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thatsnotcanonpodcasts · 4 years

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Drones, Take Two & Stargate

Welcome, hello, G’Day, hi, we are glad to announce the latest episode from Nerds Amalgamated is here. We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed recording it for you. Also as Supanova Brisbane has now happened we have to say thank you to all those who stopped by the booth, it was fantastic to meet you all. We hope everyone enjoyed the week end and have lots of photos to remember how cool it was. It was awesome seeing so many amazing cosplayers and catching up with our friends from Comics2Movies, the Sons of Obiwan, Jamie Johnson, Super Tee, Cyanide Pop Press among so many others.

First up this week we have facial recognition drones being utilised by Police Scotland to help find people who get lost. That’s right folks, AI drones using facial recognition to find individuals. Now, we know what you are thinking, hang on, this is a problem, next we know it will be used for… You will need to listen in to find out more. But we are sure you will enjoy it and have a laugh.

Second, we have news that is promising for game developers and gamers all over the world. Yep, that is a bold claim, but we are sure you will agree when you hear it. Those legends at Take Two have discussed the future of gaming and the expectations of a drop in the costs of game development. What is suggested is great and worth looking forward to. We have some fun on this topic and really get into it.

Our third topic for the week is about Stargate Command. No, the Goa'uld aren’t attacking, and the Wraith haven’t found the way through the Stargate to our universe. No, it is sad news, but possibly good news also. That’s right, a little bit of good news to look forward to that off sets the bad news. Now for the fans of Stargate this news is pretty big, and for those who need to evolve their appreciation then you better hurry up. The Professor and Buck are now contemplating a marathon viewing based on this news. Want to know what this news is you know what to do.

As normal we have the shout outs, birthdays, remembrances, and special events. As always, thank you for listening, take care of yourselve’s, look out for each other and stay hydrated.

Facial Recognition Drones - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-50262650

Take Two’s hot take on Next gen - https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-09-19-next-gen-wont-see-dev-costs-spike-take-two

MGM shutting down Stargate Command - https://boundingintocomics.com/2019/11/01/mgm-shuts-down-stargate-command/

Games currently playing

Buck

– Call OF Duty WW2 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/476600/Call_of_Duty_WWII/

Prof

– Call Of Duty WW2 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/476600/Call_of_Duty_WWII/

- Did Not Play

Other topics discussed

Drone Interrupts soccer match

- https://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/oct/15/albania-charged-uefa-serbia

Chinese police anti drone guns

- https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2079045/chinese-police-force-equipped-anti-drone-guns

Hong Kong bans make up

- https://boingboing.net/2019/10/05/facially-absurd.html

Hong Kong ban masks

- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/hong-kong-protesters-rally-ban-wearing-masks-191004144726630.html

Dutch police use eagles to hunt drones

- https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/12/16767000/police-netherlands-eagles-rogue-drones

‘Missing’ Icelandic tourist

- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/missing-icelandic-tourist-goes-in-search-of-herself-8096831.html

An Aspie Life (PC Game)

- https://store.steampowered.com/app/786410/An_Aspie_Life/

Joseph Mallozzi’s blog post on the future of Stargate Command site

- https://josephmallozzi.com/2019/10/31/october-31-2019-stargate-command-and-the-future-of-stargate/

New Melbourne Brown Coats (Firefly & Serenity fan club in Melbourne Victoria)

- https://www.facebook.com/newmelbournebrowncoats/

Drostand Hynd (Call of Duty : WWII Character voiced by David Tennent)

- https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Drostan_Hynd

The Monuments Men (2014 war film directed by George Clooney, and written and produced by Clooney and Grant Heslov.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monuments_Men

Canadarm (also known as Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SRMS))

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm

Chicken Run 2

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_Run_2

Hulk (2003 American superhero film directed by Ang Lee based on the fictionalMarvel Comicscharacter of the same name.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulk_(film)

Lou Ferrigno (American actor, fitness trainer, fitness consultant and retired professional bodybuilder)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Ferrigno

The Incredible Hulk (2008 American superhero film directed by Louis Leterrier based on the Marvel Comics character the Hulk, produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Universal Pictures)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Hulk_(film)

Shoutouts

4 Nov 1922 – In Egypt, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Thus, began a monumental excavation process in which Carter carefully explored the four-room tomb over several years, uncovering an incredible collection of several thousand objects. The most splendid architectural find was a stone sarcophagus containing three coffins nested within each other. Inside the final coffin, which was made from solid gold, was the mummy of the boy-king Tutankhamen, preserved for more than 3,000 years. Most of these treasures are now housed in the Cairo Museum. - https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/entrance-to-king-tuts-tomb-discovered

4 Nov 1942 – Disobeying a direct order by Adolf Hitler, General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel begins a retreat of his forces after a costly defeat during the Second Battle of El Alamein. The retreat would ultimately last five months. The Allied victory in the Second Battle of El Alamein was a huge morale boost after a long period of attrition in North Africa, and it made a national hero out of General Montgomery. - http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/4/newsid_3564000/3564385.stm

4 Nov 1973 – The Netherlands experiences the first Car-Free Sunday caused by the 1973 oil crisis. Highways are used only by cyclists and roller skaters. - http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/november4th.html

Remembrances

4 Nov 1992 - George Klein, Hamilton, Ontario-born Canadian inventor who is often called the most productive inventor in Canada in the 20th century. His inventions include key contributions to the first electric wheelchairs for quadriplegics, the first microsurgical staple gun, the ZEEP nuclear reactor which was the precursor to the CANDU reactor, the international system for classifying ground-cover snow, aircraft skis, the Weasel all-terrain vehicle, the STEM antenna for the space program, and the Canadarm. He died at the age of 88 in Ottawa,Ontario - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Klein_(inventor)

4 Nov 2008 – Michael Crichton, American author, screenwriter, and film director and producer best known for his work in the science fiction, thriller, and medical fiction genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films. His literary works are usually within the action genre and heavily feature technology. His novels epitomize the techno-thriller genre of literature, often exploring technology and failures of human interaction with it, especially resulting in catastrophes with biotechnology. Many of his novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and scientific background. He wrote, among other works Congo,Sphere,Jurassic Park, Rising Sun & The Lost World. Films he wrote and directed included Westworld,Coma, The Great Train Robbery, Looker, and Runaway. He died from lymphoma at the age of 66 in Los Angeles, California - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton

4 Nov 2014 – S. Donald Stookey, American inventor. He had 60 patents in his name related to glass and ceramics, some patents solely his and others shared as joint patents with other inventors. His discoveries and inventions have contributed to the development of ceramics, eyeglasses, sunglasses, cookware, defense systems, and electronics. He was a research director at Corning Glass Works for 47 years doing R & D in glass and ceramic development. His inventions include Fotoform, CorningWare, Cercor, Pyroceram and Photochromic Ophthalmic glass eyewear. He died at the age of 99 in Rochester, New York - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._Donald_Stookey

Famous Birthdays

4 Nov 1925 - Doris Roberts, American actress, author, and philanthropist whose career spanned six decades of television and film. She received five Emmy Awards and a Screen Actors Guild award during her acting career, which began in 1951. She had several prominent roles in movies, including playing opposite Shirley Stoler in The Honeymoon Killers, Billy Crystal in Rabbit Test and Robert Carradine in Number One with a Bullet among many others. She achieved continuing success in television, becoming known for her role as Raymond Barone's mother, Marie Barone, on the long-running CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. She was born in St. Louis,Missouri - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Roberts

4 Nov 1933 - Sir Charles Kuen Kao, physicist and electrical engineer who pioneered the development and use of fibre optics in telecommunications. In the 1960s, Kao created various methods to combine glass fibres with lasers in order to transmit digital data, which laid the groundwork for the evolution of the Internet. Known as the "Godfather of Broadband", the "Father of Fiber Optics", and the "Father of Fiber Optic Communications", Kao was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for "groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication". He was born in Shanghai - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_K._Kao

4 Nov 1953 - Peter Lord, English animator, film producer, director and co-founder of the Academy Award-winningAardman Animations studio, an animation firm best known for its clay-animated films and shorts, particularly those featuring plasticine duo Wallace and Gromit. He also directed The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! which was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 85th Academy Awards. Lord is the executive producer of every Aardman work, including Chicken Run, Arthur Christmas and Flushed Away. He was born in Bristol - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Lord

Events of Interest

4 Nov 1847 – Sir James Young Simpson, a Scottish physician, discovers the anaesthetic properties of chloroform. On inhaling the chemical, they found that a general mood of cheer and humour had set in. But suddenly all of them collapsed only to regain consciousness the next morning. Simpson knew, as soon as he woke up, that he had found something that could be used as an anaesthetic. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Young_Simpson

4 Nov 1960 - Mary Leakey and Louis Leakey discover first Homo habilis jaw fragments (OH 7) also nicknamed "Johnny's Child" at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. The remains are dated to approximately 1.75 million years, and consist of fragmented parts of a lower mandible, an isolated maxillary molar, two parietal bones, and twenty-one finger, hand, and wrist bones. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OH_7

4 Nov 1977 - The Incredible Hulk, an American television series based on the Marvel Comics character The Hulk premiered on CBS. It starred Bill Bixby as Dr. David Bruce Banner, Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk, and Jack Colvin as Jack McGee. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Hulk_(1978_TV_series)

Intro

Artist – Goblins from Mars

Song Title – Super Mario - Overworld Theme (GFM Trap Remix)

Song Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GNMe6kF0j0&index=4&list=PLHmTsVREU3Ar1AJWkimkl6Pux3R5PB-QJ

Facebook

- Page - https://www.facebook.com/NerdsAmalgamated/

- Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/440485136816406/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/NAmalgamated

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6Nux69rftdBeeEXwD8GXrS

iTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/top-shelf-nerds/id1347661094

RSS - http://www.thatsnotcanonproductions.com/topshelfnerdspodcast?format=rss

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/nerds_amalgamated/

General Enquiries

Email - [email protected]

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oooooooo · 5 years

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Hong Kong's #612strike protest movement: a million strong, leaderless, wireless and smart as hell / Boing Boing

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intell-news-blog · 5 years

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intelligence-news.com: Hong Kong's #612strike uprising is alive to surveillance threats, but its countermeasures are woefully inadequate

https://www.intelligence-news.com/ The millions of Hong Kong people participating in the #612strike uprising are justifiably worried about state retaliation, given the violent crackdowns on earlier uprisings like the Umbrella Revolution and Occupy Central; they’re also justifiably worried that they will be punished after the fact. After all, the #612strike was triggered by a proposed legal change that would allow people in Hong Kong to be extradited to the Chinese mainland for political crimes — and Hong Kong people already witnessed the horrific spectacle of dissident booksellers being kidnapped to China and then tortured into giving coerced, televised “confessions.” The movement is taking countermeasures to avoid identification, using masks to beat facial […] https://is.gd/RoL8nI

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simmix1 · 5 years

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RT @BoingBoing: Encrypted messaging app @telegram is under sustained DDOS attack, prevailing theory = China, retaliating against #HongKong protesters. “One million strong, leaderless, wireless, and smart as hell,” writes @doctorow of HK #612strike movement. 📷 @sethchiu https://t.co/8Lu7XUa43z https://t.co/hQuI4mEQOS

Encrypted messaging app @telegram is under sustained DDOS attack, prevailing theory = China, retaliating against #HongKong protesters. “One million strong, leaderless, wireless, and smart as hell,” writes @doctorow of HK #612strike movement. 📷 @sethchiu https://t.co/8Lu7XUa43z pic.twitter.com/hQuI4mEQOS

— Boing Boing (@BoingBoing) June 13, 2019

via Twitter https://twitter.com/simmix1 June 14, 2019 at 06:49AM

#IFTTT #Twitter

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jdaviescoates · 5 years

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via Twitter https://twitter.com/jdaviescoates

#IFTTT #Twitter

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biofunmy · 5 years

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Hong Kong Protest Updates: Leader Condemns Violence as City Remains on Edge

Tear gas is deployed as protesters succeed in delaying legislature’s debate.

Riot police turned downtown Hong Kong into a tear-gas covered battlefield as they pushed back against protesters who tried to storm Hong Kong’s Legislative Council. The protesters, angry at an extradition bill that would allow people to be sent to mainland China for trial, hurled bricks, bottles and umbrellas as they clashed with the police, as the demonstrations intensified on Wednesday afternoon.

At least 20 people were injured, local news media reported, based on data from the city’s hospitals.

A line of protesters, many of them young people in black T-shirts, repeatedly rushed toward a ring of heavily armored police, only to be repelled by the officers who lashed out with blows, rubber bullets, beanbag rounds, pepper spray and tear gas.

[What caused the protests? We took a look at the proposed extradition bill that has outraged residents.]

During their closest encounters, only a thin metal barrier separated the two groups as the protesters’ front line slowly inched closer to the source of their anger — Hong Kong’s legislature.

One police officer held a giant red sign warning protesters: “Stop charging or we will use force.”

Many of the city’s lawmakers, from both the pro-democracy camp that opposes the contentious extradition legislation at the heart of the protests and the pro-Beijing majority that supports it, failed to arrive at the council for a scheduled debate on Wednesday morning, after protesters surrounded the complex and blocked traffic. The council later said the debate was postponed until further notice.

The police’s use of tear gas and rubber bullets represented a turning point in their response to the demonstrations, and reflected the government’s determination to keep the territory’s legislature from being overrun by the people.

The police have not acknowledged using rubber bullets against protesters for decades and when tear gas was used five years ago against a student democracy protest, it incited public fury that brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets. That movement turned into a sustained occupation of several commercial districts for months in Hong Kong known as the Umbrella Movement, referring to the shield of choice used to fend off police pepper spray.

By late Wednesday afternoon, the area immediately adjacent to the council had been cleared of protesters, but tear gas hung in the air in the city’s main financial and business district.

So much tear gas was used that commuters at nearby subway stations and people in shopping malls were coughing and tearing up, and many sought medical attention.

‘Think twice,’ police chief warns protesters. If not, they ‘might regret’ it.

Hong Kong’s commissioner of police described Wednesday’s demonstrations as “riots” and called on protesters to go home, warning that those who refused “might regret your decision for your entire life.”

The remarks by Commissioner Stephen Lo at a news conference came moments after protesters stormed police barricades outside the Legislative Council, leading to the use of tear gas, beanbag rounds and rubber bullets.

“If they are peaceful protesters, please leave,” Mr. Lo said. “If they are violent protesters, then please think twice because you might regret your decision for your entire life.”

Mr. Lo said his officers had peacefully surrounded the legislature complex but would not permit demonstrators to cross over the barricade, adding that it was the demonstrators who were the first to use force.

“In terms of using violence, we have guidelines that we are following,” he said, adding that “I think we should all remember who initially started the protest.”

The commissioner’s remarks echoed those of an administration official earlier in the day.

The administration’s chief secretary urged demonstrators to disperse after tens of thousands of protesting residents forced the body to delay a debate scheduled for the morning.

Hong Kong’s leader compares demonstrators to spoiled children.

The Beijing-backed leader of Hong Kong condemned Wednesday’s violence, but gave no indication that she would stop pushing ahead with the proposed legislation that set off the protests.

“It is very clear that this is no longer a peaceful assembly, but a public and organized riot,” Carrie Lam, the territory’s chief executive, said in an interview with a local television station. “And it is impossible that this is action that loves and protects Hong Kong.”

She urged the public to help restore order in Hong Kong and to resolve differences peacefully.

Earlier Wednesday and in a separate interview recorded before the protests turned violent, Ms. Lam was steadfast in her commitment to seeing the extradition bill passed and compared the protesters to spoiled children,

“I have never felt a guilty conscience over this,” Ms. Lam said in the interview, taped on Wednesday morning, but which aired that evening after a day of protests. “I continue to hold fast to the belief that it is the right thing to do,” she told the Hong Kong broadcaster TVB, regarding the extradition bill.

In her remarks, she compared the protesters — many of whom are young — to stubborn children who did not know better.

“To draw a comparison, I’m a mother too, I have two sons,” she said. “If my son was stubborn and I spoiled him and tolerated his stubborn behavior every time, I would just be going along with him.”

The widespread public outrage over the bill puts Ms. Lam, who was selected by China’s leaders to govern the territory two years ago, in a delicate position. Backing down risks making her look weak and drawing the ire of her party benefactors, who back the bill, but moving ahead with the vote on the proposal could incite even more protests and unrest.

Small businesses support protesters, but major firms stay quiet.

Small businesses across Hong Kong closed their shops in solidarity with the protesters. A hotel chain offered rooms where protesters could shower and rest free of charge. At some other companies, managers let employees leave work to join the demonstrations, and union leaders told members to find creative ways to participate without calling for a strike, that included the drivers at one bus company pledging to drive below the speed limit.

A teachers’ union encouraged members to stage walkouts and explain to young students what was happening. “This is a critical moment for Hong Kong,” the Hong Kong Professional Teachers Union said in a post on Facebook. “Educators have to uphold the responsibility of protecting conscience, and the sense of right and wrong. The union understands how striking would affect the operations of schools and sincerely asks the schools to understand.”

But Hong Kong’s most powerful voices, those of the large international banks that have long made the city a global financial hub, have remained largely quiet on the issue of extradition.

“The extradition bill is worrying because for business it starts to call into question whether there is now a blurred line between politics and business in a city that views itself as a commercial capital that puts business first,” said Tara Joseph, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong.

While the international business community has mainly worried behind boardroom doors, more than a thousand small local Hong Kong businesses closed their doors on Wednesday.

On Instagram hundreds of coffee shops, restaurants and other businesses posted pictures with the hashtag “#612strike.” One online floral company called Floraholic wrote, “Hong Kong is sick, let’s take a day off for some rest! #NoChinaExtradition #612罷市.”

“Striking is the only action we could take,” said Yanki Lam, the owner of a shop in the Kowloon district of the city.

Critics say the bill puts anyone at risk of trial in the mainland.

The bill would allow Hong Kong to detain and transfer people wanted in countries and territories with which it has no formal extradition agreements, including Taiwan and the Chinese mainland.

Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, has said the new law is urgently needed to prosecute a Hong Kong man who is wanted in Taiwan for the murder of his girlfriend. But the authorities in Taiwan, a self-governed island claimed by Beijing, say they would not agree to the extradition arrangement because it would treat Taiwan as part of China.

Critics contend that the law would allow virtually anyone in the city to be picked up and put on trial in mainland China, where judges must follow the orders of the Communist Party. They fear the new law would not just target criminals but political activists as well.

The extradition plan applies to 37 crimes. That excludes political ones, but critics fear the legislation would essentially legalize the sort of abductions to the mainland that have taken place in Hong Kong in recent years. The mainland Chinese authorities are typically not permitted to operate in the semiautonomous territory.

Mike Ives, Tiffany May, Katherine Li, Alexandra Stevenson, Russell Goldman, Gillian Wong and Daniel Victor contributed reporting.

Sahred From Source link World News

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years

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Hong Kong law threatens people all over the world

A year ago, it seemed the whole world was glued to the incredible protests out of Hong Kong, which were a masterclass in both street- and cyber-countermeasures, as Hong Kong people bootstrapped a protest over a bad law into a popular independence movement.

But Beijing outwaited the protesters. The new "National Security Law" goes far further than the extradition law that kicked off last year's #612strike, and it passed on Jun 30.

Incredibly, the text of the law was kept secret from the public AND HONG KONG'S LAWMAKERS (including Chief Exec Carrie Lam) until moments before its passage.

https://www.chinalawblog.com/2020/07/requiem-for-hong-kong.html

The law imposes life sentences for four nebulously defined offenses ("secession, subversion of state power, terrorism and collusion with foreign entities"), and provides for secret, jury-less trials that needn't be held in Hong Kong.

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/885900989/5-takeaways-from-chinas-hong-kong-national-security-law

The law also mandates "national security education" in Hong Kong schools, with Beijing-designed curriculum, finally implementing an unpopular 2012 law that was defeated after public opposition.

It also implements 2016's failed proposal to require HK lawmakers to swear loyalty oaths to Beijing. It prohibits the mainstream opposition movements in HK.

The law permits Chinese forces to kidnap anyone, anywhere - whether or not they are from or reside in HK or are Chinese or HK nationals - to face punishment.

You may remember that in 2018, Chinese authorities kidnapped dissident booksellers and brought them to the mainland so that their coerced apologies for their opposition to the Xi regime could be broadcast around the world.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/magazine/the-case-of-hong-kongs-missing-booksellers.html

Arrests under the new law have already begun, including a 15-year-old girl arrested for waving a pro-independence flag at a demonstration.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/asia/hong-kong-national-security-protest-intl-hnk/index.html

#pluralistic

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years

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Thousands of elderly Hong Kongers march in solidarity with young human rights activists

For more than a month, Hong Kong has been rocked by an escalating series of public demonstrations that have persisted in the face of violent police suppression tactics; the demonstrations were kicked off when Hong Kong's puppet regime -- elected after China banned pro-independence candidates from standing in local government races -- proposed a new rule that would make it simple for Beijing to demand the extradition of political dissidents to mainland China, where torture and arbitrary detention of political prisoners is the norm.

Though the marches have seen millions of Hong Kongers in the streets, the majority of those marching were young, with a high proportion of student activists, which has allowed China apologists to write the movement off as youthful zeal in action.

Now, though, 9,000 elderly Hong Kongers have taken to the streets in solidarity with their younger allies, in a "March for the Silver-Haired." The protest leaders reiterated the five demands of the #612strike movement:

1. Withdrawing the extradition bill

2. Revoking the classification of protests as riots

3. Dropping all charges against all extradition bill protesters

4. Investigating police violence

5. Enstating universal suffrage in 2020

Another massive protest is planned for this weekend.

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/18/march-for-the-silver-haired.html

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years

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Hong Kong's #612strike protest movement: a million strong, leaderless, wireless and smart as hell

Hong Kong's previous mass-protest uprisings -- 2014's Occupy Central, 2016's Umbrella Revolution -- were ultimately smashed by the state through a combination of violent suppression and electronic surveillance, greatly aided by the hierarchical structure of the protest movements (which made it possible to decapitate them by arresting their leaders) and their internal divisions and infighting.

But the latest eruption -- more than a million strong and gaining -- has learned from the mistakes of the past. The #612strike movement has a flat, self-organizing structure that emerges deputies who take on functional roles (like keeping lookouts for cops planning kettling operations, which surround protesters with fencing and keep them locked down while they are identified and/or identified), that is augmented by the use of encrypted Telegram chats (the Umbrella Revolution also made heavy use of encrypted chats, with some P2P mesh apps emerging as the Hong Kong government shut off the internet).

The cultural shift is also marked by a spirit of cooperation, which is making it easier to resolve tactical disagreements -- where to put barriers, whether to risk storming key buildings -- in a collegial fashion, despite the high tensions, physical risk and punishing physical conditions (being on the streets for hours in Hong Kong June weather presents real risks of heat exhaustion, to say nothing of regular soakings in the torrential rains).

This third wave of networked protests seem close to realizing the promise of Occupy: a collaborative, networked protest movement devoted to mutual aid, where a protester can call out a request for an asthma inhaler, have that call amplified through the crowd, and then get the inhaler they need, followed by a round of applause from the crowd, justifiably pleased with itself.

The Hong Kong authorities are pulling out all the stops to shut down the protests, including the indiscriminate use of pepper spray, rubber bullets, tear gas and smoke bombs. It's a sure bet that they're also using electronic countermeasures against the protesters, and the protesters have tightened up their operational security in response: the subway stations have long lines in front of the cash-for-ticket machines as protesters eschew the use of their electronic payment cards.

Telegram has been under sustained DDOS attack, and the company has officially attributed the attack to the Chinese state; given that the protesters are making extensive use of Telegram, the connection seems likely.

(I worry that using mobile phones at all makes the protesters vulnerable to Stingrays and other mobile surveillance tools)

(I'm also excited to see them using mobile devices to accomplish something similar to Sukey, which I've been fascinated by for years)

The protests are motivated by the latest move in China's encroachment into Hong Kong's cherished independence: after Beijing's consolidation of control over the city council and kidnappings and forced televised confessions of pro-democracy booksellers, the council is now set to allow for extraditions to the mainland for people accused of political crimes.

https://boingboing.net/2019/06/13/stingrays-tho.html

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years

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Hong Kong protesters use lasers to blind security cameras

Freelance journalist Alessandra Bocchi posted this video of protesters in Hong Kong using some kind of laser to target security forces' cameras: it's part of the #612strike movement's stunning repertoire of improvised anti-police countermeasures, in a near-civil-war where faces have become a battleground.

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/31/just-dont-have-a-face-2.html

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years

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Hong Kong's #612strike uprising is alive to surveillance threats, but its countermeasures are woefully inadequate

The millions of Hong Kong people participating in the #612strike uprising are justifiably worried about state retaliation, given the violent crackdowns on earlier uprisings like the Umbrella Revolution and Occupy Central; they're also justifiably worried that they will be punished after the fact.

After all, the #612strike was triggered by a proposed legal change that would allow people in Hong Kong to be extradited to the Chinese mainland for political crimes -- and Hong Kong people already witnessed the horrific spectacle of dissident booksellers being kidnapped to China and then tortured into giving coerced, televised "confessions."

The movement is taking countermeasures to avoid identification, using masks to beat facial recognition systems, organizing in encrypted Telegram chats (Telegram blamed the Chinese state for a wave of DDOS attacks that could disrupt these chatrooms), and using cash money to pay for subway fares to and from the protests, avoiding leaving identifiable e-payment trails.

But all of that will be of limited use if the protesters are identified by other means. The most significant risk is from cell-site simulators -- briefcase-sized fake cellular towers that trick your phone into contacting them and coughing up its unique identifier, which can be used to conduct mass re-identifications of every person with a switched-on mobile phone at the protests. These devices are small, cheap, powerful, and can even mounted beneath aircraft, including drones.

Unless the protesters are using burner phones -- not just burner SIMs, but burner handsets, too -- they face a significant de-anonymization risk.After all, they're using mobile phones to coordinate the protests themselves, and that means that they're effectively carrying always-on wireless nametags that the state can silently enumerate and store indefinitely.

A second risk comes from their public social media usage; some protesters are using public Facebook groups to coordinate after-protest cleanups, where protesters return to protest sites to clear away litter, etc. To prevent themselves from being tied to protests, these protesters are deleting their messages after the cleanups. Likewise, protesters are deleting the social media messages they post about the protests while they're ongoing, and turning off their location histories. But it's very likely that the Chinese state is automatically scraping these message boards and storing them for later scrutiny and action, including arrests, blacklisting, etc.

The past decade has seen a cat-and-mouse game between protesters and authorities use of mobile phones to coordinate action, and to surveil protesters after the fact. From the Dakota Access Pipeline to the Ferguson uprising to Gezi Square to Euromaidan to Tahrir Square to Hong Kong, mobile devices are a powerful dual-use tool for authoritarians and anti-authoritarian uprisings.

It's heartbreaking to see these brave people doing the best with what they have, knowing that it's likely not enough. Like watching front-line workers in an ebola outbreak wearing trashbags over their bodies and bread-bags over their hands as they desperately try to save their countries without dying themselves.

a The more I learn about the #612strike opsec, the more worried I am on their behalf. Stay safe, folks, and fight on.

https://boingboing.net/2019/06/14/use-burners-folks.html

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