Secretive Surveillance Company Is Selling Cops Cameras Hidden in Gravestones
vice.com
vice.com
- Eavesdropping is generally considered anti-social.
- Taking up-skirt pictures in public is, I presume, illegal.
- If someone buys their prescriptions at a public grocery store, would it be alright for someone in the store to photograph their medical data?
It seems to me that the law needs to differentiate between the general sense in which one doesn't have privacy in public (e.g. the public probably has the right to know if a "family values" politician goes to a strip club) and actively spying on someone.
This is particularly the case when technology makes spying possible in a way that it wasn't previously. For example, I imagine it's not uncommon for many people to carry confidential information openly (say carrying a prescription in your hand as you walk to the grocery store) because it's not realistically possible for someone to read it and connect it to you. However, that changes with high speed photography, OCR, and facial recognition.
Why anymore so than if YOU go to a strip club?
I am a fervent supporter of recycling, should I expect a person to follow me around in public waiting for me to throw a soda can into the wrong bin?
Because one SUPPORTS a specific policy, does not mean one has to LIVE their life by that policy.
Politicians actively working against their own interests to do what they feel is truly better the country should be held in high regard. You may agree with their policies or not, but you can't fault a person for enjoying something they are against.
I smoked pot as a teenager, and enjoyed it, and fondly look back on those days getting high with my friends. Your view point would mean I couldn't actively be against teenagers smoking pot, and if I were a politician, I should not back anti-smoking legislation for teenagers.
I mean probably, you literally said you enjoyed it...
Please mention one politician who works against their own interest. Cos I don't know any.
Trump is a perfect example of this:
Many evangelicals will look the other way when confronted with his personal life, because he is putting structures in place to further their agenda.
We grant elected officials with powers granted by law. And if they abuse those powers for financial gain, or say, enjoying the fruits of human traffickers, yeah, we as a public have a right to know.
And granted I'm talking about illegal actions of a public figure here in public.
If the politician is single and he frequents "upstanding" strip clubs if there is such a thing, and nobody cares, why should we?
Personally I don't find that 100% convincing - people like child celebrities and members of the royal family aren't given a choice - but nobody gets made state senator by accident!
Two reasons:
1) People in the spotlight (like politicians) are expected to behave as role models. Especially where moral values are concerned, one can reasonably demand that politicians live according to the same standard as they demand from the citizens. Otherwise, it rapidly devolves into "rules for thee but not for me", destroying trust in the fairness of democratic institutions.
2) In close conjunction with #1, behavior like cheating on one's wife or other (mostly sexual) deviance is either considered socially inacceptable or at least to be damaging to relationships. This creates leverage for bad actors, known as "Sexpionage" - the "kings" here of course are the Russian KGB/FSB who are at least rumored to have actual material of the current US president.
Basically, the public should demand transparency and decent behavior from politicians and other state officials to make sure they are not subject to extortion attempts no matter by foreign states, criminal organizations or by legitimate mega-corporations.
> Because one SUPPORTS a specific policy, does not mean one has to LIVE their life by that policy.
The more radical you appear, the more scrutinized your behavior will be. No one's gonna bat an eye about the contents of your trashcan if you're just supporting a law mandating recycling... but if you are the major initiator of a law or lead public campaigns for recycling, prepare for being in the spotlight.
https://time.com/15432/massachusetts-poised-to-ban-upskirt-p...
https://www.bustle.com/articles/86029-oregon-attempts-to-ban...
Where do public grocery stores exist?
Their items are fairly boring and things that anyone here with a modicum of competence could hack together easily. Camera and transponder in a gravestone, child car seat, etc. basic stuff. Nothing is a big secret, why are they acting like it is? I guess to get attention. If a police department needs any of their items, they can save money hiring a high school student with modest skills and awareness of what's available on aliexpress.
I'd like to see the risk assessment of whoever made that baby seat though - removing a chunk of foam and replacing it with electronics doesn't sound good for the baby's health in case of an accident, and I doubt very much the manufacturer of police spy gear has the expertise to re-test it.
I think it's more likely that they don't want to be forced to reduce their profit margin by having to embed their crap in a wider variety of baby seats, grave markets, alarm clocks, etc. If they can skate by with one or two models of each they will make more money.
>Removing a chunk of foam and replacing it with electronics doesn't sound good for the baby's health in case of an accident, and I doubt very much the manufacturer of police spy gear has the expertise to re-test it.
Call me cynical but they likely don't care about that because they almost certainly make the departments take responsibility for use of their products. The departments don't care about being liable because they can usually hand-wave that sort of thing away under qualified immunity and if a judge does make them take responsibility and the departments don't care because the lawsuits are paid with our money, not theirs.
Would evidence collected by an ad hoc device installed by a student be admissible in court? I always understood that most of these devices are expensive because they have features that can be used to verify the chain of evidence. Something bought from Aliexpress won't.
Copying my comments from there:
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> In warning the site not to disclose the brochure, SSG’s attorney reportedly claimed the document is protected under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), though the notice did not point to any specific section of the law, which was enacted to regulate arms exports at the height of the Cold War.
We really need an overhaul of all these old laws that were enacted for a completely different era, which are now being misused. Another example is 200 year old laws being used to get companies to break encryption.
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I don't know how I feel about hidden surveillance cameras in public. I know I shouldn't have any expectation of privacy in public and all that, but CCTV cameras in plain view are a different matter.
Are we going to live in a world where we're constantly being recorded and analysed by hidden cameras? This makes me very uneasy. Whatever happened to the idea that democratic governments should be for the people?
I'm sure there's no way that this can ever possibly be misused /s.
If agencies are using these for surveillance on specific targets then that's maybe okay, but as far as I'm aware, there is not much regulation regarding hidden cameras in public - at least, not in many parts of the world.
The fact they aren't even citing the subsections hints at specious legal intimidation. The complexity is too high, lawyers are too expensive, and abuses of the law go too unpunished.
If a camera would film my immediate vicinity where I live, I wouldn't certainly extend that vandalism to state property.
Public transport increasingly uses CCTV as do some chains of supermarkets. Otherwise it is not yet established in my country yet but I already avoid both.
And bashing a window is still nothing compared to crimes some security agencies or police forces have comitted.
Unfortunately, that idea is smeared as "populism" these days and considered wrongthink.
Taking a raspberrypi zero, a camera, 4g modem, a couple of batteries and a charge circuit can turn any large-enough object into a hidden camera, for <$100 + the price of object itself (+ some dremel-ing and superglue).
/s
Please could you tell me what you read in this article?
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/britain-stole-45-t...
Read Eyes In The Sky or just generally about WAMI (wide area motion imagery): https://www.amazon.com/Eyes-Sky-Secret-Gorgon-Stare/dp/05449....
There will have to be legislation around use and access in order to have any real protection.
(not affiliated)
Considering that the structure they have to work with has at least the appearance of hundreds of kilos of granite, so there's not a very tight constraint on weight or volume, I'd think they could at least provide for, even as an option, a battery that would last for a week or a month.
That, plus some of the prices quoted give me the impression that this company is one of those that charges silly money for mediocre engineering.