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posted by azrael on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the all-this-is-mine dept.

From the NY Times: Your cat may never give up your secrets. But your cat photos might.

Using cat pictures - that essential building block of the Internet - and a supercomputer, a Florida State University professor has built a site that shows the locations of the cats (at least at some point in time, given their nature) and, presumably, of their owners.

Owen Mundy, an assistant professor of art who studies the relationship between data and the public, created "I Know Where Your Cat Lives" as a way of demonstrating "the status quo of personal data usage by startups and international megacorps who are riding the wave of decreased privacy for all," Mr. Mundy wrote in a post about the site.

Using images of cats uploaded to photosharing services, including Flickr, Twitpic and Instagram, Mr. Mundy extracted latitude and longitude coordinates that many modern cameras, especially those in smartphones, attach to each image. His site displays random images from a sample of one million of what Mr. Mundy estimates are at least 15 million pictures tagged with the word "cat" online.

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Refugee from beyond on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:21PM

    by Refugee from beyond (2699) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:21PM (#72790)

    extracted latitude and longitude coordinates that many modern cameras

    It has nothing to do with cats then.

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    • (Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:29PM

      by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:29PM (#72862)
      Except that lotsa people post pictures of their cats. Pro-tip: Read the whole summary.
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      • (Score: 1) by Refugee from beyond on Wednesday July 23 2014, @06:22PM

        by Refugee from beyond (2699) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @06:22PM (#72883)

        Lotsa people post pictures period.

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        • (Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 23 2014, @06:38PM

          by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 23 2014, @06:38PM (#72891)
          Most cat photos happen at their place of residence, unlike their photos of their meals. You really should try reading a little more.
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    • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday July 24 2014, @07:16AM

      by wonkey_monkey (279) on Thursday July 24 2014, @07:16AM (#73155) Homepage

      It's the internet. Everything is to do with cats. Apparently.

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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:25PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:25PM (#72791)

    "tagged with the word "cat" online."

    He should try some of these, just to make sure, especially the second to last. What could possibly go wrong?

    "Synonyms feline, house cat, kitty, moggy (also moggie) [British], puss, pussy, pussycat" (from Mirriam Webster)

    Somewhat on topic, someone could probably make some ad impression cash off a site of "hilariously sorta mistagged geolocated photos". I wonder what the pix look like for pixs taken more than a mile from the nearest walmart. Or how many people of walmart pix are actaully taken in other stores (Target?)

    Or do data analysis, like a histogram of number of mentions of the word "bubbler" on the y-axis vs distance in miles from Wisconsin on the x-axis (seriously wisconsinites, WTF?). And before you get your hopes up, in WI a bubbler isn't some cool new pr0n or shock site, its just a boring water fountain.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by danmars on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:25PM

      by danmars (3662) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:25PM (#72818)

      FYI, that's what they call them in Rhode Island. I don't understand - that term would make much more sense if it were referring to water coolers.

      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday July 23 2014, @06:28PM

        by urza9814 (3954) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @06:28PM (#72888) Journal

        I live in Rhode Island and I've always thought that was a southern thing...lol

    • (Score: 1) by nyder on Thursday July 24 2014, @04:40AM

      by nyder (4525) on Thursday July 24 2014, @04:40AM (#73126)

      Bubbler is a type of Bong. yes, I like in Washington State.

  • (Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:28PM

    by egcagrac0 (2705) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:28PM (#72793)

    Extracting coordinate data from a photo of a cat does not tell you where my cat lives.

    Assuming it hasn't been tampered with, it tells you where the camera was when the photo was taken.

    Perhaps, with several images, such data could be correlated, and an inference could be made.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:25PM

      by frojack (1554) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:25PM (#72856) Journal

      More precisely, it tells you where the camera was the last time it could get a GPS fix.

      Newer cameras just leave out the coordinates from the EXIF info without a fix, but older
      ones, especially in older cell phones just drop what ever they last had in there.

      I know some paranoid people leave the camera GPS off on purpose. Not me.
      Just about all my photos these days are GPS tagged. Its very useful if you travel.
      I've got tons of old pictures from past trips in the pre GPS camera days that I can't even figure out what state/province I was in at the time other than by painstakingly comparing time and date on a bunch of shots and estimating traveling speed.

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      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @07:44PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @07:44PM (#72937)

        > I know some paranoid people leave the camera GPS off on purpose. Not me.

        Iphone lets you control it on a per-app basis. So turn it off for facebook/instagram and you don't have to worry about accidentally uploading your gps coordinates for the world to see. But you still get them in your regular photo app for your own purposes.

        I'd like to see a smart GPS spoofer. Such that if you are in a pre-specified geofence it spoofs it with a pre-specified location somewhere else. Put fences around your home, work, kids school, basically any location you go to frequently and it would use a fake location. Anywhere else, it would use the real thing. That reduces the chance that you can be located by your photos in the places you need would need the GPS info the least but preserves it for those cases where you would need it but also pose the least risk to you if a stalker gets ahold of it.

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 23 2014, @08:22PM

          by frojack (1554) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @08:22PM (#72962) Journal

          GPS tagging of photos is an option on every Android phone I've ever used.

          I think a better option is to not upload photos of your kids PERIOD.
          Facebook got so much grief for this that they remove EXIF data from all photos.

          There are Chrome plugins that let you read EXIF info just by hovering the courser over any image.
          Makes testing this really quick.

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    • (Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 23 2014, @06:52PM

      by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 23 2014, @06:52PM (#72900)
      "Extracting coordinate data from a photo of a cat does not tell you where my cat lives."

      Oh, please. Have you ever owned a cat? They're not "let's hop in the car and go for a ride!" sort of animals. If you've got a photo of a cat indoors with GPS information, statistically speaking you've found the home of that cat. If you can link that cat to its owner, and given the fussy nature of cats this is reasonably easy to deduce as well, you've got a damn good shot at finding an individual's domicile. Your point would have a lot more validity if we were talking about dogs.
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      • (Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Wednesday July 23 2014, @08:07PM

        by egcagrac0 (2705) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @08:07PM (#72954)

        Oh, please. Have you ever owned a cat?

        Yes.

        If you've got a photo of a cat indoors with GPS information, statistically speaking you've found the home of that cat.

        I fundamentally disagree with that. You've found the home of the cat if p=1; I don't think you have enough data points to make that assertion based on one photo.

        From the photo, you also don't know that it's my cat. (A number of times, I photographed a friend's cat at a friend's residence and posted them online.) Many photos are augmented with caption information ("Aww, look at my little fluffykins chasing the red dot"), and that would constitute another data point, increasing p.

        Pedantry? Absolutely. I'm still confident that after only one photo you don't know where my cat lives, even if you have a very good guess.

        • (Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 23 2014, @08:11PM

          by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 23 2014, @08:11PM (#72957)
          You're talking about one case where they're talking about thousands. Guess what? ;)
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          • (Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Wednesday July 23 2014, @09:17PM

            by egcagrac0 (2705) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @09:17PM (#72984)

            For each of the million cat photos, they have a guess. For each guess, p<1. p approaches 1 with more correlating data points.

            Unfortunately, ithinkiknowwherethiscatlives.com isn't as catchy and probably doesn't spur the same kind of discussion about privacy and EXIF scrubbing - even if it wouldn't annoy we pedants.

            I continue to think that for any given prediction based on a single datapoint, p<1. I haven't seen anything suggesting that they're correlating multiple data points.

            Yes, they've probably guessed right many of the times - that doesn't mean they know. Lots of probably-right guesses isn't the same as knowing.

            Yes, I'm aware that this puts me on the "mathematician" side instead of the "engineer" side. (see 'Woman in a bar' [northwestern.edu])

  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:32PM

    by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:32PM (#72796) Journal

    One can make use of sensor noise pattern to identify individual cameras regardless of Exif tags. This just shows how reckless people are with their privacy. Guess one could make the Exif show that the picture of a cat on a green summer is taken on the north pole with a Spook camera..

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:32PM

      by frojack (1554) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:32PM (#72864) Journal

      You MIGHT be able match a photo to individual cameras, IFF you HAVE the camera in hand so as to do a comparison. Otherwise, its just not a privacy issue. Even identical cameras with consecutive serial numbers will have different patterns of noise. The best you can do with un-retouched photos sans EXIF is come up with an educated guess about what company supplied the CCD.

      So if you post a cat picture with EXIF data removed, nobody will be able to tell you much about it, especially if its been through any photo processing app, which will remove or obscure individual camera noise patterns.

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      • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 23 2014, @11:55PM

        by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @11:55PM (#73044) Journal

        The noise pattern is specific to a specific camera. Even two cameras from same batch will have different patterns. So your comparision is invalid.

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday July 24 2014, @07:39AM

          by frojack (1554) on Thursday July 24 2014, @07:39AM (#73162) Journal

          Isn't that EXACTLY what I said?

          Even identical cameras with consecutive serial numbers will have different patterns of noise.

          Reading is fundamental.

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  • (Score: 1) by NeoNormal on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:41PM

    by NeoNormal (2516) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:41PM (#72801)

    > an assistant professor of art who studies the relationship between data and the public

    Wow, pulling lat/long from publicly posted pictures' EXIF is assistant professor level work? Sign me up!

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday July 24 2014, @09:12AM

      by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Thursday July 24 2014, @09:12AM (#73184) Journal

      I know. I was hoping for some kind of feline face recognition combined with photosynth-style software that stitches together overlapping backgrounds from all pics of the same cat to build a 3D map of the cats' home. You could also tentatively mark all non-overlapping pictures of the same cat as being within x metres (where x is the area of typical cats territory) of the same location. Once it has a background map for one cat, it can start looking for overlapping pics of other cats, and stitch those into the map as well. Rinse, repeat over millions of photos until you've built up a cats-eye-view map of the world built entirely of the backgrounds of cat pics. Kind of like a shin-height google streetview. Once it has that, it's simply a case of looking for identifiable scenes in the background and/or position of sun/ stars in the background to fix the cat-map onto a known map of the real world.[1]

      But yeah, art student discovers EXIF data, thinks it makes him a hacker. News for nobody.

      [1] Although I'm sure there would be some trifling technical hurdles to overcome, it's all completely possible. A simple script tying together cat-recognition, image stitching and astronomical geolocation software should do the trick.[2]

      [2] Assumes perfectly spherical cats.

      • (Score: 1) by NeoNormal on Thursday July 24 2014, @01:29PM

        by NeoNormal (2516) on Thursday July 24 2014, @01:29PM (#73248)

        Your idea is FAR superior to what this guy has done. I'd give you a grant to pursue that... if I was a grant giver. ;) It also sounds like more fun.

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Alfred on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:59PM

    by Alfred (4006) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:59PM (#72808) Journal

    This is why I have a dog, for the increased privacy.
    /sarc

  • (Score: 2) by hoochiecoochieman on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:17PM

    by hoochiecoochieman (4158) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:17PM (#72814)

    Have you tried "pussy" instead of "cat"? That would have given much more interesting results! Anyway, if you search the web for cats in Portuguese or French you may be surprised with what you find!

    Now seriously, I haven't RTFA, but this looks like a no-brainer. I myself have turned geolocation on when taking pictures of places, so when I upload them to a website, a map will show up right beside them. What's so new about that?

    Should people take care about geolocation when they publish pictures for every cat and dog to see (pun intended)? Sure. But is it part of some secret conspiracy? No.

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by GeorgeScuttles on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:21PM

    by GeorgeScuttles (4499) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:21PM (#72816)

    I guess this is a new form of Geocaching. You show up, find the GPS tagged cat. Replace with your cat. Leave.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:32PM

      by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:32PM (#72865)
      Speaking as an owner of a black cat I'd instantly kn... actually that could work.
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  • (Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:40PM

    by JeanCroix (573) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:40PM (#72834)
    I remember a big scare went through the mainstream news sites about 12 or 18 months ago regarding the default embedding of geographic info in images taken using many cell phones. People were shocked(!) that by posting pictures of their children online, strangers could get the lat/lon data from them. The final advice was basically to check your camera settings and turn off the geo tagging - something the average non-tech user would probably not know to do. This article seems to be saying the same thing, just more with the humor and less with the panic.
    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:41PM

      by frojack (1554) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:41PM (#72868) Journal

      But if you look at random pictures on line, you'd be surprised at how FEW of them actually contain EXIF info.
      The larger the picture (resolution) the more likely it is to have this data intact, but its not as common as you
      might think.

      So it seems to me that most people don't know how to turn ON geo-location, or that post processing before upload ends up stripping the EXIF info out.

      During the Iraq invasion I saw some pictures posted in some forum I was following, which showed monstrously long lines of US armor and mechanized transport (something that the Pentagon was keen to keep under wraps at the time, and still not commonly found today). The COMPLETE exif info was intact, including the GPS coordinates, the Soldier's name, make, model, Fstop, etc. The guy could have been court marshaled. A word to the forum admin got all of them photoshopped.
       

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  • (Score: 1) by looorg on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:37PM

    by looorg (578) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:37PM (#72867)

    Looking at his page. There seems to be a lot of cats that apparently live out in the middle of oceans and the sea or are those the smart people that turned off the geoloc imbedding? While interesting in some ways looking at the pictures and watching the background or everything that isn't the cat can usually tell you quite a lot to.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Drake_Edgewater on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:53PM

    by Drake_Edgewater (780) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:53PM (#72875) Journal

    How interesting is that NoScript tells me that an addthis.com link is present in the iknowwhereyourcatlives.com page (I won't link to these).

    Remember that we discussed addthis.com in a previous [soylentnews.org] story about canvas fingerprinting.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @07:05PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @07:05PM (#72917)

      Not to mention, they are using Cloudflare's so-called "Browser Integrity Check," so visitors using proxies or with a "non standard" user agent string are blocked as likely Evil Spammers.

  • (Score: 2) by mendax on Wednesday July 23 2014, @08:11PM

    by mendax (2840) on Wednesday July 23 2014, @08:11PM (#72955)

    My evil black cat lives in Hell. She just comes to visit me on occasion.

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  • (Score: 2) by mtrycz on Thursday July 24 2014, @08:25AM

    by mtrycz (60) on Thursday July 24 2014, @08:25AM (#73175)

    All of the comments sofar are focused on the fact the guy chose to tag "cats".

    Just exchange "your cat" for "your daughter" in the title, and here's the point.

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