hactivists vs. government cameras

Mr Kleen · Post by **Mr Kleen** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 6:26 pm

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.

full story HERE

schvin · Post by **schvin** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 8:02 pm

highly cool! thanks for the link.

ldstang50 · Post by **ldstang50** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 8:19 pm

big brother is watching you

Mr Kleen · Post by **Mr Kleen** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 8:50 pm

and about 2,741,645 little brothers too. while the government taps your phone without a warrant the NSA installs illegal cookies and the Pentagon keeps secret files on demonstrators, SONY is busy installing backdoors on your PC while every merchant stockpiles data to be mined (and stolen) and every building is watched by a thousand "internet aware" cameras.

I'm all for security, but the question for our society has always been and will always be: at what price?