The drone peers over the wall of the Mountjoy Prison complex

The drone peers over the wall of the Mountjoy Prison complex

AN UNMANNED MINI drone has peered over the walls of Mountjoy Prison, and into the offices of Google and Facebook as part of a programme to ‘hack’ Dublin city.

The customised helicopter drones were launched by visual artist Nina McGowan and filmmaker and digital rights expert Caroline Campbell as part of the Science Gallery’s Hack the City exhibition.

The resulting film, called Loitering Theatre explores forbidden and inaccessible space in Dublin and “focuses on the democratisation of surveillance that drone flights afford”.

Áras an Uachtaráin, the Mountjoy Prison complex, a face-to-face view of the Daniel O’Connell statue, and the European headquarters of both Facebook and Google were all ‘spied’ on by the drones.

The entire film will be shown as part of the Hack the City programme, which will be launced later this evening at the Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin. Here’s a snippet:



Silicon Republic reports that the film depicts employees in Facebook and Google pulling down blinds in their offices, while there was even a threat to call the police from a security guard at Facebook.

Stealth underwear, robotic buskers and a hack lab which will teach visitors how to hack into wireless surveillance cameras or set up their own mobile networks are also part of Hack the City.