And the ironic thing about it all is ... by making certain forms of surveillance "exceptionally easy to do," it becomes a gigantic bowl of sugar-water in the company of flies. They simply can't resist it. And yet, they proceed to drown in it.
Phones left on bedside tables have been used to surreptitiously capture at least the sounds of people making love.
("Hyuck! Hyuck! Hyuck!" No doubt,
perfect entertainment for nerds who can't possibly attract the attention of members of the opposite gender ...
)
It's silly to think, as the article's author apparently does, that "in the USA" it would require a judge's order. At the present time, all such niceties of law-and-order have been brushed aside in the name of "$$Homeland$$ $$Security$$." These companies are doing nothing more than grabbing their tiny slice of the
##CLASSIFIED##ion-dollar 'pie.'" Law enforcement authorities are spending the money and doing the surveillance, literally, "just because they can." Merchants are coming up with anything, knowing that the US Government will buy it for prodigious (secret) sums.
The USA in particular has bought into the notion that "anything goes" in the name of Homeland Security ... whatever the hell
that actually means ... and the merchants are too-happy to oblige their "Uncle Sugar." Perversely, this leaves the nation
less secure, because, as we all know, "security is a
process, not a device."
And it should come as no surprise, then, that this strategy is a sitting-duck for a "honeypot." You have the ability to see, and nobody knows, and nobody's exercising any checks-and-balances over you. All that a criminal really needs to do, then, is to "give you something to see." A decoy. You'll stare at the screen for hours and days, collecting all that 'data' simply because it's what you want and expect to see. Because you suppose that no one would ever think of such a thing, you'll believe anything you see. Because this is "effortless," you will go to no effort. You are blinded into thinking that you must be smarter than the average bear.
And, with you thusly and completely distracted, they can go about their criminal business,
offline.
(Remember "offline?") Your painstakingly-collected "data" is, to the crooks, just a great alibi.
This is
not "your tax dollars being
wisely spent." This is your tax dollars being secretly and flagrantly wasted. This is the twenty-first century equivalent of the atomic-bomb boondoggle.
