Some Motorola automated license plate reader surveillance cameras are live-streaming video and car data to the unsecured internet where anyone can watch and scrape them, a security researcher has found. In a proof-of-concept, a privacy advocate then developed a tool that automatically scans the exposed footage for license plates, and dumps that information into a spreadsheet, allowing someone to track the movements of others in real time.
Matt Brown of Brown Fine Security made a series of YouTube videos showing vulnerabilities in a Motorola Reaper HD ALPR that he bought on eBay. As we have reported previously, these ALPRs are deployed all over the United States by cities and police departments. Brown initially found that it is possible to view the video and data that these cameras are collecting if you join the private networks that they are operating on. But then he found that many of them are misconfigured to stream to the open internet rather than a private network.
"My initial videos were showing that if you're on the same network, you can access the video stream without authentication," Brown told 404 Media in a video chat. "But then I asked the question: What if somebody misconfigured this and instead of it being on a private network, some of these found their way onto the public internet?"
In his most recent video, Brown shows that many of these cameras are indeed misconfigured to stream both video as well as the data they are collecting to the open internet and whose IP addresses can be found using the Internet of Things search engine Censys. The streams can be watched without any sort of login.
In many cases, they are streaming color video as well as infrared black-and-white video of the streets they are surveilling, and are broadcasting that data, including license plate information, onto the internet in real time.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Barenflimski on Monday January 13 2025, @03:28PM (16 children)
I'd love if every streaming camera by these companies was live on the internet. People should see firsthand what is being collected about them and their daily lives.
The only reason to lock them down is to put them behind a paywall.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Thexalon on Monday January 13 2025, @04:30PM (15 children)
Also, it would be fun to use those cameras to track important people's movements, e.g. "So senator, can you explain why you have been to Fronty's Meat Market on a weekly basis?" Or "Governor, we have noticed that significant public funds disappear every time you are at the Super Classy Gentlemen's Club". "Hey big boss, we noticed that whenever you aren't in a meeting you are enjoying a vodka and tonic at Slammers."
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1, Informative) by pTamok on Monday January 13 2025, @04:42PM (12 children)
Since there is no apparent upper bound in intelligence, but a hard lower bound, then one super-hyper-mega-intelligent person could move the average such that everyone but that person had below average intelligence. Where the average is, and how many people are above or below the average depends on the distribution, and which average you take.
(Score: 4, Touché) by ikanreed on Monday January 13 2025, @05:04PM (10 children)
On what do you base the claim of a hard lower bound?
Do you, for example, think a mayfly and a squirrel are equally intelligent?
And for that matter, what makes you so sure the upper limit is unbounded, theoretically or practically? Do you propose increasingly complex systems that can be intuitively understood with fluid intelligence? How do you measure that complexity?
IQ, as a tool is built entirely around an assumption of normal distribution. By definition there should always be exactly as many people with 80 IQ as 120 IQ, for example. If you propose an alternate absolute system, what is it? How is it measured?
You think you're being sneaky and clever by understanding that some distributions have non-normal modalities, but to be honest, your assertion raises more questions than the snarky comedy bit you're replying to.
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Monday January 13 2025, @07:01PM (9 children)
Raising questions can sometimes be good.
As for the hard lower bound: it is zero. Unless you believe there is value in the notion of negative intelligence.
As a result, because there is a hard lower bound, it cannot be a Normal distribution as the distribution is not mirror symmetric about the peak. It is, indeed, conventional to disregard the cut-off tail below zero and model the distribution as an offset Normal distribution ( the classic Normal distribution, or 'bell-shaped curve', is centred at zero, and mirror symmetric in the y-axis ). This might, or might not be a good approximation (it depends on the data), but one of the main reasons it is used so often is that it makes certain statistical calculations (a) possible and (b) easy to do.
If we take human IQ measurements, where, as you say, the average (the peak of the offset normal) is defined to be 100 on the x-axis, then it is not possible to have an IQ greater than 200, as that would make the distribution non-symmetric. If you take the actual Normal distribution, the y-value never reaches zero, no matter how large 'x' is. It becomes 'vanishingly' small for multiple standard deviations beyond the mean (sufficiently large 'x'-values), but never zero. The Normal distribution is also a continuous distribution, for which corrections are needed when modelling discretised data, such as IQs in unit steps.
George Carlin's joke is indeed funny, but its humour is dependent on a set of common assumptions that do not always apply (and enumerating them would make the delivery distinctly unfunny).
We could also have a fun (for sufficiently small values of 'fun') discussion what the upper bound of (human) intelligence is; and also whether IQ tests are a good proxy for intelligence. At present, the upper bound is someone who gets a perfect score on an IQ test, which raises the question of what kind of test you would need to measure someone's IQ that was greater than that.
Have an excellent day.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday January 13 2025, @07:05PM (8 children)
There is no special scientific meaning to zero IQ. You are mistaken on an essential fact. A negative IQ is possible, as all that entails is being 7 standard deviations below average on whatever test you're normalizing with.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday January 13 2025, @07:22PM (7 children)
How would you score a test such that the result were 7 standard deviations below the mean?
Note that most tests have fixed ranges of IQ for which they are validated, such that they are invalid for numbers lower than a particular positive value.
Using the same argument (assuming height distributions of adults are Normally distributed), you would say that negative heights are possible. I would suggest that it is meaningless to suggest that real values of height, weights, and IQs can be negative. Than again, since negative probabilities [soylentnews.org] are used, I could simply be having a failure of imagination.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday January 13 2025, @07:34PM (4 children)
I do not think it would practical or helpful to create such a test, but I am saying "zero" isn't a meaningful number in any particular way.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday January 13 2025, @08:09PM (3 children)
No, you are saying that the concept of negative IQs is meaningful, and I'm politely asking you to justify that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday January 13 2025, @09:11PM
About 6 thousand humans on the planet should have a negative IQ on a sufficiently precise test.
About 6 thousand humans on the planet should have a 200+ IQ on a sufficiently precise test.
That is literally the definition of the metric. It's a stupid metric, but that's how it works
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2025, @09:12PM (1 child)
You are treating IQ as a linear scale with a hard zero. He is treating IQ as a scale that measures standard deviations from Normal.
I think one standard deviation is 20 IQ points. In which case, being 7 SD below Normal would indeed result in an IQ of negative 40.
Which off you is correct, I don't know, but there is little practical difference over the range that is usually applicable.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday January 13 2025, @09:40PM
True, but the polite discussion is one of the things I come here for. Thanks for leaping in with a lucid summary.
(Score: 2) by https on Tuesday January 14 2025, @12:24AM (1 child)
You can't have it both ways, that there's both an upper and a lower bound (fixed ranges) and your earlier assertion of "not Normal because of hard lower bound."
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday January 14 2025, @01:42PM
That's a nice point, but going back to fundamentals, the Normal distribution is "continuous probability distribution for a real-valued random variable." - this means that it has no finite upper or lower bounds, and it doesn't 'go in steps' - it is not discretized. If you are looking at data which has hard bounds, then whoever is doing the analysis needs to check that the Normal distribution is a good applicable approximation, and be aware that sometimes it might not be.
IQ tests being only validated for a range of IQs makes things worse, not better, as that is a pretty large marker that the distribution of results the from such tests is not Normal.
As far as I know, IQ tests give discrete (usually integer) results, but are likely measuring something that can be assumed to be a continuous variable - so this article becomes relevant:
free range statistics: Inferring a continuous distribution from binned data [freerangestats.info]
As ever, analysing a joke is far less humorous than the joke itself.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday January 14 2025, @06:47PM
Yes, the joke depends on the not-scientifically-proven idea that there's an approximately bell-curve normal distribution of intelligence.
Given that around 50% of Americans can't read past a 6th grade level [thenationalliteracyinstitute.com], and the story for math is worse [wyliecomm.com], I believe the scientific case isn't contradicting the basic conclusion about how stupid people really are. And everyone who has worked a service job can tell you lots of stories that indicate that yes, there are a lot of complete idiots out walking around.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2, Troll) by Username on Monday January 13 2025, @05:50PM (1 child)
The rich can afford drivers and dummy cars. Musk already has people fly his jets to random places.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday January 13 2025, @08:46PM
I was thinking more along the lines of "there's 1 rich or powerful guy who the public wants to watch and thousands of citizens who would benefit from watching each one." So you don't just track Elon's jet, you follow Elon using the cameras onto his jet.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Monday January 13 2025, @06:55PM (6 children)
This is a strange story and they or the AI seem to be using photos to "help relate to the humans"
Going back some decades to the very start of SDR technology (like the first days of RTLSDR USB dongles in 2010, fifteen years ago) the thing to do was to monitor those car tire pressure serial numbered transmitters.
Also you can simply scan and record every wifi SSID/MAC that walks by.
I never saw it and I've not gotten into BT but I'd assume you can log Bluetooth pretty well.
Back in the Iraq/Afghanistan occupation days I came up with the obvious observation that you don't need a full protocol decode of something like a RFID passport to set off an IED (or in this case, log who is where at what time) all you need is the ability to log a unique transmitted or pollable/pairable address.
I messed around a little with wifi wardriving back when IIRC modified "orinoco" cards with an external antenna and a linux laptop and a GPS was fun to just drive around and log SSIDs. You could probably have made a decent geolocation system just using a map of my neighbor's SSIDs vs lat/lon. This is just flipping the script and using a stationary radio to monitor moving cars (and people, and phones)
I think people underestimate how much transmitting they do in the modern era. Modern world is "loud" WRT radio waves.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday January 13 2025, @07:06PM (2 children)
Yes. I am piqued that clocks that set themselves to the German DCF77 transmission no longer work in my location. The most likely candidate for interference is (poor quality) power supplies for LED lightbulbs.
(Score: 4, Informative) by sgleysti on Tuesday January 14 2025, @12:36AM
77.5kHz, yeah, a lot of switching power supplies run in that range. Basically anything that plugs into the wall and makes DC power of any variety. 25kHz to 100kHz is very common, although the top end is increasing with the availability of GaN transistors and higher frequency magnetic materials. That might eventually help you with DCF77 reception :) but it will be a while. The most cost effective stuff is probably still in that 25kHz to 100kHz range.
Some control topologies don't run at a fixed frequency (quasi resonant flyback comes to mind) and could encroach upon 77.5kHz at times, sort of randomly.
There are international regulations about radiated emissions from power supplies—we have to follow them where I work—but I wouldn't be surprised if not every product complies. Additionally, there are single components that can fail and make a power supply noisy, but it will continue to function just fine as a power supply.
(Score: 4, Informative) by sgleysti on Tuesday January 14 2025, @12:40AM
I pick up WWVB just fine where I am. The clocks I have use the newer phase modulation that was added to WWVB in 2012. Apparently DCF77 had this before WWVB did. Sorry to hear that's not enough in your case.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by The Vocal Minority on Tuesday January 14 2025, @05:30AM (2 children)
I believe Bluetooth mac addys are required to randomise frequently to avoid tracking according to later version of the specifications. I'm not sure how many actually do this in The Real World(tm).
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday January 14 2025, @05:13PM (1 child)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Friday January 17 2025, @04:52AM
Sorry not really sure, this was just some random piece of information I managed to retain from a DefCon talk I watched years ago. I'm guessing what you are describing is more of an auth issue, and the credentials would have to be separate from the MAC address if that is going to be changing, so different things.