Monitoring the monitoring

Wired has an interesting article on monitoring closed-circuit surveillance cameras, where it is 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 that gives users the ability to search by country or topic -- and then rate the cameras." Other strings are mentioned in this /. article.

Examples of search strings:

• inurl:"axis-cgi/mjpg"
• inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode="
• inurl:"view/index.shtml"
• inurl:"MultiCameraFrame?Mode="
• intitle:"Biromsoft WebCam" -4.0 -serial -ask -crack -software -a -the -build -download -v4 -3.01 -numrange:1-10000

You learn something new every day... there is such a thing as a video scanner: Icom IC-R3. It'd be worth it to have one of those.

People have gotten pretty inventive coming up with ways to non-destructively (temporarily) neutralize cameras:

• Ballons
• Plastic bags
• Tape
• Power
  
• Paint or Paint balls
• Laser pointers, possibly mounted on scopes or handheld mono/binoculars

Thought experiment: come up with a way to counter-act each of these neutralization methods.

On the automobile front, here is some info on the black boxes that are in (very) late 1990's and up GM vehicles. If that web page goes away, there are pdf versions. The "EDRU" is what collects the data.

Updated: Wired appears to be doing a good job of covering EFF's lawsuit against AT&T (and the government?) on the secret telephone spying. So far, AT&T is losing.

Update2: Well, AT&T wasn't doing well until the government steps in and invokes "States Secrets". Also, Bruce Schneier has interesting comments on this and other topics (as usual). Quite some time later: still dragging their feet, and starting to expose FBI abuses.

Update3: /. has a very interesting discussion on the upside and downsides of privacy. Here's another discussion on the "Nothing to Hide" argument.

Do we REALLY need yet another government run database that is bound to be difficult to correct?

Update4: /. has another very interesting discussion on what is allowed and not - and how that might differ from what the police want to think is allowed, or not.

Or maybe you need to just record everyone around you says, like this guys father did. Of course, beware of doing that, least you be charged with all types of silly offenses. At least after the media got involved, they were dropped.

Update 5: Interesting, and very logical, idea on how to determine if a digital picture has been altered: Neal Krawetz of hackerfactor presented "JPEGana" at Blackhat.

Update 6: Source Watch appears to be attempting to monitor the monitors - possibly to the extreme