USB 'Dead Drops'

Okian Warrior writes "Aram Bartholl is building a series of USB dead drops in New York City. Billed as 'an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space,' he has embedded USB sticks as file cache devices throughout the city. Bartholl says, 'I am "injecting" USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs accessible to anybody in public space. You are invited to go to these places (so far 5 in NYC) to drop or find files on a dead drop. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your files and data.' Current locations (more to come) include: 87 3rd Avenue, Brooklyn, NY (Makerbot), Empire Fulton Ferry Park, Brooklyn, NY (Dumbo), 235 Bowery, NY (New Museum), Union Square, NY (Subway Station 14th St), and West 21st Street, NY (Eyebeam)"

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Excellent

[427_ci_505]

I can think of no security issues that could be introduced by this development.

a new trend

[tverbeek]

For an encore, he'll be setting up "Drop Dead" sites around the city. These will be little knobs mounted to walls, for anonymous people to "share" biological materials by walking up to them and licking them.

Re:Cool

[entotre]

But then a taxi came by and said 'hey, a free passerby'.
I invite continuation

Re:Cool

[bennomatic]

Then a tow truck came by and said, "Hey, free taxi!"

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

But then a taxi came by and said 'hey, a free passerby'.

I invite continuation

But then Eric Raymond came along and said "Hey, it's confusing to call him free, that passerby is open source'. And something about his tribe and a bazaar too I expect.

In Iran...

[FridayBob]

... this concept would not go down well with the government, especially around their nuclear facilities.

Continuing the tradition...

[pedantic bore]

There's a long tradition of young folks picking up nasty viruses from anonymous strangers in NYC; now their computers can too.

Re:Cool

[Andy Smith]

Then a tow truck came by and said, "Hey, free taxi!"

Then Optimus Prime came by and said, "Longarm? Are you free?"

Re:Cool

[contra_mundi]

And then an analogy came by and said, "Hey, a free metaphor!"

Re:Good way to get your laptop attacked

[Arancaytar]

What kind of crappy machine is vulnerable to files on an external medium?

It's not the nineties anymore.

Re:Sounds great!

[djdavetrouble]

kudos to the person who will find them all and format to ext4 file system.

awesome post, but since it is almost halloween, why not a killer file system like reiserfs?

Curiosity killed the ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I definitely won't stick someone's hoo-hoo dilly in my laptop's cha-cha.

Re:Cool

[AndreR]

And then two dozen ./ users came by and said, "Hey, free karma!"

Re:Cool

[Xaositecte]

Free Willy!

Re:Cool

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

One of the signs today at the Rally to Restore Sanity asked "What would Optimus Prime do?"

Re:Cool

[Haedrian]

That could get you on the sex offender's list

Re:Good way to get your laptop attacked

[drooling-dog]

What kind of crappy machine is vulnerable to files on an external medium?

The kind of machine that would run an attached executable when you open an e-mail might be expected to do such a thing.

This is just silly

[Twinbee]

It's a great idea, but why put these things in such easily accessible locations where they could be open to anyone with less than noble intentions? I did the same thing as this guy a couple of years back, but was a little more selective in location, some of which are as follows:

* Mount Etna (near the mouth)
* North pole (well 40 ft underground at that point)
* 3 miles underground at an unknown location. There is a cave entrance though I think (well there was last time I went).
* In my house
* Inside the fossilized remains of a dead bird found somewhere in the Sahara Desert.
* Five are in the ocean too (I'll keep the exact locations secret, but you may have some luck checking out the Atlan... (hint hint) ).

Directory Listing

[Penguinshit]

goatse.jpg

Copy of goatse.jpg

Copy2 of goatse.jpg

Copy3 of goatse.jpg

...

Problems with killer file systems is that they get

[Anonymous Coward]

Problems with killer file systems is that they get sent to chroot for deleting Russian imported libraries.

Re:Sounds great!

[CanadianMacFan]

Stop throwing facts into a fun conversation.

Re:How stupid can you get?

[dangitman]

They really don't have any standards for art anymore, do they?

I hear the ISO is considering the issue, but if you want swifter action, I suggest you submit an RFC to the IETF.

Re:Cool

[mcneely.mike]

Then i came by and pissed on Optimus Prime. "Hey, free urine!"

Re:Cool

[Andy Smith]

Then i came by and pissed on Optimus Prime. "Hey, free urine!"

You pissed on Optimus? Oooh, "urine" trouble now.

Re:Engineering aspects:

[Fumus]

Okay, I thought "meh, sandbox the system and disable autorun. Nothing can break then." This certainly made me afraid of random USB connectors sticking out of walls :o

Re:Yeeeahhh

[Joce640k]

Came here to see a bunch of geeks fail to grok "art project" and go into endless loops over the merits of the technology involved.

Am leaving satisfied...

Re:My grading of this idea:

[cerberusss]

Okay, so ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, yeah? -- Douglas Adams

Re:It's like the 70's and 80's

[Reziac]

And then we'll hear, "I went to the dead-drop to swap some files, but I couldn't get near the place because it was hip-deep in copyright cops!"