Did you know that it is possible to access cameras through Google? A special program is not needed even needed for badly secured webcams. Hermans from Metronews did some research on this. He searched ‘Intitle:”Live View / -AXIS’ and within no-time he found himself at the university in Heidelberg, a camera shop, and even in some kind of kitchen. The latter camera was even controllable. Again, all of this need not any technical program. A simple search on Google was enough (Herman, 2017).
The extraordinary capabilities and value added due to the digital revolution has also taken a toll on our privacy. The simplicity of hacking a webcam raises the awareness of how easy individuals can be viewed without consent. We accept (and even value security) cameras at public places because it is in our own interest to feel safe and to know that in case something happened the situation has been filmed. However, footage from hacked webcams could be used against individuals, even if these cameras are from public places. People who were not supposed to be somewhere can easily be found through hacked security cameras, resulting in blackmail or other types of extortion. In extreme cases as with sextortion (type of blackmail that in which sexual images or videos are used) individuals’ personal lives can unimaginably change for the worse.
While writing this article at the university, I found myself looking around for security cameras, wondering if somebody could see me through his/her computer screen. I thought that if people were indeed looking at me, it would not matter because they would not have anything to hold against me because I am behaving normally. But then I thought, this way of thinking is catastrophic. There are more cameras than people at this university; every computer camera could be hacked, and every person has at least three cameras carrying around (two on every smartphone, one on every laptop). The sticker on my laptop camera covers nothing since the 300 other cameras in the same room can easily record me too.
Though we all know that we are constantly being viewed and monitored by public security cameras and our devices, the real danger lies in our ignorance of the consequences. In developing new technologies and governance, we must recognise that the possibility of being viewed without consent (even though individuals do not mind), endangers our unconscious freedom of movement.
Hermans, K. (13 Oct 2017). Lekker en snel, gewoon “effe” een webcam hacken. Retrieved from: https://www.metronieuws.nl/techgadgets/2017/10/lekker-en-snel-gewoon-effe-een-webcam-hacken
