by For the price of a US dollar, our Panopticonic universe just became a little smaller — or larger if you’re a fan of being spied upon by strangers — with the release of “Surveillance Shaker” a new iPhone App that now lets you, with the shake of your iPhone, silently surveil the world without the watched knowing you’re watching.
Here’s the advertising blurp from the Apps store:
Step through my shaken Panopticonic morning:
Do you feel empowered watching these live surveillance feeds?
Or are you creeped out by technology invisibly stalking you into every street, meadow and ocean?
This is by far one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen in a while concerning technology!
Are there no regulations to govern the use of such devices?
One question crosses my mind, “Do you feel like your being watched?” Apparently it will be a perpetual feeling we will be dealing with from now on.
Not everyone that has access to this type of technology will be responsible and respectful with it! That is one of my upmost concerns regarding the capabilities of this new feature on the iphone!
I do understand that this technology could be very beneficial … but not in the wrong hands, which is exactly where it most likely will end up!
We live in frightening times, Kimberley. Cameras are everywhere and they are not passive. They are recording us, too. What happens to the recordings? Are they held forever? Are they purged after a certain amount of time? Can innocent people be “kept” on surveillance tape indefinitely in case “one day” they go bad in the future? Being able to “spy” on your neighbor with your iPhone is, indeed, a concern. Soon enough we’ll have audio with these surveillance cameras along with the ability to select multiple camera angles. We can then create our own “real life” surveillance dramas!
Heck, even when I hear the standard “your call may be monitored or recorded for future training” I cringe a little bit, thinking about people listening to me in the future.
Oh, that’s a good one, Gordon! What choice do we have in you scenario? Hang up? Demand they NOT record us? What a mess!