
Secretive Surveillance Company Is Selling Cops Cameras Hidden in Gravestones - Ivoah
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qjdp95/this-secretive-surveillance-company-is-selling-cops-cameras-hidden-in-gravestones
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harimau777
I often see people say that we don't have an expectation of privacy in public.
However, it seems to me that ignores the nuance of actual social norms.

\- Eavesdropping is generally considered anti-social.

\- Taking up-skirt pictures in public is, I presume, illegal.

\- If someone buys their prescriptions at a public grocery store, would it be
alright for someone in the store to photograph their medical data?

It seems to me that the law needs to differentiate between the general sense
in which one doesn't have privacy in public (e.g. the public probably has the
right to know if a "family values" politician goes to a strip club) and
actively spying on someone.

This is particularly the case when technology makes spying possible in a way
that it wasn't previously. For example, I imagine it's not uncommon for many
people to carry confidential information openly (say carrying a prescription
in your hand as you walk to the grocery store) because it's not realistically
possible for someone to read it and connect it to you. However, that changes
with high speed photography, OCR, and facial recognition.

~~~
jermaustin1
> the public probably has the right to know if a "family values" politician
> goes to a strip club

Why anymore so than if YOU go to a strip club?

I am a fervent supporter of recycling, should I expect a person to follow me
around in public waiting for me to throw a soda can into the wrong bin?

Because one SUPPORTS a specific policy, does not mean one has to LIVE their
life by that policy.

~~~
SQueeeeeL
For politicians, authenticity of belief is a big concern. If you are someone
who geniuenly believes strip clubs are a moral evil, why do you deserve to be
manipulated by a politician who doesn't actually care about the issue and is
only trying to steal your vote

~~~
jermaustin1
Why is it manipulation, if they say they are going to shut down strip clubs,
and actively work towards it, why should I care if they WANT to shut them
down, vs doing it because it is a campaign promise.

Politicians actively working against their own interests to do what they feel
is truly better the country should be held in high regard. You may agree with
their policies or not, but you can't fault a person for enjoying something
they are against.

I smoked pot as a teenager, and enjoyed it, and fondly look back on those days
getting high with my friends. Your view point would mean I couldn't actively
be against teenagers smoking pot, and if I were a politician, I should not
back anti-smoking legislation for teenagers.

~~~
vezycash
>Politicians actively working against their own interests to do what they feel
is truly better the country should be held in high regard.

Please mention one politician who works against their own interest. Cos I
don't know any.

~~~
WBrad
Bernie Sanders is a millionaire who will absolutely raise his own tax rate for
the good of the country.

~~~
usefulcat
Another way to interpret that is that he values getting elected to the
presidency more than the cost of any tax hike he might sign into law as
president.

~~~
WBrad
He's been pretty consistent in those values for quite a long time before
running for president. So I doubt that's why he holds those values
specifically to become president.

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droithomme
This story is a bit weird. The company is trying to repress publication of
their catalog that was obtained from a FOIA act request directed at a small
police department. Well this company is emailing their catalog at police
departments nationwide. Fair enough but the catalog is certainly not a matter
of national security as they are abusively claiming.

Their items are fairly boring and things that anyone here with a modicum of
competence could hack together easily. Camera and transponder in a gravestone,
child car seat, etc. basic stuff. Nothing is a big secret, why are they acting
like it is? I guess to get attention. If a police department needs any of
their items, they can save money hiring a high school student with modest
skills and awareness of what's available on aliexpress.

~~~
londons_explore
I suspect moreso if it becomes common knowledge exactly what the 'police baby
seat' looks like, police investigatons might be compromised.

I'd like to see the risk assessment of whoever made that baby seat though -
removing a chunk of foam and replacing it with electronics doesn't sound good
for the baby's health in case of an accident, and I doubt very much the
manufacturer of police spy gear has the expertise to re-test it.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>I suspect moreso if it becomes common knowledge exactly what the 'police baby
seat' looks like, police investigatons might be compromised.

I think it's more likely that they don't want to be forced to reduce their
profit margin by having to embed their crap in a wider variety of baby seats,
grave markets, alarm clocks, etc. If they can skate by with one or two models
of each they will make more money.

>Removing a chunk of foam and replacing it with electronics doesn't sound good
for the baby's health in case of an accident, and I doubt very much the
manufacturer of police spy gear has the expertise to re-test it.

Call me cynical but they likely don't care about that because they almost
certainly make the departments take responsibility for use of their products.
The departments don't care about being liable because they can usually hand-
wave that sort of thing away under qualified immunity and if a judge does make
them take responsibility and the departments don't care because the lawsuits
are paid with our money, not theirs.

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kuzimoto
Why is it assumed that the safety of the car seat is compromised because of
installing a camera? There is plenty of void space inside of a car seat. The
only foam sections of the seats I have are around the head-area. The rest is
just plastic with a slightly padded cover.

~~~
stallmanite
Is not the void space important in that collapsing to absorb energy is
necessary? Stuffing the voids can absolutely make it dangerous.

~~~
kuzimoto
I'm fairly certain that car seats are not designed to have crumple zones. If
you had enough pressure to cause the plastic of a car seat to collapse
inwards, you most likely have way bigger problems on your hands.

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rahuldottech
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22022010](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22022010)

Copying my comments from there:

\---

> In warning the site not to disclose the brochure, SSG’s attorney reportedly
> claimed the document is protected under the International Traffic in Arms
> Regulations (ITAR), though the notice did not point to any specific section
> of the law, which was enacted to regulate arms exports at the height of the
> Cold War.

We really need an overhaul of all these old laws that were enacted for a
completely different era, which are now being misused. Another example is 200
year old laws being used to get companies to break encryption.

\---

I don't know how I feel about hidden surveillance cameras in public. I know I
shouldn't have any expectation of privacy in public and all that, but CCTV
cameras in plain view are a different matter.

Are we going to live in a world where we're constantly being recorded and
analysed by hidden cameras? This makes me very uneasy. Whatever happened to
the idea that democratic governments should be for the people?

I'm sure there's no way that this can ever possibly be misused /s.

If agencies are using these for surveillance on specific targets then that's
maybe okay, but as far as I'm aware, there is not much regulation regarding
hidden cameras in public - at least, not in many parts of the world.

~~~
Nasrudith
They are nothinh but flaming corrupt hypocrites. They operate in the business
of surveilance yet have the gall to complain about their non-existant right to
privacy as an organization?

The fact they aren't even citing the subsections hints at specious legal
intimidation. The complexity is too high, lawyers are too expensive, and
abuses of the law go too unpunished.

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ajsnigrutin
Is there a price?

Taking a raspberrypi zero, a camera, 4g modem, a couple of batteries and a
charge circuit can turn any large-enough object into a hidden camera, for
<$100 + the price of object itself (+ some dremel-ing and superglue).

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logfromblammo
I find it more interesting that they are threatening journalists with civil
lawsuits and criminal penalties for disclosing the contents of their
advertising brochure than the actual contents of that brochure.

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thulecitizen
Am I the only one who thinks that in the future we might have with us at all
times some sort of complex infrared video-camera-blocking tech, together with
a sound jammer?

~~~
lb1lf
No worries. If such surveillance devices become widespread, complex infrared
video-camera-blocking tech will be outlawed - after all, they are there to
provide security and prevent crime, hence anybody trying to thwart them is
either against security or a criminal...

/s

~~~
thulecitizen
> anybody trying to thwart them is either against security or a criminal

Please could you tell me what you read in this article?

[https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/britain-
stole-45-t...](https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/britain-
stole-45-trillion-india-181206124830851.html)

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toss1
>The Tombstone Cam ...all inclusive system can be deployed for approximately
two days with the include PB-180LiFePO4 battery."

Considering that the structure they have to work with has at least the
appearance of hundreds of kilos of granite, so there's not a very tight
constraint on weight or volume, I'd think they could at least provide for,
even as an option, a battery that would last for a week or a month.

That, plus some of the prices quoted give me the impression that this company
is one of those that charges silly money for mediocre engineering.

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logfromblammo
A surveillance company can have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Methinks
they doth protest too much.

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bitL
This in conjunction with 5G would make surveillance complete. I wouldn't be
surprised if 5G got some free channel/band used specifically for "telemetry"
from all 5G-capable devices around, transferring real-time audio etc.

~~~
nyolfen
there is nothing special about 5g vs current solutions. it’s just faster and
supports more clients per station with worse range.

~~~
bitL
It's just there is too much bandwidth there and some could be repurposed for
"telemetry". Many things can be derived from parallel audio/video/IMU streams
from multiple phones/devices around a certain spot of interest. Storing them
for e.g. a month, automatically analyzing streams with Deep Learning, with
suspected ones passed over for a human review. 5G could be a testing tech for
that due to bandwidth capabilities.

~~~
nyolfen
sorry, does 5g magically give other people access to all the phone audio in an
area?

~~~
bitL
Nope, but it could be used to R&D a new tech that would make mandatory
connections to nearby 5G to some "telemetry" band where all sensory
information would go, regardless of whether you like it or not. Similarly to
how SMS type 0 is handled by baseband processor in every single cell phone
already - you don't even know you received/sent hundreds of those. It's not
like there isn't some precedent already most people don't know about...

~~~
nyolfen
yes, and i guess they could r&d a 5g standard that streams 4k video from your
phone to the nsa at all times on a particular band. the standards bodies would
still have to agree to it and consumers would have to want to buy it. i will
reserve my concerns for things that actually happen.

~~~
bitL
Car manufacturers are already in talks with telcos to get dedicated 10MB/s
links to transmit all the telemetry, including visual data. Once such
infrastructures are in place and standardized in one domain, it doesn't make
much effort to move them to other, "unthinkable" domains.

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wruza
Modern light of other days.

