Hacker Cinema
Conspiracy Theory
1997 · Film · 135 min
Directed by Richard Donner
A man obsessed with conspiracy theories becomes a target after one of his theories turns out to be true. Unfortunately, in order to save himself, he has to figure out which theory it is.
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8 comments on Hacker News
> government attempts at management of conspiracy theorists.
The Mel Gibson movie Conspiracy Theory goes into a version of this.
In the conspiracy world, there's the trope on Merlin's magic wand was made from the wood of a holly tree and was used to cause confusion and mind control type of spells.
Also the film Conspiracy Theory - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118883/plotsummary/
> Jerry tells her that NASA is trying to kill the President using a secret weapon on the Space Shuttle that can trigger earthquakes.
> The best publicly available evidence suggests that X-37B is practically useless
If it's supposed to do something secret, then surely that's the best possible outcome for those trying to hide what it can do?
This made me want to go watch Conspiracy Theory[1] again...
[1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118883/
Interestingly the writer of Richard Donner's 1997 movie "Conspiracy Theory" [0] used the book "Catcher in the Rye" as a plot device.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/08/movies/sure-he-s-paranoid-and-with-good-reason.html
The "Evil Maid" class of attacks have a new vector: "Evil Digital Maid/Butler" (assume pervasive, fully compromised electronic assistants).
iPhone "Evil Maid" => GPS, Mic, Camera, Digital User Impersonation [post social network messages, iMessage, etc.]
HomePod "Evil Butler" => Control HomeKit, Mic, Playback Arbitrary Recordings [freeze, this is the police, etc., impersonate a significant other]
Roomba "Evil Maid" => Lidar (mm-resolution depth-camera?!?), Virtual Mic, Push/Close Doors, Push/Move Objects [tip over a table w/ candle]
WiFi Cams "Evil Maid" => Camera, sometimes speakers, sometimes motion control
...if this is how the robot uprising begins, we're a long way from Terminators / SkyNet, but easy to see entire classes of vulnerabilities which are pretty obvious in retrospect.
If you haven't seen "Enemy of the State" or "Conspiracy Theory", they're great movies with a similar premise: "What if 'the system' turned against you?"
I find this article underwhelming. It does not really build a strong case. I personally, am person about as interesting or uninteresting as a few billion other people in the world, or as a few hundred million people in the United States. Privacy advocates tend to paint a picture like in the movies "Conspiracy Theory" or "Enemy of the State": if you find yourself in the crosshairs of the state, you're in trouble. Well, here's the thing: I'm not Mel Gibson, and I'm not Will Smith. The chance of the state finding my person interesting is fairly reduced. If someone wants to make my life miserable, there are probably a few hundred guys working for Google who can read my every email on my gmail account, and who can probably even impersonate me on the internet. There are scores of other tech guys working in some bank who can see my every bank transaction, or every credit card payment, or engineers at Amazon who can see the history of my purchases. Pretty much only those who don't want can't find my physical address, or my phone number, or other things. Given all that, the fact that the NSA can do all these things too, well I, for one, am not losing a lot of sleep over this.
sure it wasn't The Catcher in the Rye?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118883/synopsis
:)
I think it is just being reported more, organizing with support groups forming due to the internet and other new technologies.
I can't help but recall the opening to the 1997 movie 'Conspiracy Theory' with Mel Gibson. This is pre-9/11, so there must have been enough whiff of the zeitgeist to make it then into a mainstream movie. That sort of lends evidence to my position that this is common to heavily populated urban areas where the disenfranchised can go unnoticed, and it is not a new phenomenon or necessarily growing more; it's just more visible.
I worked in the B. Dalton bookstore on 8th Street in the Village in NYC back in the 80s. One of the clerks was really into conspiracy theories and other fringe occult and alternate lifestyle stuff. He would throw me a book either self-published, or from an obscure publisher about many things like the U.S. government using Orgone energy guns to control the public and weather [1]. These texts were always similar to real academic publications - footnotes, bibliographies, photos, graphs - they were very fun to read!
He also turned me on to the book 'The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail' published 21 years before Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code', and before learning of the plagiarism lawsuit, it seemed like a fictionalized account of the book. Of course Dan Brown created a story outside of just the conspiracy theory premise [2].
Another was 'Spear of Destiny' published 1973 about the history and occult powers of the storied spear used to pierce Jesus Christ's side [3]
I also used to go with my bookstore buddy to visit some squatters living in the East Village. I'd listen to all of the theories about mind control, tainted water, secret cable TV brainwashing messages, and on and on. Great fun, really, but there were some truly neurotic people in the bunch. But then again, also some real rational people just living an alternate lifestyle. I can relate to being the participant-observer in my life's adventures. I guess its part of ethnography formally.
But then again, this was the time of the conspiracy-driven, weird film 'Videodrome' by David Cronenberg. I really need to get hold of a copy, and still see how it compares to how much I enjoyed it back then [4]. Just to see the video cassette inserted into James Woods' stomach!
'Call me, call me any, anytime' - Blondie
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgone [2] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/mar/28/danbrown.books [3] https://openlibrary.org/books/OL8111347M/Spear_of_Destiny [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videodrome