Rebel Geeks – The Critical Engineers

Al Jazeera (2015)

Film Review

This documentary is about three engineers (Russian-born Danja Vasiliev, New Zealander Julian Oliver and Stockholm based Bengt Sjolen) responsible  for launching the first civilian Earth to stratosphere scan to monitor government surveillance activities.

The purpose of their experiment was to monitor surveillance drones various governments use to spy on their populations. Their methodology was to attach radiofrequency detectors to a helium balloon. The balloon burst once it reached the upper stratosphere, and the monitoring equipment returned to Earth.  Hackers in Belarus retrieved the payload and uploaded it to an encrypted network. See Deep Sweep data

Naming their project the Deep Sweep, the engineers are presently working on a low cost Open Source template that people in other countries can use to investigate government surveillance activities.

Vasiliev and Oliver are also responsible for the Newstweek project.  If a device called Newstweek is plugged in at a wireless hotspot, then people connected to that Wi-Fi can have all media content modified, changed or otherwise edited by a hacker who is operating from a remote location.