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Redditor finds unsecured surveillance cameras seemingly placed by the US government
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- Title
- I made an alt because this is sketchy, so I can only post this here. The government (DEA, ICE, and local authorities) is hiding cameras on telephone poles, and then not securing those cameras with passwords. Anyone can access them.
- Authors
- IIlllIIllIIlllIllII
- Word count
- 1059 words
A few years ago a bunch of folks in a channel spent a night digging through unsecured webcams that could be controlled.
One guy had about eight or nine between his kitchen and living room, which was weird. Another was a hotel that was pointed directly at one guy working in a little office just off of the lobby. Plenty of yards, etc, too -- but the hardware was nothing like these.
There are directories of them, but all you need to do is search the last bit of the URL and you can find plenty of these.
If you're looking for a fun rabbit hole on night, tuck into this or spend the night looking for number stations, morse code, etc.
schedule / radio
I want to say, this thread and everyone's comments is a great example of how discussing and examining "conspiracies" can be a productive and engaging way to collectively understand current events.
I dislike a great number of things related to group conspiracy discussion. I won't go into detail, because the issues are obvious, but it is a platform can allow the right amount of speculation for some really provoking and unconventional perspectives.
Some of the most cogent perspectives on world events that I've seen have been buried in a whole heap of crazy.
DISCLAIMER: Probably shouldn't open any of these if your not on TOR browser. Interesting find nonetheless. Seems like it should be pretty big if these are really government cameras.
Big? Doesn't really seem like it. Very embarrassing, for sure. Two things that don't surprise me at all:
There are probably many many more that are properly secured that can't be scanned for this way because the person in some other agency branch office knows WTF they're doing. I don't say this to downplay the possibility that they're being used without proper warrants etc. We can and should hold our government accountable. However I also don't think this is a wide-spread conspiracy to spy on the American people.
Sure, but I would also argue that not all government surveillance is inherently immoral either, especially when it comes to combatting organized crime where it's often the only way it can be effectively accomplished. Mass surveillance is another matter entirely though; That shit is pretty hard to justify under any circumstances, IMO.
So it's not a big deal because it's normal for government institutions to be incompetent?
Well, my cynical answer is: "yes".
Mainly my response was directed at downplaying the conspiracy angle of it (since this was posted in a conspiracy subreddit). The incompetence and privacy concerns are still very much something that should be addressed.
Seriously they don't even require a password to access them? Can't say I'm surprised just disappointed. Hopefully they secure them now or something or else it could be used for stalking. I'm also a little worried that they may not need a search warrant to use these. I'm fine as long as their is proper oversight you know only using it for crime investigation not mass surveillance. Sadly this could be abused for mass surveillance or could
even currently be used for it.
You can see a whole lot of open cams here.
If a system can be used for mass surveillance by a government, given what we know about government's prior behavior with these tools, it is a safe assumption that it is currently being used for mass surveillance by a government.
Hate to be the person asking others to perform a free kind of labor for me, but could anyone summarize the findings here? I have reddit blocked.
Some person found nine high voltage boxes, one of the them labeled DEA, with high quality cameras pointed at various houses/places. The cameras were found via a web crawler looking for unsecured cameras.
Now that I'm writing this I am curious how the person knew what the physical boxes look like if they're just picking up random unsecured feeds.
Thank you as well!
Further down the thread someone posted some streetview pics that show some of the boxes they identified based on the OPs info:
https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy_commons/comments/gin79z/i_made_an_alt_because_this_is_sketchy_so_i_can/fqhihxe/
Oh, thank you! I'm not sure I agree with revealing the locations but the group effort on their part is kind of cool.
NP, and yeah, same. If these cameras are indeed related to legitimate law enforcement surveillance operations, having their addresses posted could potentially compromise any ongoing investigations. :/
The claim that the cameras are integrated with other infrastructure makes that very plausible. Unless this whole thing is misleading, you're right, investigations may be compromised.
However, the government agencies doing investigations like this should not be using such powerful tools with incompetent implementations. It puts everyone at risk and degrades an important relationship of trust. A private citizen detailing these findings provides an opportunity for informing public discourse as well as providing motivation for the agencies in question to be more responsible in the long-term.
I agree that those involved ideally should not have made this mistake in the first place, but to err is human... and as someone who used to work in computer forensics, I absolutely disagree with your above statement. There are proper, ethical ways to responsibly disclose security issues in order to make those responsible aware of the issues so they can fix them without compromising the security of all involved, and there are even ways to do so with the intent of also raising public awareness and encouraging discourse, but this is not one of them. See HackerOne's Responsible Disclosure Overview:
https://www.hackerone.com/responsible-disclosure-overview
And for instances like this where the involved parties may not have a responsible disclosure policy, or even be easily identifiable in the first place, HackerOne has a Disclosure Assistance program to help with that as well:
https://docs.hackerone.com/hackers/disclosure-assistance.html
You're right of course. I personally feel very strongly about maintaining security; Leaking on the internet tends towards degrading this security without providing benefit to anyone. I also agree that proper and ethical methods around disclosures are paramount to achieving productive change.
I'm not sure why this case struck me a little differently. I guess I have a different set of expectations for people outside of the forensics/cyber-sec world but I suppose that doesn't make a lot of sense. Everyone should care about contributing to our collective safety.
Leaking publicly on the internet without taking the time to fully understanding the situation beforehand, and also adding a conspiratorial/anti-government slant to the whole thing even moreso IMO. :/
But fair enough. We seem to largely agree about all this, so sorry if I came off as overly harsh. :)
I was trying to see some benefit in the discussion but your description really highlights the realities. I guess the allure was simply the seemingly scandalous nature.
hehe, I often can't help but dive in headfirst myself when a mystery of this nature is presented to me too... so I am definitely guilty of falling prey to the allure of it as well. ;)
I'll just copy & paste the thread here. tldr: OP browses unsecured webcams (common enough) and stumbles upon potential government surveillance cameras (high resolution, moveable, disguised, etc.). See below for links (use TOR!).
Someone (the government) is spying on us with hidden cameras. They aren’t even password protected.
So, I was just browsing looking at unsecured webcams the other day, as one does, when I came across these controllable cameras with really weird perspectives. Next, I noticed they seem to be in a box with glass on three sides, with large stickers reading “DANGER, HIGH VOLTAGE” on two of the sides. I have found at least 9 of these cameras, and one that literally has a “drug Enforcement Agency” label printed on the inside.
Things that make me believe this is the government:
-Super high quality cameras. A peeping tom would probably be better off with a lifetime porn hub subscription than to buy one of these to look in an old ladies window. I’m able to zoom in and read the lettering off a sign 968 feet away (as measured on google earth). I literally feel like a guy on CSI saying “Enhance” and the license plate on a car hundreds of feet away comes clearly into view.
-Installation. Of the cameras I’ve found, they are installed in places where Creepy uncle Joe with a 40’ ladder would look out of place. I can control the cameras and look at the hardware in the box, and it appears to be stealing power off the pole. It does remind me of the TV show Burn notice, one of the spy tips was “if you label something as high voltage on a telephone pole, even linemen won't be too inclined to mess with it”
-They appear to be using VPNsNone of the IPs trace back near their original location.
-I’ve found articles where cities are buying these, and I’ve even found a website that shows what a box may look like, but it’s not a 100% match. I suppose keeping something like that secret would be beneficial to prevent them from being stolen. http://www.qpcs.net/products/the-rsu-platform/rsu-covert/
Okay, I wrote that first half while I only had found two. Here is the status now, I have found 9 High voltage boxes, one DEA box, and a few regular traffic cameras. A lot of them pointed in people’s windows. I do not know if that is other people looking for unsecured cameras, or an operator.
Here are articles supporting the fact that the DEA and ICE are using these pole mounted cameras.
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/11/dea-and-ice-are-hiding-surveillance-cameras-streetlights/152724/
https://qz.com/1458475/the-dea-and-ice-are-hiding-surveillance-cameras-in-streetlights/
https://qz.com/1486479/the-dea-is-hiding-surveillance-cameras-in-vacuum-cleaners/
Here are the links to look at the cameras and their location. I’m not including the DEA camera I stumbled on, as it is clearly part of an ongoing investigation.
[links removed]
Update: you can control the camera by clicking the box on the lower right, then adjust with the bars on either side, or even zoom in. ANYONE can control. with all yall looking around some are bound to get pointed at the inside of the box, that's why they'd be black.
Update 1700 UTC.
Men in high visibility vests with masks had been spotted working on the Queens camera, it is now offline, at least for me. Farmdale Ave Los Angeles camera is IDed as a LAPD Gang and Narcotics camera.
Common question: How did I find these. There is a website called insacam.org that crawls around google and picks up all these unsecured cameras. A lot of them are just pictures of billboards or a parking lot somewhere in China, But I got good at knowing what to look for and where to look. It just became kinda a gut thing, I’ve always been good with that sort of thing. I didn’t run out of cameras to find, I just stopped looking after I found these. After finding the box with a printer label that said “Drug Enforcement Agency” it made my stomach feel funny, and I figured it was time to switch from Search to spread. These are just the ones where the IP says they are in a west coast time zone. I'm sure there are more out there.
Again, I am not here for Karma, I am here because this is messed up. Feel free to copy and paste, and send wherever you’d like. I don’t know if it’s my VPN, my nerves, the traffic to these cameras from reddit, or something more tinfoil hat sounding, but my computer has slowed down considerably.
Errr...I'm not sure that we should be allowing what appear to be legally dubious links here. Mentioning to use Tor at the top of a long post with a list of links that could be misinterpreted as being links to, eg, maps while scrolling through the comments seems problematic.
done.
Thank you!
The thing that worries me more than the obvious privacy issue is the incompetency and systematic technical delinquency of governments around the world.
These are the people that we trust to protect us, and yet they cannot even password-protect a publicly-accessible camera.