30c3 - Trevor Paglen - Six Landscapes - 131228 2300

Kinda related, I saw this fascinating presentation by Trevor Paglen recently. It's about the footprint of secrecy. It's almost a decade old, but still very much worth your time. ▶ this video

It's spending months in space, I don't think it's for marketing. ▶ this video Based on what this talk indicates, the US Government is doing some questionable (...) things in terms of signals intelligence in space. We probably won't know what X37-B is doing in space for years but I imagine they will have at least tried to do some big brother exercises. The US/Western Intelligence community effectively treats all communications as fair game - they always have (e.g. MI5 were capturing encryption keys from neutral embassies using microphones in the ~50/60s) they just possess the means to do it efficiently at large scale now. I imagine a large part of its mission is also just testing military equipment that can't go on the ISS but that's not as sexy.

At the 30c3, Trevor Paglen gave a talk about his work, where he also goes into details or it [1]. I found it highly interesting and can only recommend it. [1] ▶ this video

The Exploration and Exploitation of an SD Memory Card: link Fast Internet-wide Scanning and its Security Applications: link A lot of people also recommended 'Seeing The Secret State: Six Landscapes', but I haven't seen that one myself so far: ▶ this video

Seeing The Secret State: Six Landscapes - ▶ this video > In this talk, artist Trevor Paglen discusses his work attempting to “see” the various aspects of the secret state. In examples ranging from tracking spy satellites to foraging through the bureaucratic refuse of CIA front companies, Paglen will discuss methods used to identify and exploit structural contradictions in classified programs which render them visible, and comment on the aesthetics and politics of attempting to “see” secrecy. source: link