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Comment by yupper32 | Hacker News Reader

They installed spyware on someone else's computers. Of course that's illegal, regardless of whether or not the AG decided to go after them.

Are people serious here? There's nothing ethical or legal going on with the blog post here. The fact that they got off is just luck. There's no whistleblowing or any other protection granted, and there shouldn't be. Period.

And the worst part in my opinion is the author has no intention of not doing something like this again. They think they're in the right. Probably because they got off the first time.

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Wow. I found a video of this exhibition on YouTube, and it looks like what this guy installed is less pure spyware and more a remote administration tool (RAT).

After he took the photos he wanted, he remotely uploaded them to every computer and forced them to be shown on-screen while people were browsing around the demo.

Freaky stuff. How is installing RATs on other peoples’ computers even remotely ethical?

For real. People here are treating them with whistleblower gloves. There's nothing of that sort going on here. Just unethical, horrible stuff.

All kinds of unethical horrible stuff doesn't get a Secret Service raid.

The whole point of the unethical horrible stuff was to get people to think about what they were doing, think about what was happening with tech and surveillance, think at all.

An artist got their home raided, Cambridge Analytica - which was manipulation on an industrial scale - barely got a slapped wrist. Ad tech uses mass surveillance to build personal profiles and hardly anyone notices - because the surveillance and behaviour mod happen under the surface.

Who is more unethical? Which response was proportionate?

> An artist got their home raided, Cambridge Analytica - which was manipulation on an industrial scale - barely got a slapped wrist.

Please tell me your post is satire.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/23/judge-grants-se...

I'm not saying Cambridge Analytica was sufficiently prosecuted, but using the home raid of the author as a comparison screams satire.

Were charges pressed? No. Was there a court case? No. Was there a guilty verdict? No.

What was the justification for the raid?

Perhaps you need to revise your understanding of Fourth Amendment protection from fishing expeditions before dismissing a home raid which found no grounds for prosecution as "satire."

Hmm.

I'm a big proponent for sanctity of the home.

So, this made me think ; where does the current home end, and the current office?

If the future, we may see more and more home raids, where an employer's malfeasance results in employee "workspaces" being raided for info.

All computers taken, mobile phones, various office artifacts, with homes involved due to work-from-home.

I suspect this may have already happened many times over the years, with CEOs, employees of small startups working from home.

Has this battle already been lost? Not sure for Canada and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but what of the US?

Does work from home, mean raids are easily justified?

> What was the justification for the raid?

They had a warrant to seize assets used for developing the spyware installed on Apple's property. If the feds don't have jurisdiction to investigate potential infringement of other' rights, what do they do about peeping toms? How do they know the extent of this spyware they've deployed?

To even get that warrant, they need a decent argument in front of a judge. None of this is infringing on any rights

> home raid which found no grounds for prosecution

They knocked, presented the warrant, and the agents were cordial and honest. The purpose of these sorts of warrants are for investigative purposes, which is in the warrant. You don't need to promise a prosecution to serve one

He made it super-small (and it's not in the FOIA doc, that I could find) but, here's the warrant he was served by the agents at the door: https://kylemcdonald.net/psac/large/warrant.png

They gave him all the reasons they were there, they let him know what would expand the scope of the warrant (drugs or weapons) and discussed, in-detail, what they were there for

Hi, OP here. Just some technical clarification. There were two apps. The first one took a photo once a minute and uploaded it to a PHP script on my server. Apple probably identified this one because it sent a ping to my server even when it didn't send a photo. The second app was essentially a screensaver that regularly checked a URL to see whether it should go fullscreen or not, and then it quit after one minute. These were both custom-built apps, less than 100 loc each and missing all of the functionalities of spyware and RATs. I would expect that real RATs have been installed on Apple Store machines in the past, and perhaps Apple suspected this was another. If I had been sniffing and posting keystrokes, the situation may have turned out completely different. But this project was focused on face analysis.

It doesn't seem fair to say that he has no intention of not doing it again.

"I'm not sure I would make this piece today, anyway. I'm increasingly critical of artwork that attempts to engage with the theme of surveillance by replicating systems of surveillance. How fruitful can a conversation be about consent and privacy, when an artist does not seek their subject's consent?"

I also don't think it's as bad as you're making it sound. I feel it's akin to gray-hat security research. Maybe he crossed the line into "you shouldn't do that" but ultimately had a harmless intent and didn't cause any real damage. Not exactly whistleblower status but more like a comedian being granted the liberty to push some boundaries and spark potentially valuable conversations.

> more like a comedian being granted the liberty to push some boundaries

No. Not at all. Freedom of speech is extremely strong in the US, and for good reason. Freedom to install software onto other people's computers is not.

It's extremely troubling that people are defending this person.

It's far more troubling that too few people are questioning the mass surveillance he was critiquing and dramatising.

It's classic shoot-the-messenger.

Meanwhile Facebook was - and probably still is - tracking people's online behaviour even when they're not logged into Facebook, based on legalese buried in T&Cs which most users don't even know exist, never mind have read, never mind understood, never mind given explicit informed consent to.

> It's classic shoot-the-messenger.

No it's not!

I don't go around shooting people to advocate gun control laws.

I don't go around stealing people's belongings in cars to advocate that people shouldn't leave valuables in cars.

This is vigilante behavior that should never be condoned.

But you are defending a home raid on someone who was not brought to trial, but was making a politcal and moral point about corporate tools and corporate behaviours.

When you think criticism - oblique, but clearly still harmless - is more of a problem than the behaviours, you are very much trying to shoot the messenger.

I think, as soon as he became the actor as well, he ceased being "the messager" in the terms of solely passing on a message.

Put another way, "shoot the messenger" is a phrase used when an unbiased person, merely delivering a message of bias/harm from another, is attacked for the message.

You are not a messenger, when you perform the act/deed/thing yourself.

That is what I don't understand why he can't be a messenger and an actor at the same time.

Everything doesn't have to be black and white you know

Then it isn’t shooting the messenger because they’re also an actor? Being a messenger doesn’t grant someone immunity from being critiqued for doing unethical things.

No, it don't. But being an actor doesn't mean an individual can't be an messanger doing something in good faith.

"Dooing good, through bad methods"

>But you are defending a home raid on someone who was not brought to trial

He should have been brought to trial

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Every noteworthy push for societal change through history that ever involved breaking a law could be labeled vigilante behavior by some party. I just don't find that argument convincing. Our laws aren't there to protect themselves, they exist to create the society we want to live in. In what ways did the artist's actions harm our society? In what ways did it change how we view our society? Do we like what we see?

This isn't big brother with all the power systematically spying on citizens, this is a nobody with no power showing us a picture of ourselves. Both cases are happening, both happen against the will of the people, and yet which one do we allow to continue?

I'll also point out that the discussion we're having is exactly the outcome the artist intended.

I had sort of a similar reaction to this but then I thought that the artist here seems to have done this only to show people they are being surveyed or that hidden surveillance is easy.

> Probably because they got off the first time.

Imagine all the companies and governments doing exactly what this artist did, without any remorse or intention to show it back to the public. And they do not get caught, forget getting off "first time". What emotions should we express for them?

This artist put a face to the story, a photo that did the job of a thousand words. I think it is easy to see his ways are unjust but I do not think there is an easy way to motivate more people to ask tough questions about our own data.

What companies and governments are taking secret images of you while shopping at stores? This guy is a tin foil hat wearing conspiracy nut who then goes on to do the exact kind of evil he accuses others of.

What is CCTV? What is Google Photos?

Off the top of my head, I'd say every single one. Including the corner grocery stores and the lobby of the building that I live in. I used to work right at street corner that was a top tier Instagram destination so I'm probably plastered all over thousands of random people's social media all over the world.

> I had sort of a similar reaction to this but then I thought that the artist here seems to have done this only to show people they are being surveyed or that hidden surveillance is easy.

If you want to make an art piece exposing how much violence happens in our society, you don't do that by acting violently yourself. If you do that, you're not an artist exposing a societal wrong, you're the perpetrator, and should be persecuted for it.

Seriously, how would you feel about your picture, secretly taken without your consent in a setting you had reasonable expectation to be private, ending up in this art installation?

I think you do not understand. The artist wanted the show what is already happening, just something we are simply not protesting about in masses. Like the level of such hidden information grabbing is massive, but what do we citizens care? The photo had an effect, which bits and bytes are not having.

Yes the artist did something totally illegal and should be prosecuted. Who is going to prosecute the governments? I like your strong emotions and fail to understand why you do not see this is exactly what the artist hopes will happen - more emotional take on the current situation.

If you want to stress that [a certain crime] is already happening, I do not think it's an acceptable form of expression to commit [a certain crime] yourself, on unwitting victims.

This. This guy deserved everything that came to him and his ethics are so downright screwed that Apple and the Gov probably actually assumed that no artist would do this kind of thing.

That was my first thought. Inside an Apple store is not a public place. A sidewalk is a public place - you can take photos there and post them with no consequences. Inside a private business might as well be inside someone's private residence as far as the law is concerned.

Just because a business is open to the public does not mean it is a public space. People confuse the two.

>>>Apple store is not a public place. A sidewalk is a public place ...Inside a private business might as well be inside someone's private residence

In correct, an Apple Store would be a Public Accommodation, there are all kinds of laws governing Public Accommodation that do not apply to a Private Residence.

I was referring to the privacy side of things, since that's the context of this story. Also would apply to trespassing - hence you can be removed from a private business if the owner/manager wants you gone.

From a privacy standpoint individuals have no more right to privacy in an Apple store then they do on the Street.

Apply can forbid photography on the premises, and remove anyone that fails to follow this rule but that is about property rights not privacy.

OP here. syshum has it correct. If you take a photo with your lens on one side of the Apple Store's massive glass wall, it is legally the same from a privacy perspective as taking a photo on the other side (unless Apple explicitly forbids it).

> And the worst part in my opinion is the author has no intention of not doing something like this again.

I think the author's intentions are what earn him some sympathy from people around here. He wasn't stealing bank info or passwords. He wasn't tracking their location or scanning their email. He was essentially doing street photography albeit with cameras owned by Apple.

The author may be naive but he's not malicious and that matters to me when I try to come up with some kind of judgement.

Taking pictures of people and posting them without their permission while they're at a private business is malicious in my opinion. And also illegal. There's a reason he had to hide it. Ethically it's no different to me than connecting to someone's webcam at home and uploading the photos.

On YouTube there are dozens of videos taken inside shopping malls. For example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W54i8i_sSvM

Does that feel malicious to you as well?

Gray area. The vast majority of those shots were at a distance and not intimate with the person at all, and someone with a giant shoulder-mounted camera at least lets people know they're being filmed.

I still don't see any intent to harm. Maybe we are thinking about different things when we talk about malice?

Despite this artists claims, he was basically taking a bunch of people close up pictures without their consent for their personal gain.

Steer photography at least has more plausible deniability

What law did he break? These computers are sitting around unlocked in public with the express intent of letting randos test them out. I'm sure Apple didn't intend for anyone to start installing software, but they could add endpoint security to the machines and they don't. As he said, there's no expectation of privacy in public. There's security cameras running nonstop. And glass windows to the street. Installing spyware in and of itself is not a crime. Lots of businesses do it as a matter of course. If you feel like he made you uncomfortable and has you thinking about something you haven't thought of before, then "art" was achieved.

"someone" else's computer ... It's Apple, not a personal computer. Are corporations people?

ATMs belong to banks, not individuals. Is that enough of a justification to install malware on them?

No. What is the point of this analogy?

Everyone's phone is full of spyware installed by someone else (Apple or Google). This isn't any different.

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