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Saturday, July 9, 2011

Secret Service raids Apple store artist for snapping 1000 spy photos (Yahoo! News)

A young digital artist secretly recorded shoppers peering into computers at New York Apple stores

A sneaky act of experimental Apple store art led the Secret Service to raid a young Brooklyn resident's apartment this morning. Kyle McDonald, a 25-year-old digital artist, secretly snapped a thousand images of unsuspecting Apple store shoppers for a project that sought to explore "how we stare at computers and how computers see us." Using his own custom spyware, McDonald secretly documented exactly that over the course of 3 days in June.

To pull the feat off, McDonald installed the hidden program onto Macs at New York's 14th street and Soho Apple stores. The stealth software, which made use of the computer's built-in cameras, took photographs of unaware New Yorker shoppers as they peered into the seeming abyss of the computer screen. He collected the photos, which were automatically transmitted to a private server, but had to reinstall the software in person each morning during the experiment.

Earlier this week, a video that documents his undertaking in full went live on Vimeo, followed by a Tumblr blog also appropriately entitled "People Staring at Computers." McDonald says he would honor individual requests to remove the photos, though his Twitter account suggests that the federal raid hasn't dampened his commitment to the feat of public art.

The stealthy undertaking resulted in the confiscation of McDonald's two computers, his iPod, and some other storage devices, but it isn't yet clear if the McDonald was actually in violation of any laws. While the Secret Service warrant cited 'computer fraud' as the cause for the raid, the clever digital artist reportedly asked an Apple security worker for permission to take photos in the store — though the guard probably couldn't have imagined the scope of what he had in mind.

(Source)

Artist Gets Secret Service Visit Over Apple Store Webcam Spying (PC Magazine)

A Brooklyn-based artist has caught the attention of the Secret Service after installing software on Apple Store computers that takes Webcam photos every two minutes, and posting those images on the Internet.

The "@secretservice just stopped by to investigate ... and took my laptop. please assume they're reading any emails you send me," Kyle McDonald tweeted on Thursday.

McDonald took the photos and posted them on a Tumblr blog called "People Staring at Computers." He told Mashable that he got permission from Apple security guards to take photos in the store, but it's unclear if they were aware that McDonald also meant installing software and snapping Webcam shots. Given that it attracted Secret Service attention, it's safe to say that not everyone was excited by the project.

When asked on Twitter if he got permission from every person whose photo appeared on his blog, McDonald said no because "as i understand, photography in open spaces is legal unless explicitly prohibited." He will, however, remove any photos if asked, he said.

It appears McDonald was committed, however; Apple wipes its computers every night, so he had to reinstall the program every day he took photos, Mashable reports. That program focused only on photos; "keylogging public machines would make me uncomfortable," he tweeted.

McDonald said the warrant he received from the Secret Service said his actions violated 18 USC section 1030. That deals with "fraud and related activity in connection with computers," and covers, among other things, accessing a computer without authorization.

McDonald said he contacted the Electronic Frontier Foundation for help with the case, and "they've encouraged me to stay quiet for now," he tweeted.

In a video (below) describing the project, McDonald said he was "thinking about how we stare at computers" and thought, "maybe if we could see what our computer sees we would stare differently?" As a result, he took 1,000 photos over three days at computers in New York Apple Stores. The video shows McDonald at the 14th Street store for what he called a "public exhibition." As shoppers are perusing Macs, the screen flashes and takes a photo; sometimes it displays photos of other people. Most shoppers look confused and try to get their images off the screen. "Most people just hit 'escape,'" when their photos popped up, the video said.

McDonald's fascination with faces continues. He just released a face-tracking app, FaceOSC.

People Staring at Computers from Kyle McDonald on Vimeo.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Founder of TwitPic tweets his run-in with the law via his own Twitter photo-sharing service (Yahoo! News)

Twitpic founder Noah Everett shows off Twitter indiscretion at its finest

A single errant tweet may have cost a prominent politician his job this month, but one high-profile Twitter user opted to live-tweet an indiscretion to top that — his own arrest. Late last night, TwitPic founder Noah Everett found himself in a run-in with the law for apparently going on a moonlit walk with no shirt on. Naturally, he tweeted the whole thing and posted a photo from the back of the police car over his own photo-sharing service.

Everett first sent the missive "Getting arrested...in the back of a cop car now" followed by the siren-lit TwitPic as self-proclaimed proof. Happily, Everett was only having a little good, arguably-clean fun; he later revealed the reason for his arrest: "...I guess you can't walk down your own street half naked...who knew - I got a free ride home by the nice police officer."

TwitPic is a service that lets Twitter users upload photos and share them across their respective micro-blogging universes, for better or worse. Of course, not all of TwitPic's applications are quite as silly as Everett's late-night adventure. The instant visual sharing afforded by such services has inspired a wave of global citizen journalism and social media-fueled uprisings — most notably, the ouster of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak earlier this year.

Update: According to a set of new tweets from Everett, he wasn't arrested at all, merely detained briefly and questioned.

Twitter via Mashable