, citizens should be expected to do what they do elsewhere: take matters into their own hands: latching onto tools and technology to give them the privacy that they aren't afforded by the legal system. However, there may not be an easy technology fix for ubiquitous, unregulated surveillance. Writing in Wired this week, Jathan Sadowski warns that the tendency for individuals to focus on securing their own data and communications and using technology to do may be misleading. 'The problem is that focusing on one or both of these approaches distracts from the much-needed political reform and societal pushback necessary to dig up a surveillance state at its root,' Sadowski writes."
This one is only good for those cameras that use a flash:
http://www.nophoto.com/
I'm thinking it might be possible to build a "clear" overlay with a bunch of infra-red LEDs built in in a pattern that is invisible to the naked eye but fuzzes the numbers for any camera that sees in the infra-red (most of them). Put that over your plate and run it all the time, even when the car is parked anywhere except in your garage.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Exactly. The right to bear arms didn't do Edward Snowden or Bradley Manning a fat lot of good either.
Manning gave up that right when he enlisted. He traded it for the responsibility to bear arms.
But this brings up an interesting point: encryption tech is still (although not as much as it used to be) treated as munitions by the US government. As such, does the right to properly encrypted data fall under the right to bear arms? Or is the US interpreting the constitution these days to say you can bear as many arms as you want, but munitions are off-limits?
The whole "personal jammer" thing is a non-starter. Jammers are indescriminate, and the usual rhetoric used to make them illegal will apply.
Take for instance, with personal cellphone jammers. They are illegal in the united states, specifically cited by the FCC. The reason, is that they disrupt vital comminications infrastructure, and can therefor prevent expedient deployment of emergency services, an other vital services that rely on the availability of that communication medium.
In the case of the surveylance industry, the argument can be made that cameras make the community safer, by helping law enforcement to identify and rapidly locate dangerous criminals, and that disrupting this system places the community at greater risk.
Those are totally specious arguments in most of the applied settings they would be used in, but that doesn't matter. Think of it as a horrible cousin to the "think of the children!" Rhetoric. Or, maybe the "interstate commerce" doctrine.
Personal jamming tech is a nonstarter for legal defense against ubiquitous tracking and surveylence.
About the only thing left, then, is relentless use of it anyway, as a dedicated civil disobedience movement. Yes, that means pleading guilty to the charge in court when arrested, as per the proper use of civil disobedience as a tactic. You want to swamp the justice system with burdensome numbers of people to incarcerate, with a near 100% recidivism rate.
It has to cost them far more money than their corporate puppeteers make from the mandatory protection and employment of the surveylence. It has to do this consistently, and without fail.
Otherwise, there will always be the profit motive, and the corruption that money has on government, and the surveylence state will persist.
Lasers strong enough to damage a CCD are not legal to own in many places. Weaker lasers blind cameras, but this can easily be overcome with a colour filter applied digitally to the recording. In short lasers are not very good against cameras.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC