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Redditor finds unsecured surveillance cameras seemingly placed by US government

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Re: Redditor finds unsecured surveillance cameras seemingly placed by US government

#101

Post by derefr »

eloff wrote: post #84
tptacek wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People on message boards really want to believe there's a black -letter rule about what you can and can't do, but that's not how our criminal codes work. These cases will come down to the state of mind of the person accessing the website, as well as an argument about what a reasonable person would conclude upon reading what's on that website.

I think programmers especially like to view law through the lens of rules they could implement in code. Often they think it can be hacked by violating the spirit of the law while upholding the letter. Law in reality is a much more human thing that takes into account intention on the party of both legislators making the law and the people it is being applied to. Good thing too. Is this that makes me think attempts to…

I think some programmers try to think in the mindset of what laws would/wouldn't be violated if you could somehow fuzz-test a particular aspect of the court system.

I.e., if instead of an individual case, you could generate a million people who all tried to do every potential variation of breaking the law in that way, then what would the curve of the resulting judgements look like?

Re: Redditor finds unsecured surveillance cameras seemingly placed by US government

#103

Post by aasasd »

elicash wrote: post #35

Anybody else afraid to click some of the links in that post until you hear about legality of accessing (and controlling!) a DEA camera that's likely part of an active investigation?

I'm having a chuckle from comments on Reddit: “It's an IPv4 address pointing directly to the camera, not so sure that there are any logs.”

Wonder how many of the VPN-employing folks in fact use something like NordVPN and pay for it with their credit card.

Re: Redditor finds unsecured surveillance cameras seemingly placed by US government

#105

Post by sl1ck731 »

milesvp wrote: post #97

My personal experience with these types of camera is based on a conversation I had with a friend who’s a public defender in washington state. She said it can be nearly impossible to figure out who owns or put up all the random cameras you see at traffic intersections. Also good luck trying to subpoena the footage. And this is from someone who has greater access to government information than the typical citizen and h…

Is the implication that it is hard to find the owner because it is messy and any number of agencies could place them or that it is difficult to find the owner because it is purposefully hidden or "super secret"?

Re: Redditor finds unsecured surveillance cameras seemingly placed by US government

#106

Post by blaser-waffle »

thekevan wrote: post #50
BlueGh0st wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The website appears to be compromised. It's hosting and redirecting to webstores/spam/porn/etc. It seems an enterprising agent decided to start building and selling his own covert camera boxes but I wonder how old these things are now. Perhaps they've been forgotten?

I want it to be a conspiracy. No one is intended to see the inside of the box and thus the website unless the box is compromised. So when an unauthorized person sees it and goes to that website, they see it as a spammy forgotten domain, but it's actually trying to install surveillance software to see who you are and later why you've been poking around in a box they never intended you to poke around in. (This of cours…

That's pretty clever.

If I had to bet money though, I'd assume something more mundane, like they are actually dumb enough to put a name and email on one of those.

Do we have any reason to think that the person posting this is not the FBI themselves? Or some other foreign surveillance types?

Re: Redditor finds unsecured surveillance cameras seemingly placed by US government

#107

Post by aaron-santos »

milesvp wrote: post #97

My personal experience with these types of camera is based on a conversation I had with a friend who’s a public defender in washington state. She said it can be nearly impossible to figure out who owns or put up all the random cameras you see at traffic intersections. Also good luck trying to subpoena the footage. And this is from someone who has greater access to government information than the typical citizen and h…

Is it not possible to destroy them and then find the owner by determining who has standing for the case?

Re: Redditor finds unsecured surveillance cameras seemingly placed by US government

#108

Post by lowdose »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #81

It is possible that it is my general weariness talking, but based on our US government amazing level of incompetence displayed when dealing with COVID-19, I am now way less inclined to accept as a given that government can do conspiracies well.

The local manager of the Burger King doesn't decide what beef is on your burger, complaining about the temperature of fries to HQ is not going to help you either.

Re: Redditor finds unsecured surveillance cameras seemingly placed by US government

#109

Post by kube-system »

derefr wrote: post #94
kube-system wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be if it was not intended to be public. It's really not much different than walking around outside. You can walk in an unlocked retail store and it's okay, but if you walk into your neighbors bedroom it's not okay.

What determines what's a retail store and what's a house? Zoning? What if a place is zoned multipurpose commercial/residential, where there are both public offices and private apartments occupying undifferentiated sibling units of the same building? I would assume there would have to be some common-sense or explicit claim being made that a place is private property.

It doesn't really work that way. The entirety of the situation is taken into account.

What matters is what you knew, what you should have known, what you could be expected to know, what you were told, what you observed, what you were thinking, what actions you took, and why you did it, etc.... and how all of these things line up with your local laws which will vary to a degree.

If you walked into the place confused because it wasn't clear what was a home and what was a business, that might be a valid way to demonstrate a lack of intent. But it wouldn't be because of zoning, it would be because of it way it appeared to you.

Re: Redditor finds unsecured surveillance cameras seemingly placed by US government

#110

Post by MiroF »

ogre_codes wrote: post #45

The only thing surprising about this is that they are so easy to pwn. Then again, PDs aren't exactly tech-savvy.

Yeah, it's actually quite easy to find misconfigured IP cameras like these online and be able to control them, used to do it for kicks back in high school.

Surprised this has gotten so many upvotes.

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