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The Constant Gardener
I just saw this movie, and it is well done. Acting is good, and story is good. This is not like other formulaic movies for American audiences. It comes across as an Indie film, but is a bit depressing.
Why post about this movie here? I wanted to make comments about the story here with respect to computer security, "hacking", and countermeasures to surveilence.
NOTICE: SPOILERS MAY BE DISCUSSED BELOW HERE. IF YOU DO NOT LIKE SPOILERS, STOP READING.
This movie has a few scenes where "computer security" is included, and the average user (main character) is easily thwarted. It looks like there is a password protected folder, and when he tries to open it, he is stuck. He is a common user, and stops trying.
After his wife gets killed, he hooks up with his "hacker/espionage" buddy and his buddy's kid. The kid does know how to get around the OS, and they do take some liberities in conveying this by having lots of windows open up really fast. (You don't need to be a hacker to suffer from pop-up problems. ;-)
Anyway, the guy tells the kid that it is password protected, and the kid says, "Oh, that is easy."
Now, here I am thinking... "Here we go again."
But it does not go the direction I thought it would. Instead, the kid says, "5 letters, someone's name." Then he proceeds to tell the guy that it was this kid's own name with the "o" sustituted with a zero and the "i" substituted with a one. How did he know the password? Simple, he says he helped this guy's (now dead) dead wife setup the security!
Hah! Now that is a twist that is believable.
Later in the film the main character has his passport confiscated, but his buddy helps him with a fake identity and gives him a list of some things that he should not do. They do not key-in on the whole British security camera Facial recognition system directly, but they hint at it, and they also hint at telephone surveilance, and name checking.
A few examples of seemingly harmless, but common casual action are used to pass OOB data in covert channels.
This is not a "hacker" film, but does have elements of computer security. I was impressed by how they did not over-do the "super hacker" role. It seemed to me that the skills possessed by the major characters were not extraordinary.
Points taken away from playing up the "Big Brother" theme, and "conspiracy theory" with large corporations trying to kill people to earn profit, but the story was still good.
I just saw this movie, and it is well done. Acting is good, and story is good. This is not like other formulaic movies for American audiences. It comes across as an Indie film, but is a bit depressing.
Why post about this movie here? I wanted to make comments about the story here with respect to computer security, "hacking", and countermeasures to surveilence.
NOTICE: SPOILERS MAY BE DISCUSSED BELOW HERE. IF YOU DO NOT LIKE SPOILERS, STOP READING.
This movie has a few scenes where "computer security" is included, and the average user (main character) is easily thwarted. It looks like there is a password protected folder, and when he tries to open it, he is stuck. He is a common user, and stops trying.
After his wife gets killed, he hooks up with his "hacker/espionage" buddy and his buddy's kid. The kid does know how to get around the OS, and they do take some liberities in conveying this by having lots of windows open up really fast. (You don't need to be a hacker to suffer from pop-up problems. ;-)
Anyway, the guy tells the kid that it is password protected, and the kid says, "Oh, that is easy."
Now, here I am thinking... "Here we go again."
But it does not go the direction I thought it would. Instead, the kid says, "5 letters, someone's name." Then he proceeds to tell the guy that it was this kid's own name with the "o" sustituted with a zero and the "i" substituted with a one. How did he know the password? Simple, he says he helped this guy's (now dead) dead wife setup the security!
Hah! Now that is a twist that is believable.
Later in the film the main character has his passport confiscated, but his buddy helps him with a fake identity and gives him a list of some things that he should not do. They do not key-in on the whole British security camera Facial recognition system directly, but they hint at it, and they also hint at telephone surveilance, and name checking.
A few examples of seemingly harmless, but common casual action are used to pass OOB data in covert channels.
This is not a "hacker" film, but does have elements of computer security. I was impressed by how they did not over-do the "super hacker" role. It seemed to me that the skills possessed by the major characters were not extraordinary.
Points taken away from playing up the "Big Brother" theme, and "conspiracy theory" with large corporations trying to kill people to earn profit, but the story was still good.
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