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."

Good going.

Cracked by macrovision descramblers. Color me impressed.

Re:Well, At Least...

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.

Re:Well, At Least...

What they achieved doesn't impress me at all, because it is akin to standing next to the camera and saying: "Hey, I can see what the camera sees".

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:

"It must not be cool anymore to have access to this data," said Rieger, who argued that Western societies are becoming democratically legitimized police states ruled by an unaccountable elite. "We have enough technical knowledge to turn this around; let's expose them in public, publish everything we know about them and let them know how it feels to be under surveillance."

A simple media campaign would be far more effective.

Black stripe

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?

Re:Black stripe

Size of eyes, how deep they go into the skull, and the distance between them is a big part of what makes a face unique. Also, depending on the size of the black stripe, it could cover eyebrows and a good chunk of the nose. It's the most effective area to black out if you don't want to be recognized.

Re:Black stripe

Now if you REALLY don't want to be recognized, then you could/should fill in the whole head with a bright yellow smiley face!

Re:Black stripe

Now if you REALLY don't want to be recognized, then you could/should fill in the whole head with a bright yellow smiley face!

Surely you mean a blue, cap-wearing smiley with text rotating around it? [randomdialogue.net]

Re:Black stripe

For people who don't know: Laughing Man [wikipedia.org]

Re:Black stripe

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.

Veils

Maybe we should all just adopt a more modest dress code. We could obscure our faces with veils that only reveal our eyes.

Then only those who wear veils will be criminals.

Re:Veils

That sounds like a veiled threat...

Then only those who wear veils will be criminals.

If you don't think that's already the case, try walking into a bank wearing a ski mask.

Re:modesty

Argh... flashback of my Senior year in high school...

What the bloody hell was I thinking?

Re:Veils

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.

Excellent!

This is civil disobedience and hacking at its best. Good for them.

Re:Excellent!

Your IP has been logged and back traced to your residential address and ID, this post has been added to your psychology profile (which btw is a good laugh).

Thank you for your cooperation.

NSA

Re:Excellent!

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.

Big Deal

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.

Re:Big Deal

Yes, it sure would be terrible if someone knew I was walking down a certain street at a certain time. What is the BFD?

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 .

Re:Big Deal

I'd like to make a couple of points, as I have some experience in a tangentially-related area.

Firstly, the amount of storage space you're talking about for keeping all this stuff forever is huge. Hundreds of thousands of cameras (if not millions), all filming 24/7 - I can't be bothered to do the maths, but if you assume no audio, grey-scale and a crappy resolution (but still high enough to identify "everyone you talk to" and "everything you do") you're talking about hundreds of megabytes per camera per day, if not gigabytes.

Secondly, those cameras are fixed. They're not following you around, you move from camera to camera. In order to produce a file on any one person, you'd have to check through the logs of every single camera they passed and extract the relevant clip(s). To do that for any non-trivial period of time would be a very time-consuming process; image processing software isn't good enough (yet?) to do it automatically. You'd be sat trawling through hours of footage. I wouldn't do it for a "couple of cases of beer".

Finally, I've worked with the (UK) police on a couple of information storage and retrieval type projects (I can't say any more than that - I'm under NDA and besides, it's classified). I can assure you that they take their legal responsibilities extremely seriously, especially when it comes to controlling and monitoring access to the data and application we were working on. Around three-quarters of the development effort revolved around protective monitoring of the application - everything anyone does with it is logged, and those logs are searchable. Misuse of the application is a criminal offence, and will be prosecuted.

Now, that said I'm not saying that you're not right to be concerned about this sort of all-pervasive monitoring of the general population; you should be concerned. I'm also not saying that one day, we won't find ourselves in the situation you describe. I don't think we're very close to it now, though, and certainly not only 5 years away.

Vehicle tracking, on the other hand, is a different matter. The licence plate is a very easily processed (nominally) unique id. Given sufficient resources it would be a relatively simple matter to build up a log of all vehicle movements, at least to the detail of what camera was passed at what time in what direction (and at what speed). That I think we should be worried about now.

Re:Big Deal

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?

Re:Big Deal

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)

Um...where, exactly?

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?

Laughing Man

Albeit relatively low tech in comparison. A real life counterpart none the less.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laughing_Man_(ani me) [wikipedia.org]

RTFA?

The group in question is an Austrian civil liberties group, not German hackers and not based in Berlin. How do I know this? I read the first sentence of the article............

Turn the tables

I think the only thing that MIGHT actually get the laws changed would be as one person suggested in the article. Turn the tables on those passing the laws. Find key political figures and start saving all the video footage of where they go. I'm sure with tens of hours of video footable between dozens of people you're bound to come across a wide variety of embarassing moments.

Put those up on the web and away you go. Might actually get something changed then.

Re:Turn the tables

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.

Living in a surveillance society

This reminds me of an old MIT article, The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove [mit.edu]. It describes what is involved in living in a surveillance society. It also defines the attributes of a surveillance society:

1. Transcends distance, darkness, and physical barriers.
2. Transcends time and its records can easily be stored, retrieved, combined, analyzed, and communicated.
3. Is capital-rather than labor intensive.
4. Triggers a shift from targeting a specific to categorical suspicion.
5. Has as a major concern the prevention of violations.
6. Is decentralized-and triggers self-policing.
7. Is either invisible or has low visibility.
8. Is more intensive-probing beneath surface, discovering previously inaccessible information.
9. Grows ever more extensive-covering not only deeper, but larger areas.

I think surveillance, even when used with the best of intentions, will interfere with people's lives. The authorities will investigate anyone that does anything different. Yet doing things different is what life is all about. When used with less noble intentions, surveillance could lead to a much more troubling society as the East Berlin residents. described in the article may well remember.

Re:Living in a surveillance society

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 [google.com], which is working just fine for me.

hth? ;o)

Who decides?

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.

Re:Who decides?

could mean that violent revolution is justified even with a system that -- on the surface -- seems democratic and fair.

From the rest of your comment, I assume you're talking of the US system.

I can assure you that for anyone not born, raised and indoctrinated in the USA your system seems neither particularily democratic, nor fair in the sligthest. Infact it's pretty close to the least fair imaginable system that can still claim to be "democratic"

I'll give a few examples. There's literally dozens, but Slashdot ain't the rigth venue for a deeper discussion.

One: If the citizens of say Florida vote (invented numbers) 40% Democrat, 35% Republican, 15% Green, 10% Others, how is it "fair" that the people of Florida then send 27 members of the Electoral College from the Democratic party ? Fair would be to divide the members as the votes are divided. Giving someone with 40% of the votes 100% of the influence is not my idea of "fair".

Two: If you live in the state above, and are aware of the aproximate likely distribution, how can you vote anything except Democrat/Republican and not have your vote wasted ? The real question, for many of the voters is not "Which party do you prefer?" but instead: "Which of the two large ones do you dislike the least?"

Third: If you live in a state where it's very very obvious that say the Republicans will win, then you are indeed free to vote for whomever you prefer, since your vote doesn't matter anyway!

Basically *all* election-systems are more "fair" than the ones you use. Furthermore, your current system favours the two parties currently in power. And the only ones who can (peacefully) change your system are those two parties.

Thus you've got the fox guarding the henhouse: The only two parties with a fair chance of changing the election-system are the only two parties with no interest whatsoever in doing so, since it'd lead to less influence for themselves.

Re:Who decides?

However, I can guarantee you that if their government sat still and did nothing, only to later on have a massive terrorist attack on their hands, there'd be some serious inquiry as to why there had been no systems in place to gather intelligence to prevent such a thing, or some sort of monitoring to catch the culprits.

And that's as it should be. That's still not a valid reason to rob us of our civil rights, be them rights enshrined in the Constitution or rights that were not articulated in the Constitution because at the time of the founding of the U.S. there was no concievable threat to them (i.e. the right to not be tracked without a warrant, etc.).

The world's a dangerous place. I am sure if nothing had been done post-911 and there had been a few more attacks, the chance of falling prey to a terrorist act would still be far lower than that of being in a car accident.

I'm not saying we should do nothing, but I think that alot of what we are doing has more detriments for us than benefits - their saying it is being done in our benefit doesn't placate me.

But I also know that the government does this every time there is a crisis of some kind - goes way back to the Sedition Act of 1798 - so I hold out some hope for us.

How to block face rec

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.

Use the Aliens method.

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.

Austrians, not Germans

They are from Vienna, Austria, they just presented this on the 22C3. It's correctly written in the wired article though.

War on terror anyone

The general perception about politicians lately is CCTV will eliminate all problems. After the London bombing on 7/7/05, the Met spent hundreds of man hours sifting through CCTV "evidence" to find more information about the hackers, while for all practical purposes is shutting the barn door after...

Even the Dutch, once known as hacker-friendly, politically progressive Europeans, are now fearful and demanding more cameras on their streets.

Whilst recording and monitoring activities in parts deemed dangerous, not easy to patrol, prone to mugging/thefts/incidents may be worthwhile, recording public spaces is similar to littering the motorway with speed cameras...

Coming soon to your country:

"It is a period of civil war. Rebel starships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire." Yes, even the United States. And it will be bloody. Songs will be sung about this day...

Talk about paranoid...

I feel like I'm being watched... >_>

Surveillance Sucks

Its interesting that this was posted on Wired almost 4 days ago. But still very interesting article. Surveillance is only going to get worse, I guess we should learn how to cope while we can.

People....this can be a good thing.....

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.

Obligitory Anime Reference

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.

I want my blue and white laughing man logo with "I thought what I'd do was pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes" spinning around.

Slashdoting of google?

After going through 2 or 3 pages of those web cams google gave me 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.

Given that I can still search anything else and not get that message I am inclined to think that we may have tricked google into thinking that we are attacking it by every one making the same request all at one.

Nothing hacks a camera

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:Nothing hacks a camera

Fire, dynamite or simply knocking them down also work.
 
I am fascinated by the British phenomenon of Gatsos [wikipedia.org] 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 [p]hundreds of Gatsos.
This page [speedcam.co.uk] displays some of their handiwork.

Who's watching the watcher?

In France we had a president (Mitterrand) who spied on a woman (Carole Bouquet) probably because he liked her.
Granted she is beautiful, but this shouldn't have happened!

And for the French, the rainbow warrior show how wrong it can go. A men got killed in this other stupid affair..

That's the danger putting too much power in the hand of individuals, who check that they aren't abusing them? Or doing really stupid thing with their power?

MacCarthysm show that even with more people taking decision, things can still go out of hand, but at least we can hope that this happen less often.

Not exactly the brightest bulbs inb the pack.

The Quintessenz activists then began figuring out how to blind the cameras with balloons, lasers and infrared devices.

How dumb are these people? I think it comes from "School of the blindingly obvious" how to do it don't you think?

There's nothing so dumb as a smart person.

extra geekness

It would be much more fun if they'd replace the head with the smiley from Ghost in the shell: Stand alone complex.
For those of you who havent seen the series; an elusive expert hacker hacks into public cameras, TV cameras and the eyes of people with cybernetic implants and replaces his head with a smiley. Here's the image http://images.google.com/images?q=laughing+man [google.com]

Blurring the lines between fiction and reality

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.

Replace the black stripe with the laughing man logo from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex...technology blurring fiction and reality once again.

Two points. . .

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 [guardian.co.uk]. 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

poor slashdot

i like ann harrison (afterall she's a nice woman and john gilmore's gf), but sorry, her article on wired about 22c3 is a shame. way too short and touching lectures you could write entire essays on in a single sentence.
i wonder why my /. submission about the entire conference http://events.ccc.de/congress/2005/ [events.ccc.de] got rejected..

videos from all lectures: ftp://dewy.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/ [tu-ilmenau.de]

my friend Gareth and i

were once chatting about the cameras overlooking Confederation Square in Ottawa. He suggested building a scale model, then videotaping himself in a Godzilla suit, and, well, you get the idea. Of course, we'd have needed to find the camera and haul a VCR up to it to "enhance" its output, but it sounded like a lark. Oh, those crazy eighties...

Face auras

Right now, they are currently deploying thousands of CCTV cameras in the subway where I live. I'm gonna test something I've been thinking for a little while: epaulets and a baseball cap visor studded with IR LEDs. Cameras are sensitive to IR light, so the epaulets and visor would cast an aura around my face, making it very hard to see it on screen.

one thing....

these guys are officially heroes. they should get a trophy or something.

(-hrair-)

Surviving Cameras

There has been a real explosion of survellence cameras over the past several years near where I live (Minneapolis, MN, USA). They are in nearly every business I go in, they monitor stoplights, traffic and I've even seen a few on top of streetlights in residential neighborhoods. A few of my neighbors even have them outside of their homes.

For the most part, I think these things are beneficial and can be used to catch bad guys. Crime costs all of us money. Shoplifting and other crimes against business help drive up costs and if a shopkeeper wants to install a camera to help stop some of it good for him.

If putting cameras on top of streetlights helps to reduce crime or increase the effectivness of police, I really don't have too much of a problem either. Crime hurts people and if we can use cameras to put a few bad guys away, good.

Traffic cameras on freeways help keep traffic flowing and can be used to quickly dispatch highway patrol or highway helpers to the scene quickly. Again, I have few problems with this. It makes my commute better.

Recently the city has installed photo-cop cameras on a few traffic lights through the city. The primary purpose of these cameras is to issue tickets to people running red lights. It helps to generate revenue and it makes these select locations a little safer (they are posted). While I understand the benefits, I have a problem with this. Not so much because I may get caught but because these cameras are kind of turning things around. It is a new revenue stream for the city, one that depends on petty crime to survive. Since it has shown early success there is an excellent chance that it will be expanded providing even more money for the system. A city needs money in much the same manner as an addict needs a fix. They will stoop to deep levels to get the cash. The photo-enforcment is one example of a good idea taken in a bad direction that will ultimately go too far. Soon, any light likely of providing a revenue stream will be guarded by a photo cop. Yet I doubt that this will reduce taxes at all.

These photo enforcement cameras are very unlikely to do anything for any serious crime. They are only activated when someone runs the light. I'd feel better if the tickets issued did not directly benefit anyone. Perhaps the money could be put into a fund that would not go to the city but rather into a fund that is used for something that the city does not directly control. That way, they would only have good motives for sticking the cameras up and I would feel better about them. These photo-cop fines are a form of unequal taxation that must be stopped!

sousveillance & shootback

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

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

More links can be found here [del.icio.us]. [6]

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

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

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

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

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

Blinding cameras with a paint gun

When cameras were introduced in central Canada to watch for car speeders Canada people discoverd the joys of paint guns. One shot and the camera is dead until it gets repaired. It was so effective that the cameras were abandoned.

Try renewing your U.S. driver's liscense

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.

Re:Ha! I'd dare them to pull that crap here!

Of course, in your rush to make a post with a inane little political statement against the administration, you failed to read the article.

If you had read it, you'd learn that the cameras are not in Britain. Even the article submitter failed to use basic reading comprehension, since 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.

In Austria. Not in Berlin, Germany. Also not Britain.

Reading comprehension seems to be sorely lacking here.

Re:Ha! I'd dare them to pull that crap here!

Well, you already noted that it's in Berlin, but then mentioned that Germany might be soft on terrorists. But since the 1972 olympics security failure, and neo-nazi activities, Germany is not very soft on terror. Oh hell, I mentioned nazis, I've killed the thread.

Re:Ha! I'd dare them to pull that crap here!

And the hackers are from/did this in Austria. Just the news article was written in Berlin, because the that's where the conference was taking place.

Re:Ha! I'd dare them to pull that crap here!

tootsweet

You really should have written the Anglicised Tout suite or to be fully accurate the French Tout de suite unless you were deliberately trying to make a usa redneck joke.

And if you had of read the article it was in Austria not Britain (with a capital B)!

Re:Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

I think "Dirty deeds, done with sheep" was better...

Re:article exposes the zero-sum game

"Basically make CCTV networks accessible by everyone like OSS..."

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.

Re:Ha! I'd dare them to pull that crap here!

I got you all wrong.

When I read your earlier post, I thought that the mods had it all wrong. I thought that your comment was witty and a brilliant use of sarcasm to make a point. Then I read your followup post. I realized that you were not witty. You weren't making brilliant use of sarcasm. You're just an asshole

LK

Re:They have too much time on their hands

Austrian techies, actually. They just gave a talk on it during this years Chaos Communication Congress - kind of like Europe's Def Con or whatever - which happens in Berlin. Well, at least Wired got it right.

Re:They have too much time on their hands

Next time read TFA.

They're from Austria, not Germany.

Re:They are VANDALS, nothing less, perhaps more

Those in power choose the labels for those who are not.

Those in power are also amoral psychopathic murderers.

So, putting two and two together. . .

Perhaps 'Vandal' should be worn as a badge of honor.

-FL

Re:They are VANDALS, nothing less, perhaps more

Not necessarily. They could be Ostro-Goths. Or even Austro-Goths.

ericr

yes, I am the Devil's cabana boy.

Would not they then be called OCTV? :)

Would not they then be called OPENCircuitTV? :) Matthew