BBC trying to expose Samppa von Cyborg performing "illegal" procedures

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-41519892

A reporter posed as someone looking to get their tongue split in order to document and expose Saampa performing "illegal" procedures, like injecting anasthetic.

via BiohackInfo

Comments

  • If what they are saying is true it is definitely something that needs to get shut down. If you look through the forums you can start to see a trend where Samppas has some strange business practices.

  • Tongue splitting is a popular body modification and there is no reason it deserves to be shut down. People should be able to do whatever they want to their own bodies (or be able to pay others to do so).

    Also, the only thing that actually broke any laws was the injection of anasthetic!

    People in our community do much more fringe things- do you also think we should be shut down?
  • Yeah. I'll never speak with anyone from bbc again. I almost think with gf we need a vouch system. You have to know someone. They have to vouch for you?
  • The reporters in this case were working undercover so no one knew they were from the BBC.

    I think people needing to vouch for people might give a false sense of security?.

    It wouldn't take long for someone to enter the community by making friends with people already in the community, who might not even know what they do for a living. Also, it's a big barrier for entry for legitimate people who don't already know anyone but want to join us.

    That might sound contradictory, that it is easy for malicious people and hard for innocuous people, but that's how social engineering works- and being friendly to serve your own ends is a skill that malicious people have more reason to try and develop than harmless but shy people.

    I don't have a good solution, other than to try to continue to inhabit legal grey areas and watch very closely for cameras during certain procedures, but that becomes its own thing that gets hard to enforce.

  • Issues like this are why I think the grinding community needs a lobbying group. As we go forward it's unreasonable to assume we'll be able to remain out of the spotlight as technologies become more sophisticated, and I think it'd be better to at least have a framework in place to protect our rights before legislation gets passed to limit them.

  • I'm curious. Does anyone know of a way to knockout cameras easily? I mean, cctv and transmitting spy cams are probably vulnerable. But what about an audio recorder? Or a simple dvr and minicam? I'm just thinking about ways to avoid similar issues. We could make people change into a hospital gown?
  • > @Cassox said:
    > I'm curious. Does anyone know of a way to knockout cameras easily? I mean, cctv and transmitting spy cams are probably vulnerable. But what about an audio recorder? Or a simple dvr and minicam? I'm just thinking about ways to avoid similar issues. We could make people change into a hospital gown?

    You can use jammers but they r very illegal but for audio just play music on some speakers
  • jammers will block transmission over the cellular network, but won't stop video recording.
  • Well there r jammers for more than cell, the jammers I’m talking about will block common wire less camera that transmit to a recording box
  • > @JakePunk said:
    > > @Cassox said:
    > > I'm curious. Does anyone know of a way to knockout cameras easily? I mean, cctv and transmitting spy cams are probably vulnerable. But what about an audio recorder? Or a simple dvr and minicam? I'm just thinking about ways to avoid similar issues. We could make people change into a hospital gown?
    >
    > You can use jammers but they r very illegal but for audio just play music on some speakers

    It is also illegal to administer anesthetic without a licence.
  • It wouldn't be illegal to wand people, I'm pretty sure all currently available cameras will set off a close magnetic sweep...but I'm not sure.

    Alternatively, there are counter-surveillance devices that can detect cameras, RF transmissions, and various other bugs. To really insure security, you'd probably want a combination of various methods. https://www.brickhousesecurity.com/counter-surveillance/lens-finder/ Is a high-end example, I'm sure you could find other models.

    Of course, you could arguably just require people to self-administer if they want anesthesia. I'm not 100% on the laws related to that, but couldn't a template & an auto-injector kit serve for specific uses?

  • I wouldn't know. I don't use lidocaine of course.
  • Of course not.

    I don't believe there's a reliable way to just target recording devices. Maybe poor/shifting light conditions coupled with some blinding IR spotlights? But that wouldn't be conductive to any work being done.

  • If you don't want anyone filming anything, get a bunch of IR lights, string them up all over the place and make them strobe at about a couple times per second and get some speakers and play a nice loud tone at about 30khz. Nothing will pick up anything and no one will notice it's happening.

  • edited December 2018

    This can mess up cheap video recorders without distracting humans.
    https://hackaday.com/2018/09/12/unphotogenic-lighting-as-a-feature/
    It is far from foolproof but the BBC might not want to pester you if they can't get good looking video.
    Some RGB LEDs and a microcontroller ought to do the trick.

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