These birdhouses built into the shape of CCTV cameras were spotted at the Design Biennale in Saint Etienne, France. Pretty cool idea to deter riminal activity while saving the wildlife. via Pasta and Vinegar Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!...
Bicycle usage is up around the world - and with increased amounts of bikes come increased instances of bike thefts. Copenhagen residents alone had 20,000 bicycles stolen last year. Three initiatives from around the globe are aiming to combat and prevent bike theft using RFID (radio frequency ID) tags. The University of Portsmouth in the UK has begun embedding RFID tags on bikes registered in their WASP (Wireless Asset Security Protection) program. Students can park their bikes in designated safe zones and register their position via mobile phone. If their bike is moved without calling and entering a pin...
Over 400 years ago today, Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators placed 20 barrels of gunpowder beneath the British House of Lords. Today, the Houses of Parliament are getting a much more peaceful, but perhaps equally incendiary, delivery. Chafing beneath Britain’s widespread surveillance and increasingly restrictive laws, the Libertarian Party UK is sending each Member of Parliament a warning shot on the direction of their nation: a copy of George Orwell’s anti-totalitarian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Yesterday, the Libertarian Party announced the launch of its “1984 Campaign,” and by today, each Member of Parliament will have received a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four...
If there was ever a poster child country for the world as foreseen by George Orwell it has to be England. This was the country of my birth and even though I originally left with my mother aboard the QE II at a very (very) young age I have been back twice with the last time when I was 14 years old. Since that time England has changed into a country I don’t even think I would recognize let alone want to call home. It is a country where privacy is something that has disappeared totally as your every moved...
Following in Britain's footsteps, it looks like the Japanese government is looking to install CCTV cameras in every conceivable public place in order to keep an eye on the populous. But since it's Japan, they're doing it in a uniquely Japanese way: via their ubiquitous vending machines. As anyone who's been to Japan knows, there are vending machines all over the place there, especially in the cities. They're on every block and ever corner, offering up hot coffee in a can and cigarettes whenever you need them. The next generation of vending machines, as first released on Friday, will also...
Becky Hogge from the Open Rights Group sez, I've just come back from Parliament Square in London, where about 30 of us have spent the morning building a giant picture of Prime Minister Gordon Brown out of photos of CCTV cameras and other surveillance state ephemera. Take a look at some of the photos of the day (http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=FnFBigPicture&m=tags) - it looks fantastic (and the great weather helped!) Last week, Boing Boing helped us put out a call for people to capture the database state on their cameras. Today, to celebrate an international day of action for democracy, privacy and free...
pax 2008 USB Pumpkin Ditch your old paper business cards for a dot matrix one How not to hide from CCTV cameras Papercraft CCTV camera...
This is nice, it would be fun to put these all over the place, maybe adding a little red LED-throwie action too to make it appear it is "on"... papercraft CCTV cameras! via BB. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Paper Crafts | Digg this!...
Filed under: GPSThough not quite as bad as toting the GPS module around with you, one particular marijuana farmer had to be mighty embarrassed / wondering what he ever did to deserve such bad luck when a GPS-equipped turtle meandered into his crop. As the story goes, a close friend of the police -- a box turtle with no fear of Big Brother -- just happened upon a pot stash on US park property. Clearly, Mr. Isiah Johnson (the culprit) was heavily stoned when choosing US land to farm his ganja, and now he's in custody until he's "extradited back...
The Camerahead Project is a Seattle protest group upset about the growing prevalence of CCTV cameras there -- they're staging a bit of theater tomorrow in Cal Anderson Park, walking around with giant cameras on their heads to get people thinking about what it means to have their public spaces under constant surveillance. Local artist Paul Strong, Jr. says he’s holding the demonstration, called the Camerahead Project, to remind people that video surveillance cameras are recording their every move at Cal Anderson Park and three other parks around town. “The project not only raises the questions of who is watching...
Not the UK The United Kingdom, home to some 4.23 million CCTV cameras, has a problem with Google Street View. It seems that a busybody privacy rights organization, Privacy International, objects to Google’s commercial use of photos that include people. For-profit photos should have the express written consent of the people in them, it argues. Not unreasonable if you can clearly identify the person, I suppose. For its part, Google says it’s complying with all local laws. Google has a track record of annoying people, like those Pennsylvania folks that said Street View lowered the value of its property....
