Undercover restorers fix Paris landmark's clock (2007) | Hacker News Reader

Undercover restorers fix Paris landmark's clock (2007)

theguardian.com

132 pointssmollett19 comments

If you're interested in this kind of stuff, I highly recommend you check out the work by Itso & Adams. Recently, a room was discovered at the Central Station in Copenhagen, which, though thought to be shut down, had been occupied for years. Itso & Adams have done stuff like this all over europe. There's a book in the library of stockholm in which a key and a map is embedded, which leads to a bunch of their hiding places and passage ways. No one knows which book though, and if you find, you're supposed to check out the spots and put the book with the key back. It's very inspiring.

Couldn't really find an article with a good overview in english but heres a video with subtitles and an interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr3GV2ZLHDI http://www.megawordsmagazine.com/interviewDetail.php?intervi...

It's a pretty big clock - http://benjamin-constable.net/Three%20Lives%20Places/Pantheo...

More pictures, including the clock mechanism and the work lounge they made - http://urban-resources.net/untergunther.html

A group did something similar with Melbourne's Nylex clock last month.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/were-not-vandals-nylex-clo...

Griff Rhys Jones did a series of the world's greatest cities, and when he covered Paris he met with the group of restorers and followed them through a massive network of underground tunnels, wherein they could access almost any building in Paris, they claimed to have keys to many of them. It was a terrific documentary.

It's available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OiL8oVj0sA (~45 minutes)

Is there more detail about why the judge dismissed charges? I'd like to read more about the interactions with museum management after the reveal and the law enforcement response. Is this a case where everyone except management just loved what these guys did?

Basically: did people (the judge specifically) make the Right Decision here, or was there simply some legal shenanigans that allowed the restorers to go free?

You provided the incentive for me to read some of the French press of the time.

Basically, it's not illegal (nor authorized) to enter a monument after opening hours. Nor is it restore an antique clock.

The charge eventually used against Untergunther was one of damaging a door, but it seems it was picked clean and completely undamaged. Interestingly the accused where so sure of being in the right that they didn't bother with a lawyer. There may have been a lot of goodwill toward them as they were possibly guilty of more serious crimes, with decent evidence against them. Basically it looks like pretty much everyone saw it as technically illegal but not morally wrong, and completely victimless.

What I found to be the most complete article : http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2007/11/24/aux-intrus-...

Video: https://vimeo.com/51365068

Ha,Ha,ha!, fantastic. I love what these people did. Fixed the broken clock surreptitiously. Its a pity the building's administrator got fired though.

That's a typical bureaucratic response. It's a bit like firing the people that figure out a system is insecure and tell management or the response to whistleblowers.

Not quite; in this case, it's that someone figures a system is insecure, tells management, and management fires the people that were supposed to keep the system secure.

The people in charge of the place neither fixed the clock nor kept the place safe, so they do indeed look slightly incompetent.

One could argue that this way the lessons from the break-in do not stay in-house as the people who got fired get replaced by presumably less experienced ones. I get that they want to incentivize people to do their best, but just getting outsmarted doesn't always signal incompetence and the next person on the job isn't likely to be better.

Agreed, but still, for a major historic landmark building one would expect it to have movement detectors etc

Is one of them Harry Buttle?

Met one of the guys who did in this in 2010. He said they have done many other projects of similar or larger scale but they generally keep them out of the spotlights. Impressive stuff!

You can find articles about this case there: http://www.ugwk.org

A much more extensive article about this caper was published in Wired in 2012:

http://www.wired.com/2012/01/ff_ux/all/1

They are like old days' hackers of the real world

more articles there: http://www.ugwk.org

Of course, guerrilla restorations don't always work out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_Homo_%28El%C3%ADas_Garc%C...

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