Hackers Rebel Against Spy Cams

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.

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.

cont'd...
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,69942-0.html?tw=rss.index

On edit: Read the whole (1 page) article, there's a lot of good stuff there.

http://22c3.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/index.php?action=ondemand

peace

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."


That's a great quote. All these schmucks who live for surveillance are never under the glass themselves. If they were, they probably wouldn't like it much, either.

If THEY want an Open Society, let's ensure that it's TRULLY open. If I can review the behavior and competance of that several million earning CEO, if I can dig in to the personal shopping habits of Bush's wife and kids, if I can take a gander at what positions Gonzales likes to "tap it" in the bedroom, THEN I MIGHT be ok with their collating my medical history. Open Source Information World, just consider organizations like MediaMatters and OpenSecrets. Although, admittedly, the wealth of information we now have access hasn't necessarily resulted in a casual link to a better informed general populace. Witness the other thread about how many US citizens still believe complete bullshit like 9-11 hijackers being Iraqi and Bush being "the smartest man they know" and Bush won the 2000 Election.

a healthy respect for real investigative journalists that challenge the government and expose their mistakes.

We don't have one of those.

peace

Hack into the white girl news networks and broadcast the truth for a half hour and watch the whole country talk about it for days if not years.

Fight technology with technology.

Shouldn't be too hard -- considering Bush and his cronies are such incompetents.

especially freedom loving anti-authority ones. I've always wondered if we could combat the diebold crap using our own hackers. If I were ten times smarter and knew how to do it, I'd at least give it a shot. :argh:

That's a satirical riff.

He would, of course, get to rename the country to GNUSA.

(If you don't know who he is, here's a link)

http://www.stallman.org/

it's brilliant. Ohio was the last time he did training, it meant so damned much to him to be there.

...the one's in this country just seem to do it for their own amusement.

If I knew how to do this sort of stuff, which I do not, this is they type of stuff I'd encourage my friends to do. ;)

...the community has become a little skitish as of late. Violating the security of practically any system can, in theory, be prosecuted as an act of terrorism under the Patriot Act. And hitting targets of "political signifigance", especially from "our side" of the fence, could and likely has, resulted in more than a few dissappearances or unfortunate accidents. On the flip side, the hats that work for "their side" have been VERY active and have been operating with impunity.

ON EDIT: that may be because the skills themselves tend to give rise to ideaologies that run counter to the goals of those like Bush, and foster an increased sense of paranoia coupled with a degree of isolationist behavior. If that guy that lives in that apartment complexes basement, who has worked so hard to keep himself "anonymous", vanishes, who would notice?

"The signal could then be descrambled using hardware designed to enhance copy-protected video as it's transferred from DVD to VHS tape."


MacroVision! This is the best that the Austrian police can do?

http://GlobalFreePress.com

peace

At this very moment he is sending a messenger which junior prefers to call angels, with information about us dissents.

A holy man from India is sitting in a cave high in the Himalayas, he reports to our messenger that a super computer, made in China, (via Bill Clinton of course) has revealed information from junior's camp, that large buildings were being build by Halliburton to house us DUers. Report didn't say what country these buildings were to be build in, or what type of torture chambers were to be installed.

peace