Smile! Urine Candid Camera! 370
Anon E. Muss writes "Just because you can put a camera somewhere doesn't mean you should. Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security doesn't grasp this concept. They've installed video cameras in urinals at Houston's Hobby Airport. At least they weren't sneaky about it — they posted a notice saying 'Automatic infrared flush sensors also provide video monitoring for security purposes.' (Insert bad joke about bashful bladder syndrome here)."
Simple solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Bring some post-it stickers to cover the lens while doing the business - remove&flush afterwards.
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Funny)
What if the camera is too big to flush?
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Funny)
That sound you hear is 16 armed TSA officers bursting in the bathroom.
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, yeah, the land of the "free". Just continue being "proud" and do some flag-waving.
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, yeah, the land of the "free". Just continue being "proud" and do some flag-waving.
<sarcasm>
Well, the terrorists hate us for our freedom. Obviously the solution is to destroy all traces of freedom.
</sarcasm>
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Funny)
Well you don't need to be so pissy about it. :-P
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So, tell us, what enlightened nation do you live in? If it's in the EU, you are at least as much spied upon, analyzed, data mined, etc. as Americans.
Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Funny)
Citizen. Come with me. Uncle Sam wants to peep your dilznick. Make even the least bit of sense? No? We're detaining you indefinitely anyhow, terrorist.
I'm not going to Houston then... (Score:4, Funny)
I wouldn't want to reveal my Willy of Mass Destruction to the cameras.
Re:I'm not going to Houston then... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Informative)
Why stickers when you can simply break the fucking camera? Cause damage. That's the right way to do it.
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Informative)
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In the US they are most often located on the urinal itself (not on the porcelain, but on the pipes), just about chest-high, where you normally would find the flush lever.
Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Funny)
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, that just takes the piss...
Not as bad as it sounds (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, video surveillance is absurd, but cameras in bathrooms isn't any worse than cameras on every street corner.
Re:Not as bad as it sounds (Score:5, Funny)
Except that most people don't walk around on the street corner with their wang out.
Re:Not as bad as it sounds (Score:5, Funny)
I do.
Re:Not as bad as it sounds (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not as bad as it sounds (Score:5, Funny)
And you get modded insightful... What's going on today
Yes, clearly that comment should have been modded informative.
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Now it's modded funny. Behold the power of time!!!1
Re:Not as bad as it sounds (Score:5, Funny)
And you get modded insightful... What's going on today
Yes, clearly that comment should have been modded informative.
The mod may be apt as it's fully...in...sight
Re:Not as bad as it sounds (Score:5, Interesting)
+1 Funny doesn't give you Karma. +1 Insightful does. The mods are gaming the system to reward people who make good jokes since the system doesn't do it, if used properly. I suppose it's arguable whether the system should be changed or the metamods need to go on double-duty.
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I couldn't if I wanted to, my Wang requires a 3 phase power supply and takes up half the server room. Oh, wait, the other kind of wang.
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Except that most people don't walk around on the street corner with their wang out.
What? You don't walk out with your cock out?
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Leave it to the badanalogyguy, then !
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The camera itself isn't shown in the picture; it's on the wall probably chest-height. That's where the IR sensors usually are. (I don't know how much slashdot females know about mens urinals o.o)
Re:Not as bad as it sounds (Score:5, Funny)
They exist?
Re:Not as bad as it sounds (Score:4, Insightful)
*raises hand*
Of course, slashdot law requires that at least five people now show up to prove me wrong, since there are "no women on the internet." It's ok. However wrong you may be, I am prepared to acknowledge that you are only following cliches, jumping on bandwagons, and repeating someone else's jokes for perhaps the hundredth time in your life in an attempt to sound funny, witty, or intelligent. I know you're only 'doing your duty,' par se. Fulfilling your obligation to slashdot society.
Don't worry. There are people who can help you.
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Wish I had mod points. I just hope for their sake the grandparent post isn't seen by my wife today....
Min
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But in all honesty, if someone is going to steal anything or participate in any other kind of illegal activity, why wouldn't they just sneak in and go into a stall?
Presumably the auto-flush lavatories in the stalls also have cameras. Anyway, I dunno why people are getting so upset. These guys can shove their hand up your ass - er, check your cavities - if they want to, they have back-scatter x-ray that render you completely naked as you walk past them, yet everyone's getting upset about a handful of extra chest-high cameras...
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Plus, they are probably desensitized to it all anyway. It would take a bit to shock them.
Still, I wonder what happened to the goatsie guy, and whether he ever flies.
Remember ex-Senator "Wide Stance" Craig? (Score:2)
The stalls are apparently where all the action is anyway.
Re:Not as bad as it sounds (Score:5, Insightful)
"...the airport is the one place where I am willing to give up some privacy and convenience to gain more security."
Why?
Do you think it's easier to hurt you in an airport?
Or did you mean on the plane? Where there should be a solid impenetrable door to the cockpit and an absolute no negotiate policy.
That would actually protect you on the plane.
But you said the airport. Are you more afraid that they would hurt you there rather than on a bus? Or perhaps the train or subway?
Why not the mall? Why not a school? That'd make a point from a terrorist point of view.
If you are willing to give up your privacy in an airport simply because someone used that as a point of terrorism in the past, you're pretty narrow minded.
Just because something has happened in the past does not make it right to fear it more than other things that are just as likely and obviously much less guarded in the future. If you thik the terrorists are a one note band then you'll be just as surprised on the next news flash as you were on the last one. Learn that the only way to make things secure is to actually make them secure, not play security theatre.
Do you think that they will be able to monitor every camera, in every bathroom, all the time and that no one will figure out to go into a stall since the camera is visible?
Really?
Then you shouldn't worry about those terrorists, you should worry about what they are "trying to destroy"... Your freedoms, your feelings of safety and security, since there will be more stupid stunts to gain attention in the future and it's inevitable. Since they can buy a gun and walk into a mall or onto a bus or into a church and do whatever they want without time for a response, you're doomed if you let go of youor freedoms. They're the only thing that can sway those kinds of people away from those acts. To get them to stop doing what they "think they must do to get attention to their plights" and instead help fix the world of the consistant removal of those things that make us different. That make us not want to commit those acts because we have the freedoms to live and prosper as we see fit. To be in america. The things you are willing to give up to feel a little safer are the things that have been keeping you safe in your own country from domestic terrorists. Look to the middle east and count the bodies of those who did not have the freedom to think otherwise and then tell me you would give it up to feel safer and be a little more like them.
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They're illegal. In a bathroom you have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
That's what I thought, and looked up Texas Penal code Sec. 21.15... It states:
Urine a lot of trouble TSA!! (Score:2)
There is no way they will be able to escape the public outcry on this one. This is utterly incredible.
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Re:Urine a lot of trouble TSA!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Excuse me but... (Score:5, Funny)
Why not in stalls in BOTH sexes? (Score:5, Interesting)
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And in people's bedrooms too. Why not run an EEG scan on everyone before boarding too?
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Have you read ANY of the stories on proposed security measures in the last five years? Only reason they don't run lie detectors on everyone is because it'd take too much time.
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That silly device invented by the writer of Wonder Woman and adopted by the FBI at a time when they were infamous for taking kickbacks doesn't actually work.
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It used to be Up, Up and away, but with camera's looking on it really is a Downder
Truth, Justice, and the American way!
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News for nerds, stuff that matters.
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Why not in the stalls in BOTH sexes
You don't get out much on the internet, do you? Homeland Security is finally catching up with the pornographers.
Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, just to get this out of the way.. this is bullshit. And dear god when did Slashdot become Digg?
Anyway, I think the comments are more interesting, especially this one:
From Inner Loop Realtor:
Y'know about 3 years ago I was mugged in the Hobby Airport parking garage. I told them at the time that they needed cameras in the garage. This is typical of bureaucratic idiocy. Meanwhile, watch your back.
1. I thought Houston was in Texas.. why weren't you packing? Defend yourself asshole.
2. Ya know that security cameras are completely useless for identifying people, right? I mean, if *you* couldn't identify the guy, then how is a security camera gunna help? You don't actually believe that "we zoomed in and cleaned it up a bit" shit that you see on 24, right?
3. Has anyone ever done a study (a real study) of the effectiveness of security cameras at preventing crime? Any sort of crime.
4. It's this kind of knee jerk "we need more surveillance" reaction that the DHS contractors are banking on. You are the problem.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
"I thought Houston was in Texas.. why weren't you packing? Defend yourself asshole."
AIRPORT.
He wasn't packing because he hadn't unpacked yet. You have to check those, you know.
Or maybe---since he had just flown in---he wasn't from around here. ;-)
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
>> 1. I thought Houston was in Texas.. why weren't you packing? Defend yourself asshole.
Please carry a firearm into the Houston airport terminal and let us know how that works out for you. kthanksbye.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
3. Has anyone ever done a study (a real study) of the effectiveness of security cameras at preventing crime? Any sort of crime.
Here you go [schneier.com], that's web economy for you (two answers in one link).
Have a nice day.
fake. Anyone can make up stickers. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm actually bit jealous of whomever came up with that gag. He sure got a lot of mileage out of it.
It's clearly just a riff on the "naked X-ray" controversy going around.
Illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this illegal?
I remember some stores had the pants sued off of them (no pun intended) when people found out the dressing rooms were being monitored by cameras, to prevent theft.
Lots of high end places have bathroom attendants. Their job is two-fold. I'm not quite sure of the first one, but I know the second one is to make sure people know that it isn't a place where they can go and shit in the sink or assemble guns from the parts they have hidden in their underwear.
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The first one is to hand you a towel to dry your hands with, and receive a tip for doing so.
The very concept of tipping someone for picking up a towel has always baffled me. But then I never understood the purpose of the guy who was there to point out the bathroom in your hotel room either (ooh, so *that's* what a bathroom looks like !). Both services are worthless.
Isn't it probably just a prank? (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one who thinks this is just some prank pulled by some kid with an inkjet printer and some label paper? It would take 2 minutes to make that sticker and just slap it on a few urinals for giggles.
Like, I realize some ridiculous crap has happened in the past few years, but are we all so jaded we just automatically assume that this sort of thing is real?
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are we all so jaded we just automatically assume
You must be new here.
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If it is a joke, I bet someone goes to jail.
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If it is a joke, I bet someone goes to jail.
For what crime, exactly?
Re:Isn't it probably just a prank? (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that in the War on Terror it isn't necessary to charge people with crimes, don't you?
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If it's a joke, they won't know who did it. Because there wouldn't be any cameras. (Unless there are ... and they just don't label them .... puts on tin foil codpiece)
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Tomorrow: Ironically it turns out there really are secret IR cameras installed in these facilities which caught him in the mischievous act of labelling. Hmm.
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Am I the only one who thinks this is just some prank pulled by some kid with an inkjet printer and some label paper?
My printers and label paper were not involved with this prank.
It would take 2 minutes to make that sticker and just slap it on a few urinals for giggles.
I would prefer to buy them in bulk, on eBay.
And I think that all the gents who got the joke and pissed on the stickers, had a hell of a laugh.
Like, I realize some ridiculous crap has happened in the past few years, but are we all so jaded we just automatically assume that this sort of thing is real?
Let's just hope that the security folks don't read Slashdot. This prank might give them so ideas.
Is it illegal now to shake it more than three times?
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I realize some ridiculous crap has happened in the past few years
The surveillance tapes show the crap was actually pretty ordinary. Oops, you weren't supposed to know about those cameras...
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No way it could be a fake. If somebody tried to plant those stickers the urinal cameras would have identified him immedi.... Oh. Hang on....
Any other confirmation? (Score:5, Informative)
Source is just blogspam and image could easily have been faked in photoshop. The government is stupid and paranoid and not deserving of our love but this is might be just a wee bit over the top at this point in time...
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Indeed. This looks shopped. I can tell from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a few shops in my time.
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Hrmm (Score:2)
Would it be a felony for me to piss on the cameras?
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Piece of cake, urinal cake (Score:2)
I get a lot of money and someone ends up scrubbing the urinals for the rest of their life instead of monitoring them, right ?
When does "stupid" and "ridiculous" (Score:4, Interesting)
If businesses in the United States cannot put video cameras in their bathrooms (and they can't), then neither can Homeland Security. They can't have it both ways.
If I found such a camera I would put duct-tape over it. That's just too damned far.
Also: why are they just in urinals? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Seriously, though, when I travel, I generally carry with me some essential survival equipment: pocket-size rain poncho; "space blanket"; some string; some tape; a couple of needles, 2 or 3 yards of thread in different colors, and a thimble; a magnifying glass; some safety pins; a multi-tool; at least a small lighter but usually also some matches in a waterproof case; a flint-steel-magnesium firestarter; a small but powerful flashlight (Surefire or equivalent).
I smell a prank. (Score:2, Funny)
I smell a prank.
Oddly, the prank smells a lot like asparagus.
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I'm pretty sure that's a common side-effect from taking Modafinil.
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Easy solution... (Score:2)
Use them for target practice.
i wondered what larry craig was up to (Score:3, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Craig#2007_arrest_and_consequences [wikipedia.org]
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After about 13 minutes of sitting in the stall, the police officer observed Craig lingering outside and frequently peeking through the crack of the door on the stall.
No doubt wondering WTF was taking the officer so long...
At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot. ... The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area. Craig then proceeded to swipe his left hand under the stall divider several times, with the palm of his hand facing upward.
More like a signal that he was out of toilet paper (which explains why he was "lingering outside" prior to the foot tapping).
unionized toilet flushing employees (Score:3, Insightful)
I had this idea once for a short youtube feature.
It would show the normal black squares found on automatic toilets and urinals. But it would move into the wall to show employees sitting behind those squares, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of being a unionized toilet flusher.
Think of it done in the style of the BBC's remarkable Look Around You series.
I have found people surprisingly creeped out by this idea.
new moto? (Score:2)
DHS - We're Watching You Pee!
Why would anybody be surprised? (Score:2)
They're a bunch of cocksuckers, why would it be a surprise that Homeland Security drones are trying to get information from urinals? J. Edgar Hoover was the head of the FBI when they did crap like this, and he used to prance around his office in ladies' dresses.
These guys are obviously cut from the same cloth.
Obvious Prank (Score:5, Funny)
Who dunnit... (Score:2)
I bet a shiny quarter it was a college student from a fairly liberal school that is anti-police, anti-taser, etc... Probably an art student.
Clever prank, I guess. It would probably spook me out of peeing in that bathroom.
The guy that printed these... (Score:4, Insightful)
The guy that printed/posted these is sitting somewhere laughing his fool arse off. Srsly - it's obviously a fake, and it made /. front page!
Ever wonder about the dark red glass on the I/R sensor? It's ridiculous to think there's a camera in there...
chuckle chuckle...
EULA (Score:2)
(By approaching this urinal you agree that all photos, video, artists renderings, and other visual media of your genitalia are (C) Wolfram Alpha LLC. We reserve the right to redistribute this media for any purposes.)
pedo's (Score:2)
Hard to read, (Score:3, Funny)
What's with all the unnessicary bolding that seems to occur ever three or four words. It almost seems like their word processor is trying to speak like Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise.
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If this is a gag then wouldn't it have been more ironic to put the pee-pee camera at the "Bush" airport?
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Only if the children in question are fucking or striking suggestive poses. What, you thought pictures of nude children are illegal? Think again, perhaps even of your baby album.
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Actually they are, if anyone else gets to see them. And people have faced serious questioning from the police over their baby albums.
The only safe way to live these days is to never even thinking of pointing a camera at anyone under 18.