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30c3 - Trevor Paglen - Six Landscapes - 131228 2300

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2 HN users recommended this talk2 months2013–2022 score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Recommended as a fascinating and still relevant look at the physical footprint of government secrecy.

Trevor Paglen's 30C3 talk on photographing and documenting the secret state, including CIA flights, spy satellites and military sites, to reveal the geography of covert programs.

“It's almost a decade old, but still very much worth your time.” (HN, 2022)

2 recommendations · 3 citations · Talks

5 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@mikejb Jul 2017 Recommends
on HN thread Eye in the Sky
At the 30c3, Trevor Paglen gave a talk about his work, where he also goes into details or it [1]. I found it highly interesting and can only recommend it. [1] [this video]
Paglen discusses his work on spy satellites in detail.
@eye_street Dec 2022 Recommends
on HN thread I Found a Secret US Government Surveillance Program
Kinda related, I saw this fascinating presentation by Trevor Paglen recently. It's about the footprint of secrecy. It's almost a decade old, but still very much worth your time. [this video]
Fascinating talk on the footprint of secrecy.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@gorekee Dec 2013 Cites it
on HN thread 30C3 Recordings
Seeing The Secret State: Six Landscapes - [this video] > In this talk, artist Trevor Paglen discusses his work attempting to “see” the various aspects of the secret state. In examples ranging from tracking spy satellites to foraging through the bureaucratic refuse of CIA front companies, Paglen will discuss methods used to identify and exploit structural contradictions in classified programs which render them visible, and comment on the aesthetics and politics of attempting to “see” secrecy. source: [link]
Paglen talk on seeing the secret state.
@F30 Dec 2013 Cites it
on HN thread 30C3 Recordings
The Exploration and Exploitation of an SD Memory Card: [link] Fast Internet-wide Scanning and its Security Applications: [link] A lot of people also recommended 'Seeing The Secret State: Six Landscapes', but I haven't seen that one myself so far: [this video]
Mentioned as widely recommended but not yet watched.
@mhh__ May 2020 Cites it
on HN thread Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches
Read more
It's spending months in space, I don't think it's for marketing. [this video] Based on what this talk indicates, the US Government is doing some questionable (...) things in terms of signals intelligence in space. We probably won't know what X37-B is doing in space for years but I imagine they will have at least tried to do some big brother exercises. The US/Western Intelligence community effectively treats all communications as fair game - they always have (e.g. MI5 were capturing encryption keys from neutral embassies using microphones in the ~50/60s) they just possess the means to do it efficiently at large scale now. I imagine a large part of its mission is also just testing military equipment that can't go on the ISS but that's not as sexy.
Talk indicates questionable US signals intelligence in space.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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