[HN Gopher] The Follower: Using open cameras and AI to find how ...
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The Follower: Using open cameras and AI to find how an Instagram
photo is taken
Author : maciejgryka
Score : 336 points
Date : 2022-09-12 11:56 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (driesdepoorter.be)
(TXT) w3m dump (driesdepoorter.be)
| MisterTea wrote:
| This is why I have no social media accounts. No one knows what I
| am up to. No one knows where I have been. No one can find me.
|
| Do not track is now a lift style.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Do you use a credit/debit card? Do you pay utility bills, rent
| or a mortgage? Do you carry a cell phone? Do you drive a car?
| If you said yes to any of these (and many more!) then you are
| not invisible at all.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| you can be found easily if someone really wanted to. social
| media is just one way you can be tracked
| turdnagel wrote:
| "Enemy of the State" (1998) tech becoming reality.
| ahofmann wrote:
| Well, some of the things shown in the film were already reality
| at that time. Only that one was called a conspiracy theorist,
| if one has noted this at that time.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Some of the photographers and subjects seem to know exactly the
| right angles to appear more "fit."
| altacc wrote:
| Some people put a lot more effort into their photos than I do!
| Although as they selected people with 100k+ followers I guess
| taking good photos is basically work for them (or rather their
| patient partners).
| matt-attack wrote:
| There's something about it that's so undignified, and cringe
| inducing to me. To see someone pose, repose, inspect, repose,
| etc. I just could never want to put that much effort into how
| I'm appearing. The faux spontaneity is just so off-putting.
| bil7 wrote:
| capturing a vibe can be very lucrative if you have the
| follower count. Authenticity doesn't matter if your post
| still gets likes and shares.
| Shacklz wrote:
| > The faux spontaneity is just so off-putting.
|
| I think it would be really good educational material. Showing
| the silly dance that is performed removes all the glamour
| from the result, and might help alleviating the bad
| psychological effects that glamour is causing
| sangnoir wrote:
| Seeing how the sausage is made almost always results in
| disillusionment regardless of the industry.
|
| Some of the magic was taken away when I learned that certain
| scenes a movie I liked required dozens of takes: it felt too
| mechanical/industrial and went against my romantic notions of
| how art is made. This is not far off from the pose-repose-
| inspect cycle you noted, but has a much larger supporting
| crew (and budget) and far longer hours.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Are you kidding?
|
| How you stitch each of those together into a seamless ever-
| changing story *is* the magic, especially when you know how
| it's done.
|
| Everything happens in tiny almost imperceptible 1/24th of a
| second steps, and yet eye-blink instant can make the
| difference between you believing a scene and not believing
| it.
|
| Next time you watch a film or a TV programme, try to see
| how the trick is done. Watch for how people are positioned
| so that their eyelines cross when they're talking. Watch
| how when you cut from one shot to another, there's a
| movement in the shot that you leave, that matches the shot
| that you enter. This fools you into not "seeing the join".
| As you turn your head to look around you blink
| subconsciously, so your brain is used to dealing with
| cutting between scenes. How you do that to tell a story is
| a phenomenally powerful and beautiful art.
| altacc wrote:
| Most art is the result of numerous trial & error. Most
| finished works of creativity/art, be it visual, music,
| poetry or prose, are preceded by numerous sketches, drafts,
| discarded attempts and edits. Creativity is a process and
| requires work. I think this is important to know as so many
| people think that they aren't artistic or creative as they
| can't immediately create something wonderful. But those
| that can seem to create spontaneous art have practiced a
| lot to develop that skill. It is possible to practice
| creativity in order to develop more.
| woevdbz wrote:
| All these could be submissions to
| https://instagram.com/influencersinthewild
| londons_explore wrote:
| Down without a mirror...
| proto_lambda wrote:
| https://archive.ph/YjOfv
| [deleted]
| spoonjim wrote:
| Can someone explain to a novice how "AI" is used here? Is the
| person in the IG image being correlated to a security camera time
| stamp with face recognition or similar?
| status200 wrote:
| It is using computer vision to compare the instagram photo with
| the recorded 'open camera' footage to give the best guess at a
| timestamp. You can see the CV drawing boxes around the objects
| it is identifying in the footage on the right side, and it
| already knows that the photo was taken at the location (since
| the location tag was used that to scrape the photos), so it is
| basically just hunting for a person that best matches the
| subject in the instagram photo.
| bmicraft wrote:
| The instagram photos are most likely not posted exactly when
| they were shot but some time after. Also, even if they post a
| rough location there is no guarantee that they would show up on
| any particular cam. I'd image the ai has to go through a very
| large amount pictures and cam footage to find one where the
| influencer shows up on a cam some time before it was posted.
| secretsatan wrote:
| The metadata of the image would reveal the actual time taken
| over when it was posted
| jcims wrote:
| Reminds me of this RadioLab episode about a company that loiters
| over areas with a high resolution imaging platform that allows
| them to 'rewind' from the scene of a crime to see where the
| suspects came from:
|
| https://radiolab.org/episodes/update-eye-sky
|
| The company in question:
|
| https://www.pss-1.com/
| jstrieb wrote:
| If you're looking for more info, there is a whole book that
| goes beyond the content of this episode. I found it to be an
| informative, and eye-opening (albeit disconcerting) read.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Eyes-Sky-Secret-Gorgon-Stare-ebook/dp...
| tomatocracy wrote:
| It also made me think of this:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20629671
|
| All of these are good illustrations of the idea that by putting
| multiple data sources together, even "anonymous" data sets can
| be de-anonymized surprisingly easily.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Man, that is creepy as hell. Perhaps it can be useful to really
| bring home to people how they're being spied on every day.
| bosswipe wrote:
| Why is it creepy? The influencers already publicly posted their
| location and photo.
| rexpop wrote:
| What makes an "influencer" less deserving of privacy in the
| dimensions they haven't shared? Furthermore, what makes
| someone an influencer, when this technique can be used on
| smaller accounts, too.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It's not about the influencers. It's about the rest of us,
| and how pretty much anybody can do this sort of thing with
| anyone for any other purpose.
|
| It's just another piece of evidence that we really are living
| in dystopian times.
| Rias wrote:
| Looks like the website is down, here's the YouTube video about
| the project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd_P0LxIBGI
| allenu wrote:
| Seeing the context in which the photos are taken (busy streets,
| kind of grimy looking) makes you realize how powerful a camera
| is at creating an illusion. That is, taking a good photo means
| composing your shot so that you don't include elements you
| don't want in it. What you end up with is a photo which makes
| it appear you're the only one at a location, or that a location
| is more beautiful or exciting than it actually is. Your brain
| fills in all the details of what's outside of the frame, which
| often isn't what's really there.
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| Archive.is managed to archive it: https://archive.ph/YjOfv
| mjwhansen wrote:
| very thought-provoking - people think only a portion of what
| they're doing is shared, but government sees all
| secretsatan wrote:
| These are probably privately owned cameras, which are far more
| widespread, i don't think governments have what meta has on
| you.
|
| I'd go so far as saying, hand wringing over government
| surveillance has served as a smokescreen over the proliferation
| of private surveillance.
|
| Not that i want to advocate for government surveillance, just
| that, in my experience, people who worry so much about it
| seemed to have entirely missed how much private companies have
| expanded into public space.
| [deleted]
| bolasanibk wrote:
| I wonder what the storage requirements for video from multiple
| traffic cameras for weeks is? A few TB per day?
| jewel wrote:
| It depends on the bitrate. Let's assume 10 mbps for five
| cameras. That'd be 16.4 TB for a month's footage.
|
| Depending on the application, you could lower the bitrate
| significantly during times of low motion or low detail (such as
| at night). You could also drop the framerate.
|
| I've found that when the scene is static, without panning, and
| no wind blowing leaves on trees, you can compress really well.
| I have a Wyze outdoor cam looking at the front yard that does
| 1080p at a little less than 1 mbps.
| willxinc wrote:
| The concept and visualization reminds me a lot of similar
| technology in the TV show Person of Interest.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_Interest_(TV_serie...
|
| It's quite interesting to think about how relevant the themes
| being discussed in that show are ever present today.
| robk wrote:
| Underrated show and absolutely prescient!
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| It was a cool show, but a lot of the domains I am familiar
| with (hacking/cybersecurity, programming, compression) were
| very much made up for the storyline, so I suspect they didn't
| have much accuracy in domains I don't know much about
| (superintelligent AI, government surveillance, etc).
| lilsoso wrote:
| Great project.
|
| Is the code for this project or similar projects available on
| Github?
|
| The unstated implications of all this are unsettling.
| NIL8 wrote:
| This is a mixed bag of both good and bad. Imagine a domestic
| violence victim being tracked/stalked by their abusive partner.
| Conversely, allowing citizens to monitor these cameras could
| potentially help prevent/solve crimes. In the end, it's probably
| a Constitutional dilemma that will find it's way into the high
| courts someday soon.
| jsdwarf wrote:
| What does "open camera" mean? Public webcam? Hacked CCTV? How did
| the author find those cameras?
| netsharc wrote:
| Considering the open camera "feeds" have the bounding boxes
| around people, I guess they're CCTVs mistakenly put on the open
| Internet, findable through some services (can't remember the
| name of a famous one).
|
| Well actually he probably added the bounding boxes. DDG result
| for "Dublin Temple Bar livestream":
| https://www.earthcam.com/world/ireland/dublin/?cam=templebar
| [deleted]
| Ftuuky wrote:
| Shodan is the name IIRC
| htrp wrote:
| The Temple Bar (Dublin) actually makes this publicly
| available. They also have a feed of the inside of the bar so
| that you can virtually experience Ireland.
|
| https://thetemplebarpub.com/
| bla3 wrote:
| There are a whole bunch here:
| https://www.earthcam.com/mapsearch/
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| This reminds me of an old 4chan "prank". There was an open
| camera somewhere in New York(?) and in the view was a shop
| with various display stands. Users would post something like
| "Im gonna do it, watch!", everyone would start watching the
| video feed and like half an hour or so later a kid would run
| up and knock over one of displays. They'd just fuck with the
| poor shop owner whenever they were bored.
|
| Edit: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/nyc-cardstand-
| earthcam...
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| https://www.tfljamcams.net/
|
| Traffic cameras are publicly available in London. The first
| thing I used to do when coming to the office each morning was
| to look myself up in the traffic cameras along my journey
| (historic footage is also publicly available).
| penneyd wrote:
| Do you know why it's just London?
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| It isn't just London, but I think London has the most
| traffic cameras in the city center. Other UK cities seem to
| have them mostly on the highways.
| ElCheapo wrote:
| It's not surprising, but I find very cute the fact that the
| further you are from the center the older the security
| cameras are.
| doodlesdev wrote:
| What the actual fuck. This is actually frightening. I can
| watch anyone, anywhere, anytime in London, anonymously,
| without them knowing? I guess I have to add yet another city
| to my never-visit-again list. No wonder schizophrenia is more
| common in developed countries, you ARE being watched.
|
| Remember that this is still 2022. People think there's no
| privacy anymore, but in a few decades we are going to look
| back and wish we could go back. Of course these are public
| spaces where privacy has never _truly_ existed, but having
| cameras transmitting your every step to anyone with internet
| access is chilling.
| Frost1x wrote:
| Many state department of transportation groups in the US have
| camera on roadways all alone their respective state online.
| They're usually fairly low res, probably to reduce costs and
| data as they only need to check traffic flow, but they're
| often public. Check your states DOT website and look for
| traffic, there could be a treasure trove of cameras.
| bochoh wrote:
| A really famous spot in Dublin is the Temple Bar (Red bar in
| examples). They have live cameras in HD available inside and
| out https://worldcams.tv/ireland/dublin/temple-bar
| naillo wrote:
| Not creepy at all
| dylan604 wrote:
| How is this any more creepy than any of the other people in
| those public locations videoing the same thing? Every day, you
| are recorded by hundreds of cameras, and a lot of those cameras
| are privately owned/operated. Specifically, I'm talking about
| people's smart phones. No matter where you go, just take a look
| around you, and you will probably be in someone else's camera
| frame.
|
| There is no expectation of privacy in public. This just drives
| it home.
| drewbeck wrote:
| It's creepier because it's connecting it to real life
| people's accounts, meaning anyone can then trace that person
| in the video and find out so much more about their life or
| stalk them etc.
| naillo wrote:
| Both are really creepy. It becomes more creepy when you go
| from a recorded video that no one really watches to one
| systematically analyzed with AI though.
| dicknuckle wrote:
| That's how a lot of license plate reader features for
| surveillance cameras already work.
| naillo wrote:
| It's more creepy when it's human beings you're analyzing
| than non humans.
| dylan604 wrote:
| if only "no one really watches" was strict. if that video
| is one that gets posted to a social, but then rarely
| watched (by humans) after, it is still now available for
| all of those evilScraper types to pull down that content
| and do whatever they feels. those are the creepy bastards.
|
| knowing that the three letter agencies can do this same
| forensics to catch $badGuy is somewhat comforting that at
| least it _can_ do the function it was meant. preventing
| everyone else from doing the same is where the wheels fall
| off the bus. it 's another one of those situations where
| the intended purpose gets shoved to the side with
| unconsidered purposes becoming the norm which makes $tech
| look evil.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I realised what they were doing on the second photo/video.
|
| OMG that's the most terrifying thing I have seen in ages.
|
| Amazing, innovative, tipping-point-sign, but still, terrifying
| Cyberdog wrote:
| I was scared at first too until I realized we're talking about
| people already taking photos for the purpose of posting to
| Instagram anyway. It's involuntary surveillance while
| participating in voluntary surveillance.
| somebodynew wrote:
| It's only following people who posted their own photos
| voluntarily in this particular implementation, but consider
| the next incremental step for this same approach: a website
| where you upload a photo of anyone's face and get a map/trail
| of every public photo/video posted by _someone else_ where
| that face appears in the background for the last month. Now
| you 're not just finding the subject of a voluntarily
| portrait in security camera footage from a public place, but
| finding anywhere that any private person has gone in any
| populated area where anyone else is taking photos for social
| media.
|
| How many involuntary social media photo and video backgrounds
| do you think someone living in NYC or SF is identifiable in
| every day? I would venture to guess, enough to track a lot of
| their life. The only thing I see stopping anyone from making
| this site today is the challenges in scraping large
| quantities of public data from social media sites. Once you
| have the data, the rest seems like a solved problem.
| jrockway wrote:
| My favorite part of the pandemic is it being socially
| acceptable to wear a face mask. I enjoy the break from
| surveillance.
| lilsoso wrote:
| Masks increasingly help less and less, for example see:
|
| https://www.datasciencecentral.com/sunglasses-and-face-
| mask-...
| MauranKilom wrote:
| They certainly seem to have a hand for... uncanny projects.
|
| Like a clock that shows you what percentage of your life is
| over.
| thih9 wrote:
| You might enjoy "the green leopard plague" [1], it's a sci fi
| novella and (mild spoilers ahead, pause reading if you want to
| avoid them) it describes a future where image processing like
| this is a bit more common and accessible.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Leopard_Plague
| hackpert wrote:
| That is actually pretty freaking cool. Not hard to do by any
| means, just cool.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I think it's harder than it looks to do it reliably and
| automatically.
| matt-attack wrote:
| We have no idea as to the reliability of the system. We don't
| know how many false positives were found. We don't know if
| these were just hand selected from date/time/location.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The machine learning element isn't really needed if the
| instagram posts are tagged by date/time...
| FrenchTouch42 wrote:
| You could have taken the picture a day before or am I missing
| something? The post date/time itself does not mean much.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Many (most?) photos have EXIF tags with timestamps showing
| when the picture was actually taken, regardless of when it
| was posted. But given the amount of post-processing that
| likely happens to Instagram photos, I would not be
| surprised if that info was stripped out entirely, or at
| least altered.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| EXIF tags are scrubbed by most social media sites.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| but they certainly keep the original with the tags
| somewhere.
| Nadya wrote:
| Due to a massive rise in doxxing and stalking that
| occurred after 4chan made checking EXIF data an extremely
| common tactic when doxxing people - complete with "how
| to" guides for less tech savvy individuals - most image
| hosts and social media sites nowadays strip EXIF data
| from uploaded images. Some sites will detect/extract
| certain data only (eg: to include the camera/lens used
| for photography-focused image sharing sites) and scrub
| the rest. Been that way for roughly a decade if not
| longer now.
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