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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

#131

Post by derefr »

kube-system wrote: post #127
derefr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, that's what's important after-the-fact if someone's getting mad at you. But that's very murky territory—the kind individuals constantly wander into because of conflicting motivations, but which corporations tend to stay well clear of. Let's instead talk about legal liability , and how corporations seek to discharge it in their delivery of products/services. If I'm programming a political auto-dialer, there are…

Third parties do not typically have legal liability for how their customers use their products, but this a murky area that I am sure has tons of edge cases and exceptions depending on product, industry, and local regulations. To your example: You can buy drones today that will follow people around. The person who uses it is generally responsible for using it to film legally.

Mind you, I said "camera drone as a service", which is not the same idea as a camera-drone IoT device product with cloud-subscription features. (Instead, it's stupider!)

You know how a politician might hire a PR firm to produce a "day in the life of" documentary about them? Part of the PR firm's job would be to handle any negotiation of the local legal terrain required to get filming rights for locations, and likeness rights for other people appearing in the film. If they couldn't get such rights, it would also be part of their job to inform the customer of what things they now can't film, so that the customer could either make the choice to just leave some parts of their day un-filmed; or to re-arrange their schedule so that only legally-filmable events are on the roster for that day.

A hypothetical "camera drone as a service", in my mind, would be that, but handled mostly by an AI, maybe with OnStar-like interactive support if you get into an edge-case. (Again, it's a stupid idea! It's a thought-experiment, not a viable startup. :)

There are many services where part of the service you're paying for, is the service provider's expertise in navigating the local legal landscape in their own regulatory domain of expertise. In fact, that's entirely the point of some services: anyone can do their own accounting in a technical sense, but you pay an accountant because they know how to do your accounting in a way that complies with all your local regulations.

So, again: if one of the legal requirements of the CDaaS service is to automatically avoid (or at least not-surveil) any private property—then what would the rule for that look like?

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

#132

Post by c22 »

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…

This can be a Good Thing, but it depends a lot on the courts not being lazy and taking shortcuts. When I was in front of a judge there was no disagreement as to the material facts of the case, but my guilt and my sentence were decided based on the Court's determination of my intent. The only evidence the court had regarding my intent was my own testimony and the differing hypothesis provided by the police officers I'd had a verbal disagreement with at the scene. Guess whose story they went with.

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

#133

Post by zokier »

rolph wrote: post #86
snypher wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This phone number traces to Mike Bethers, Special Agent at Oregon Department of Justice. I might give them a call today and ask about these cameras.

Phone Number Details Phone Number: 5039326899 Area: Salem, OR (Oregon) Phone Company: NEXTEL COMMUNICATIONS, INC. Switch: PTLDOR40CM1 User Reports About: 503-932-6899 Number of Complaints: 0

HN is not really the place for doxing

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

#134

Post by m-ee »

MiroF wrote: post #124
m-ee wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oakland has shotspotter and my understanding is that it's been considered a failure

Really? Why? In DC, I think it's been pretty successful because lots of gunshots do not result in police calls.

Looking into it more it's less clear than I remembered. OPD considered scrapping it in 2014 saying the costs weren't justified and they'd rather have more money for their helicopter. Other cities have said they're not confident in its effectiveness but that doesn't seem to be a large factor here. They ended up keeping it.

https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Oakland-cops-aim-to-scr...

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

#135

Post by kube-system »

derefr wrote: post #131
kube-system wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Third parties do not typically have legal liability for how their customers use their products, but this a murky area that I am sure has tons of edge cases and exceptions depending on product, industry, and local regulations. To your example: You can buy drones today that will follow people around. The person who uses it is generally responsible for using it to film legally.

Mind you, I said "camera drone as a service ", which is not the same idea as a camera-drone IoT device product with cloud-subscription features. (Instead, it's stupider!) You know how a politician might hire a PR firm to produce a "day in the life of" documentary about them? Part of the PR firm's job would be to handle any negotiation of the local legal terrain required to get filming rights for locations, and likene…

I did notice that you said "as a service". That doesn't change the situation, really. The person who films is responsible for making sure they film legally. The added "on behalf of a customer" probably doesn't make a difference, unless your local laws care about whether your filming is commercial or not.

Changing the technology from 35mm film to VHS Camcorder to AI powered drone doesn't make a difference. Adding abstractions between the lens and the operator makes no difference. If your organization films with cameras, it should make sure it does so legally.

> So, again: if one of the legal requirements of the CDaaS service is to automatically avoid (or at least not-surveil) any private property—then what would the rule for that look like?

If you have determined that you need to "avoid private property" in order to comply with the law, then the rule you'd want to implement is "don't film private property".

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

#136

Post by Animats »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #62
tren-hard wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also worth noting that just about every redlight intersection has cameras mounted on top pointing at traffic in each direction. It's pretty much impossible to navigate through a city anonymously in a vehicle. Now with facial recognition software getting so advanced I'd water it's impossible to walk through a city anonymously as well. They don't necessarily need aerial imagery when every intersection has HD cameras po…

They’re not cameras, they are metal/RF/infrared/whatever detectors used to detect vehicles waiting at the intersection so lights don’t stop traffic for no reason. Source: I’ve had to call municipal governments to get the detectors rotated or angled properly due to them not detecting cars and therefore not changing the light to green. Of course it’s technically possible they also contain cameras, but I have yet to see…

Traffic signal cameras for traffic light control are common. They used to be dumb monochrome analog cameras connected to simple "non-pavement object detected in box" processing units. There's been considerable mission creep since. Here's the promo video from Econolite's current product.[1] HTDV, WiFi, car, truck, bus, bicycle and pedestrian detection, connects to control center if the bandwidth is available.

CALTRANS has most of their highway cameras available from their web site.[2][3] CALTRANS has been at this since the 1980s, and the cameras are mostly somewhat old and low-rez.

[1] https://www.econolite.com/products/detection/autoscope-visio...

[2] http://cwwp2.dot.ca.gov/vm/streamlist.htm

[3] http://cwwp2.dot.ca.gov/vm/iframemap.htm

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

#137

Post by kickopotomus »

Gasp0de wrote: post #128

The cameras are all password protected for me (from Europe). Did someone get notified and changed it?

Looks like they did. The logins weren't there earlier. Would love to see the frantic email thread that led to that. Still worth noting that none of those sites appear to have any sort of TLS enabled.

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

#138

Post by LiquidPolymer »

My idiot brother shot a county Sheriff during a traffic stop many years ago. The entire thing was captured on a dash cam so there was no doubt who did it. He immediately ran and was never captured.

These camera types were placed around his house from the power poles. The neighbor actually filmed the install.

I suspect this is standard le practice for various scenarios.

it’s been 9 years and my brother has never been seen since that night. I suspect he killed himself in the expansive, Wild, thick forests the area is known for.

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

#139

Post by sbierwagen »

zokier wrote: post #133
rolph wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phone Number Details Phone Number: 5039326899 Area: Salem, OR (Oregon) Phone Company: NEXTEL COMMUNICATIONS, INC. Switch: PTLDOR40CM1 User Reports About: 503-932-6899 Number of Complaints: 0

HN is not really the place for doxing

Tell it to GP, that's the same phone number posted upthread.
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