The Art of Surprise
Artist Kyle McDonald installed a program on computers in two New York Apple Store locations that automatically takes a photo every minute. Now his personal computers have been confiscated by the U.S. Secret Service.
—Apple Store Sets Secret Service on Spy Camera Artist
What’s this, government police seizing property at the legally dubious behest of an embarrassed Apple Inc? It’s only the second time in two years.
If the last time is any guide, popular opinion about the incident will be determined firstly by how comfortable people are with the idea of a secrecy-obsessed government protecting a secrecy obsessed-corporation, and secondly by how people feel about the accused. Is he an okay fella or a creep? And that is really a question of whether you can identify with him—Wouldn’t you have just taken the prototype iPhone to the bartender, etc? But we aren’t supposed to be raiding homes and threatening to imprison people based on feelings of personal identification; we’re supposed to apply those most intrusive and dangerous government powers based on actual laws, decided in advance, to provide the public some measure of fairness and predictability.
This reader comment on the Mashable writeup provides some food for thought:
As a customer you have [no] right to install software on store computers.
What is a right? What is software? What is it to install software?
You might think of rights as explicit limits on government power; in the set of all things that are not illegal, rights would the innermost core, the public’s last line of defense. But this statement, made in support of the police action, must be defining rights as the entire set of permitted actions. Effectively and casually, then, the claim is that “As a customer it is illegal to…”.
To do what? With practically every web page you visit on a borrowed computer you are running software of your own choosing. You are running it in JavaScript, or with even more potential for hijinks, in Flash. Flash can take pictures and movies using built in cameras. Could it be illegal to run Flash on Apple Store computers, as a customer? The Secret Service would have a lot more doors to break in tonight.
It’s safe to assume that you can run software on store computers, since everybody does it. What about “installing” it? It’s such an arcane concept, these days! And ironically, the meaning of “install” has always been vague on Apple computers. Did I install it when I dragged the icon from the disk onto the desktop? Or does it need to be in /Applications to be installed—potentially illicitly? Imagine the highly trained government agents, watching the screen with a telescope, waiting for the moment an app icon is released over the “Applications” hot zone! Just another episode of CSI: Apple Store.
But seeing as things like web software and Flash exist these days, we have to think of “installing” more broadly. You might install software by changing your home page, or your browser’s search provider. You might add a link to the bookmarks toolbar that says “Google” but goes somewhere else. You might leave a tab open in some unobtrusive place. The possibilities are endless!
Where do we imagine the line to be drawn between what most people are doing at the Apple store—checking their email and other interesting web sites—and criminal activities that justify the police seizure of property? Just doing something that surprises and upsets the computer’s owner?
That is a strange and unusual power granted to computer owners, but I’ll take it. What if I loan you my laptop to send an email, but later I discover you set my home page to, I dunno, that rick-roll thing. Can I have the Secret Service seize any computers in your possession?
Alas, no. Because there is no principle here. The exhibited use of power depends on whose computer it is, plus some other subjective criteria decided after the fact. You know, Feudalism.
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Is the intervention of a secret police force unjustified in instances of unwanted application preference altering? Should computer makers just figure out how to maintain control their own machines in their own stores? If so, the corollary is that we have been handling “hacking” wrong since the beginning.
Buffer overflows are no different from changing preferences. At every level, computers just follow instructions. Sometimes people use them to produce results other people don’t want. The only way to prevent that is to more creatively anticipate potential instructions. But rather insanely, our reaction has been to punish and often imprison the people who demonstrate the greatest ability to creatively instruct computers.
As if now, because Kyle McDonald’s personal computers have been seized in an effort to build a case against him, Apple Store customers are safe from anyone else doing the same thing. Ha. It’s probably happening all the time, except not as an art project. Rather, a project to phish, sniff, and spoof one’s way into critical accounts of unfortunate users.
Do they plan to lock up everyone capable of configuring Safari?
