Back in January, police acknowledged that a mysterious hack had injected ransomware into Washington DC’s CCTV surveillance system. Now authorities have identified two Romanian suspects they say were responsible for hacking 123 of DC’s 187 surveillance cameras, as part of broader extortion plan.
From far enough away, this installation by the Czech artist Jakub Geltner almost looks like a flock of seagulls preening at the end of a jetty. Almost.
CCTV and other security cameras are meant to stop crime, but an ingenious drug ring in a Mexican border town turned the lens back on the police, hiding an elaborate secret system of internet-controlled security cameras as a counter-surveillance program.
This 77-year-old man from the Czech Republic has never been luckier. As he foolishly scurries across a train track, the man mis-times his walk and almost gets killed by a speeding train. The train comes so close to hitting him on the tracks that it actually does. His foot is clipped by the train and you can see one of…
On the side of a building in Madrid, the Spanish artist SpY recently installed 150 CCTV cameras with, in the artist's words, "the intention of not watching over anything." It kind of makes us long for the days when CCTV was the most threatening symbol of the surveillance state. [SpY; StreetArtNews]
A life of small-time crime is difficult enough as it is; the pay's not great, the cops are on your case, your conscience flares up. But one particularly dim bulb in Somerset, England made things even harder on himself by robbing a man who installs IT cameras for a living. Whoops!
There are security cameras all over the place, and as we creep ever forward into a technological utopia distopia future, there are going to be even more, gazing at you from the street corners, in stores, and who knows where else. But all that footage doesn't have to be pure surveillance; you can turn it into art.
Apparently security cameras are even less secure than we thought. Eighteen popular brands of cameras have been found to have serious flaws in their own security, leaving at least 58,000 unsecured, open-to-basically-anyone security cams out there.
It should come as no surprise that quite often, lurking in the shadows, a security camera is secretly leering at you. In stores, in banks, even on the street; and now they can recognize you too. Of course, there are ways to fight back, but unfortunately they include wearing these goofy-looking glasses.
Watch one of the two winners of the $588 million Powerball jackpot last Wednesday. He looks at the numbers and goes "YES!", then he shows it to the store clerks, as if he couldn't believe his luck.
In a world where security cameras are nearly as ubiquitous as light fixtures, someone is always watching you. But the watcher might not always be who you think it is.
On a cold, dark night on the mean streets of the UK, an undercover police officer was radioed and informed that a potential suspect was close by. Keen to do the right thing, he set off in hot pursuit. Twenty fraught minutes later, he learned he'd been chasing... himself.
The London Riots caused so much havoc that they continue to spook British officials. So much so that they're thinking of implementing so-called "Smart CCTV" that can track potential subjects and their behavior. Cue the requisite 1984/V for Vendetta comparisons.
500,000 cameras have been purchased by the Chinese government for installation in the Chongqing city over the coming three years, to keep an eye out for crime, but more importantly political activists. Or so human-rights warriors fret.
Social scientists have long known that people manage their reputations by modifying their behavior in public. But new research out of Australia now shows that this tendency to "act appropriately" extends beyond our actions and into our moral judgments.
Apparently Russia has a slight problem with some crazy-skinhead running around town with an axe, hacking into ATMs. Evidence of his second destruction was caught on CCTV by the ATM, which sadly didn't fare too well:
Art, of course! Korean student Hwang Kim is a little into voyeurism—so he created this CCTV neck collar, or "chandelier," as he's termed it, allowing you to monitor his every move via twelve cameras. It's a bit like Saw meets sci-fi dystopia, but there's something oddly beautiful about the whole thing. If you ignore…
A few days ago, China Central Television showed footage of what they claimed was an air force training exercise conducted on January 23. From the looks of things, they were actually just playing clips from Top Gun.
Cats! Always independent little fellers aren't they? Lilou the cat ran away from her home in suburban Ireland by boarding a train headed to Dublin. I imagine she was going out for a few pints with her mates.
Last night, a thief walked out of the Paris Museum of Modern Art with some $127 million in paintings by Picasso, Matisse, and Braque. There were no lasers and no temperature-sensitive security systems. Hell, there wasn't even an alarm.
