Hackers Have Leaked Nearly Two Terabytes Of Police Helicopter Surveillance Videos

According to an initial report from Wired, an activist group has leaked almost two terabytes of police helicopter footage,

The group is named Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets). The objective for the leak is still unknown and a specific name of the doer is yet to be revealed. Co-Founder DDoSecrets Emma Best said the source only said that the leaked footage comes from two police departments, who had left it in unsecured cloud drives. This surveillance footage was recorded by officers of Texas’ Dallas Police Department and Georgia’s State Patrol.

This has shown how easy it is for anyone to hack into the system and violate the citizens’ privacy. Wherever you are, you are being recorded and the videos can be used for any purpose if accessed by mischief mongers. “This is exactly one of the things that people are constantly warned about, especially when it comes to government surveillance and corporate data mining,” said Best in the Wired report.

“Not only is the surveillance itself problematic and worrisome, but the data is not handled in the ideal conditions we’re always promised,” they added in the report, which received in reply to a request for comment from the Dallas Police Department only that it couldn’t speak publicly about how this surveillance data is stored.

Usually, equipment like drones and robots like Spot from Boston Dynamics is used for surveillance purposes. If the robots used are programmed in a certain way, they will be able to target humans for killing or injuring as well. The thought that Spot could be used to kill people was denied by the company as they said it is not possible. However, the use of drones and robots by the police has expanded over the past couple of years and it implies that it isn’t great for democracy.