“Big Brother” surveillance systems are growing across the globe at an alarming rate, some people believe it makes them safe, while others believe their privacy is being violated.

This step-by-step article will show you how to cheaply make an IR (infrared) LED mask, that will shield your image to the camera with a bright white spot.

The use of this IR LED device would shield you from unwanted video recording while in public, any criminal activity would still be caught by potential eye witnesses. 

Serious criminals would likely wear a real mask or disguise to thwart any eyewitnesses, so any concerns of contributing to illegal activity are unwarranted. A lot of people like to make gadgets like this for fun and have no grand idea of pulling a heist.

The example below uses a hat to embed the LED’s, but there are more creative designs and uses for this idea that I’m sure people will come up with.

Parts

• Approximate prices are given; this project should cost about $11 USD
• 8 or more High Intensity IR LEDs = $0.30 each that’s $2.40
• 1 Hat/Cap that looks good on you = $6.00 (you may have one already)
  • make sure it’s a hat that all the parts will fit in
  • choose one with a design that will camouflage the LEDs
• 16 thin wires from a 2 meter long UTP cable = $1.00
• 1 Electrical Tape = $0.80
• 1 9v Battery = $1.00

Step 1. Wire the LEDs. Make sure your wires are long enough around (15cm each) depending on how big your hat is. Start wiring up the LEDs one by one, making sure the wires are secured well to each LED and they won’t fall apart. You can even solder to be extra sure but it’s probably not necessary.

Step 2. Mark and cut the hat. This part is also crucial, as you need to pick good spots where you want the LEDs to go. If you place them too far apart from each other, the light beam won’t be strong enough to blind a camera. If you place them too close, they will only hide your face from a certain angle but not others. Think this out and position them well. Mark the spots with a marker, then cut a few holes with a pair of small scissors in the front (middle of the hat) and a few on the sides to get a wide beam. See Tips below.

Step 3. Attach the LEDs. Turn the hat inside out. Take each LED and place it tight in its hole. Make sure each LED is secure and it won’t fall out. You can even use a dab of hot melt glue for extra stability!

Step 4. Secure with tape and power up. Tape all the wires together using electrical tape. Make sure you remember each LED’s plus and minus wire; if you get them wrong, you may burn out some LEDs or risk some of them not working. For example, you can use white wires for each positive terminal and color wires for the negative terminal so you won’t get them wrong later. Connect a small 9v battery to the wires and secured them on there with electrical tape. You can even add a little on/off switch, if you want. In this example, the battery is placed on the inside back of the hat.

Tips

The bright light being on top of the head may still leave at least portions of the face visible. Placing some LEDs in the shirt collar, and/or wearing LED earrings or ear pieces (like fake or modified bluetooth headset) would improve the mask.

Since the infrared is invisible to the naked eye, you will have to use your own video camera to make sure it is working.

Warnings

This method works best in lower light conditions, as in full daylight or brightly lit areas the camera easily adjusts. This can be seen in the video when the finished product is shown. You can clearly see the hat and the individual LEDs, no blinding effect.

Works about as well as shining a light in someones face, except CCTV never blinks. Thus it requires one to be able to continually face the camera at the right angle. Notice almost half of the face is visible in the photo despite good positioning.

Source: Wikihow

This article from Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund lays out some useful tips and advice for dealing with nosy agents of the state who think it’s their right and duty to “inspect” your farm.

While this organization appears to be based at least partially around political action, much of the advice they provide is not only useful to farmers, but to anyone whose private property is subject to such “inspections.”

One farmer member held off a state and federal inspector at his farm gate for over nearly three hours. He knew his rights, and reminded the inspectors of them. They didn’t have a warrant, they just wanted to look around. As a licensed pet milk provider, he would have allowed the state inspector access, but the state inspector was there because he thought the renewal had lapsed. The federal inspector was another matter. He was told that if he stepped one foot on the farm, he would be physically escorted off the farm, the sheriff would be called, and he would be arrested for trespassing.

The article lists multiple actions to take under similar circumstances, for instance:

[State inspectors] show up unannounced. They use the element of surprise to catch the farmer unprepared, or at a time when the farmer is not around. Have your materials, camera, video camera, notepad, clipboard with questionnaire, phone numbers, portable or cell phone charged and easy to find. Train those who are on your farm in your absence how to act in your place. Also, have on hand, phone numbers of customers or shareholders that live nearby that could lend a hand.

Be sure to check out the full article — and the site in general — for more stories, tips, and resources.

(post thumbnail by Dru Bloomfield – At Home in Scottsdale on flickr)

“gives you an encrypted tunnel and changes your public IP-number to an anonymous.”

Unlike other privacy solutions, this one claims that:

“this is the first time you can get all the advantages without any drawback.”

Here’s how it works:

The Service consists of an encrypted VPN tunnel between your computer and Ipredator. The IP-number you receive from your existing ISP is only used to connect your computer to Ipredator,from there on Ipredator substitute your existing IP-number with a new IP-number from Ipredator. This gives you a number of advantages:

· Your existing ISP will not be able to intercept and track your applications or communication
· Your existing ISP can not limit what you can do nor limit what information you can access
· Other organizations or individuals can’t intercept or track your applications or communication.

A pretty brief write-up can be found at Wikipedia.

While I have not (yet) personally used this service, it comes highly recommended from such privacy advocates as Cory Doctorow:

“…Ipredator, the excellent proxy service from the Pirate Bay…”

(Here’s the post where he first wrote about discovering the service.)

A full pros/cons comparison and review can be found at Barely A Draft.

Further reading on Gizmodo and Wired.

If/when I end up trying this service, I’ll be sure to post a review. In the meantime, if anyone has (or does) try it, let me know what you think in the comments.

Of course, many of you reading this now are doing it through Tor already. So, the purpose of this post is to inform anyone who isn’t yet aware of this tool of its valuable existence.

Now, Tor, like most things, is not perfect. You can read about it’s pros and cons from an “unbiased” source at Wikipedia.

That said, it is indeed a very useful tool; and, like many such tools, is best used along with a collection of supporting tools.

Browser: Firefox

Why? Well, first off, it’s a damn fine browser. But the main reason is that it has the Torbutton extension, as well as whole host of privacy and security add-ons available.

Extension: Torbutton

Provides a button to securely and easily enable or disable the browser’s use of Tor. It is currently the only addon that will safely manage your Tor browsing to prevent IP address leakage, cookie leakage, and general privacy attacks.

Proxy Server: Privoxy or Polipo

Privoxy and Polipo work in concert with Tor to do the following:

Privoxy is a non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, modifying web page data and HTTP headers, controlling access, and removing ads and other obnoxious Internet junk. Privoxy has a flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs and tastes. It has application for both stand-alone systems and multi-user networks.

Because it has primitive filtering capabilities, Polipo can be used in place of ad-filtering, privacy-enhancing proxies such as Junkbuster, Privoxy or WWWOFFLE. As Polipo has much more refined HTTP support, it doesn’t impose the speed tax usually associated with such proxies.

Software: Vidalia

This is where things really get good. Vidalia includes everything needed to get up and running with Tor: the Vidalia GUI, Tor itself, Torbutton, and Polipo. Just install, configure according to the instructions, and go.

With things being this simple, there’s no good reason not to consider Tor for your future web-exploration. It’s just the beginning of privacy online, but it’s a very worthy first step.

The article also discusses how “the Department of Homeland Security asked the Census Bureau in 2003 for details about where Arab populations live in the United States.”

Further, it outlines various news stories from censuses past; detailing cases about failure to submit, to answer all questions, etc., as well as varying opinions and party platforms surrounding the moral validity of the census.

When the US Government rounded up Japanese-Americans in 1942, they used the “supposedly private” census data to tell the soldiers how many Japanese lived on each block. The Census Bureau handed out the data needed to put them into prison camps or otherwise be harassed. Reams of information came from the “strictly confidential” census. In 1943, a direct tabulation of “Every Japanese person living in Washington, DC”, including name, address, sex, age, marital status, citizenship, profession, and employer, all taken directly from individual census records, was provided to the Secret Service. Throughout the war, individuals “of interest” to the FBI and Secret Service were looked up, and their private information was released for purposes of government harassment.

Don’t participate in the census, don’t work for it, don’t fill it out, and feed it false data whenever you can. There is no effective law against doing so; the maximum penalty was $100 (Congress recently raised it to $5000), no jail, and it is VERY rarely enforced. The Constitution authorizes them to count heads every ten years, not to ask how many bathrooms you have and what racial group your ancestors are from.