Notes for season 1 episode 7 “Witness”
01:00 The episode opens with black and white cctv footage, complete with analog interference artefacts, and video “rolls” – which have culturally shifted from genuine artefacts to cringy digital video effects incorporated into YouTube essays. Surprisingly we also see the targeting reticules, indicating that this is video is online and being assessed by The Machine. (There’s an online guide to what the different reticules signify.) So there are still blindspots in the network of bodega-cams alluded to in episode 5.
02:21 We can see a cop outside reviewing the analog footage on a laptop – so I assume the most obvious explanation is that someone recorded the cctv during playback with a cellphone or similar.
05:00 Our focus on the obsolescent is drawn to a kettle on a gas stove. I watch this in a month where the suggestion that gas stoves might be better phased out became a brief and phoney US culture war. (But I’m guessing there are few places outside of the US that would willingly switch from electric kettles back to stove-top kettles.)
06:14 As Reese walks up the alley, we can see a large CRT deposited along with the dirty mattresses.
06:52 We finally see Reese with a genuine iPhone 4, and he’s already smashed the screen. Maybe he should have invested in one of those tactical phone cases?
07:40 One of the Russians shooting is Enver Gjokaj from “Agent Carter” and “Dollhouse”.
13:38 Finch is able to type a series of numbers into an ATM that seems to him into a command mode (The doubly-fake IP address 20.533.60.36.156) which gives him a remote access to the camera feed.
The answer to the real-world question “are ATM cameras recording constantly, or just when people are interacting with them” is “it depends”. It might be the case that any motion detection within view is enough to trigger recording, and that essentially they’re only limited by disk capacity.
15:17 Finch telnet’s (!) into the ATM, but on a different fake IP than was displayed earlier.
25:20 Characters somehow being able to quickly access the blueprints of old buildings online has always felt like a contrivance. But I just checked, and New York does have a public web archive of old building blueprints.
26:50 Fusco is smart enough not to forward a police report from his work address, instead using a personal address lfusco@fast1mail.com to forward to Finch at a3re@x7anonz.com (which I imagine is a protonmail-like service). In 2023 both of those domains are still registered to Warner Bros, and boringly just redirect to a holding page on the Warners web site.
27:00 All it takes to gain remote access to a vehicle’s location and microphone is just asserting over the phone that you’re a police officer. Which seems sadly plausible. This is essentially the basis of every other Joseph Cox story.