*Hackers Rebel Against Spy Cams*
By Ann Harrison
http://www.wired.com/support/feedback.html?headline=Hackers Rebel
Against Spy
Cams&story_id=69942§ion_path=/technology&ftype=feedback&msg_type=2&aid=1413
<http://www.wired.com/support/feedback.html?headline=Hackers%20Rebel%20Against%20Spy%20Cams&story_id=69942§ion_path=/technology&ftype=feedback&msg_type=2&aid=1413>|
Also <http://www.wired.com/storylist/1413-0-0.html> by this reporter
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 <http://www.quintessenz.at/cctv> 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 <http://www.quintessenz.at/qgate> that uses face-recognition
software to place a black stripe over the eyes of people whose
images are recorded.
Quintessenz members Adrian Dabrowski and Martin Slunksy presented
their video-surveillance research at the 22nd annual Chaos
Communication Congress <http://events.ccc.de/congress/2005/> here
this week. Five hundred hackers jammed into a meeting room for a
presentation that fit nicely into CCC's 2005 theme of "private
investigations."
Slunksy pointed out that searching for special strings in Google,
such as /axis-cgi//, will return links that access
internet-connected cameras around the world. Quintessenz developers
entered these Google results into a database, analyzed the IP
addresses and set up a website <http://www.vam.com/> that gives
users the ability to search by country or topic -- and then rate the
cameras.
"You can use this to see if you are being watched in your daily
life," said Dabrowski.
The conference, hosted by Germany's Chaos Computer Club
<http://www.ccc.de/>, featured many discussions on data interception
and pushing back the unprecedented onslaught of surveillance
technologies.
Even the Dutch, once known as hacker-friendly, politically
progressive Europeans, are now fearful and demanding more cameras on
their streets, said Rop Gonggrijp, founder of Dutch ISP Xs4All.
Gonggrijp says the Dutch chief of police has announced the intention
to store large amounts of surveillance data and mine it to determine
who to pressure and question. "People are screaming for more
control," said Gonggrijp.
Dutch journalist Brenno de Winter warned that the European
Parliament's support for data retention doesn't ensure security, and
makes citizens vulnerable to automated traffic analysis of who
communicates with whom through phone calls and internet connections.
"What we have seen is a system that fails because we miss out on too
much information, and even if we have all that information, it
doesn't give us the right information and it is easy to circumvent,"
said de Winter.
CCC member and security researcher Frank Rieger
<http://frank.geekheim.de/> said hackers should provide secure
communications for political and social movements and encourage the
widespread use of anonymity technologies. He said people on the
other side of the camera need to be laughed at and shamed.
"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."
The four-day Chaos Computer Congress is meeting near Alexanderplatz
in the former East Berlin, where more than a half-million people
rallied for political reform five days before the fall of the Berlin
Wall.
In his keynote address, Joichi Ito <http://joi.ito.com/>, general
manager of international operations for Technorati
<http://www.technorati.com/>, warned that the internet could itself
become a walled-in network controlled by the International
Telecommunication Union <http://www.itu.int/home/>, Microsoft and
telecommunications companies.
Ito said these restrictions would stifle free speech and the ability
to question authority without retribution. "An open network is more
important for democracy than the right to bear arms and the right to
vote," said Ito. "Voice is more important than votes."
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