This project is part of an on-going series of meetup events where privacy advocates, hackers, and others come together to achieve the following goals:
- To test and research practical privacy invasion techniques
- To learn how to protect against these techniques
- To persuade others that their privacy has value and that they should think more seriously before giving it away in exchange for free services
It important to note that anything we share here could possibly be used by bad-intentioned individuals. But the same can be said for the internet, cryptography, and many other things. It is better to learn what is practically possible and how to protect against it, than to sit idle in ignorance waiting to be targeted.
This is the current long-term project idea that we hope to make a reality. It does not exist yet, but we have already begun researching and outlining how to accomplish it.
The "stalker booth" will be a physical art piece that will give people the chance to see how much of their privacy they voluntarily give away by irresponsibly sharing data online. Imagine a black box (literally) that will include a camera and display screen which will invite passers-by to try it out.
- The person will approach the booth
- A camera will take a single photo of the person
- A reverse image search will find the person's publicly available profiles
- Interesting data will be gathered about the person: name, email, phone number, friends, places they have been recently
- The information will be displayed on a screen
- Give advice for how they can protect their privacy in the future
After our first meeting, we realized that we do not have to limit ourselves to just a photo. It is possible to use other passive privacy invasion techniques to dig for the individual's personal information (e.g WiFi and RFID tag sniffing).
We are currently in the early research and testing phase. You can see what we are currently working on in the issues section of this GitHub repository.
We meet semi-regularly at Paralelni Polis, an alternative cafe which hosts many different events relating to creativity and technology. The events are held in the "Hackerspace" which is located in the basement below the cafe. If you have trouble finding us, just ask around - someone will know about us.
If you want to get involved, please visit our next meetup event which you can find on the Learning by Doing meetup page or Facebook page.
We use a Matrix chat room to communicate and share findings in between our meetings.
You can also collaborate with us remotely here in this GitHub repository. Please feel free to share your research findings in the appropriate issue.