{"id":15363,"date":"2017-05-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/the-future-of-living-with-surveillance\/"},"modified":"2020-12-09T12:11:48","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T11:11:48","slug":"the-future-of-living-with-surveillance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/the-future-of-living-with-surveillance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future of Living With Surveillance"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"project":[451,504,472],"project_type":[725,732],"class_list":["post-15363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","project-web-residencies","project-calls-2017","project-blowing-the-whistle-questioning-evidence","project_type-formats","project_type-interview"],"acf":{"bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","custom_color_css_variable":"","content_type":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"Are we already living in surveillance states? Is their a creative side of privacy? And what do artists and WikiLeaks have in common?\r\nAgainst the narratives of Google and Facebook, that privacy doesn\u2019t exist anymore, Adam Harvey believes: privacy is the new trend. Already well-known through his <\/strong>anti-surveillance and anti-drone fashion\/camouflage-projects<\/a>, he also made it possible to break geofencing and obscure geolocation metadata with the open source project SkyLift. For <\/strong>Web Residencies<\/a> No. 1, 2017 by Solitude & ZKM curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli on the topic \u00bbBlowing the Whistle, Questioning Evidence<\/a>\u00ab he has now released the third version of the device: R<\/strong>ead an interview with the artist on surveillance, art, and whistleblowing, and learn how to build your own SkyLift for less than $5.<\/strong>\r\n\r\nClara Herrmann:<\/strong> What is SkyLift? How did the project start and how does it work?\r\n\r\nAdam Harvey:<\/strong> SkyLift is a low-cost device for geolocation spoofing. It uses a small WiFi microcontroller (ESP8266) to replay WiFi signals used for geolocation services allowing a smartphone user to virtually appear nearly anywhere in the world. For this residency I\u2019ve released the code and instructions to build your own device at https:\/\/github.com\/adamhrv\/skylift<\/a>.\r\n\r\nThe first version of SkyLift (V0.1)<\/a> was created in the summer of 2016 in collaboration with Surya Mattu<\/a> for !Mediengruppe Bitnik\u2019s<\/a> exhibition \u00bbWelcome to Ecuador!\u00ab at Zoo Galerie<\/a> in Nantes. The concept was to virtually relocate visitors inside !Mediengruppe Bitnik\u2019s recreation of Julian Assange\u2019s room in Nantes to his real location at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. This first prototype used a Raspberry Pi and software called mdk3<\/a> (a beacon frame generator) to emulate the WiFi infrastructure at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"img_gallery":false,"img":[24852],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"Functionally, the device worked well. Visitors in Nantes were successfully relocated to Julian Assange\u2019s real residence in London, overpowering their phone\u2019s other geolocation services such as space-based GPS and cellular triangulation."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_video","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"video_embed":"https:\/\/twitter.com\/wikileaks\/status\/755528093863964672","video":{"video_mp4":null,"video_webm":null}},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"But the project was difficult to setup and demonstrate. It used one computer for collecting the WiFi data on site at the Embassy in London and another separate computer for rebroadcasting them in Nantes. Both computers needed to be setup with custom software and this required too much time and prior knowledge. Instructions were posted on GitHub to build the device but people reported difficulty with the setup and results. This technical barrier to entry is further supported by the history of WiFi geolocation spoofing, which was first discovered over 9 years ago by Professor Srdjan Capkun<\/a> at ETH Zurich. In his report, Professor Capkun makes clear that a smartphone\u2019s location can be easily spoofed by forging a router\u2019s MAC address and rebroadcasting its Beacon Frames. Despite their early warning in 2008, this vulnerability still existed in 2012 when Bengt Sj\u00f6len and Gordan Savicic creatively exploited it for their 2012 project Packetbridge<\/a>. All three projects (Capkun\u2019s device in 20018, Packetbridge in 2012, and SkyLift V0.1 in 2016) make clear that geolocation spoofing is technically feasible, but still too technically challenging to reach a larger audience.\r\n\r\nFor this web residency with Akademie Schloss Solitude & ZKM, I\u2019m releasing the 3rd version of SkyLift, including the code and instructions<\/a> for how to build your own device for less than $5.\r\n\r\nCompared to the first version of SkyLift, the main improvements are:\r\n