Building your very own surveillance state
Building your very own surveillance state
Have you built your own surveillance fiefdom?
We’re all aware that there are more cameras around than ever before. Whatever your opinion of them (helping wage the War on Some Terrorists, or just protecting private property) they’re all out there. I doubt anyone thinks they can take a leak behind a dumpster any more without being recorded.
You might be interested in doing something like this yourself. Maybe you want a web cam that points at your darling child so you can see them while you’re goofing off at work. Baby monitors are another nearly ubiquitous accessory that have led to people being arrested because their next door neighbors overheard things like “put the baby to bed and let’s fire up that bong”.
I’ve got a weekend coming up where a lot of people think they’re supposed to come to my house, light a fire in the firepit, and play drums. I’ve changed the “official” date to the following weekend, but I am confident that someone will not have gotten The Memo and there will be at least some people who will show up. I’m really curious about that, and I wonder how I might know about this.
“Put up a webcam to record it” was suggested to me.
I’ve often thought that it would be interesting to install a webcam that pointed at my living room when I was wondering what my spouse was doing all day while I was at work. I have not done so because that stuff, once recorded, doesn’t go away. It used to be that if you had the print of an incriminating photo secured in a locked box in a drawer, you could be pretty sure that nobody would see it unless you let them. But hardly any photography is being done on silver nitrate any more, and even so, how much do you trust that person checking out your photos at K Mart anyways?
Ok, yeah, it does go away at the next hard drive crash, but often we have these “my pictures” directories we transfer from computer to computer, maybe burning off to DVD-R’s for safekeeping. But it’s hard to be sure that something you never held in your hands anyways ever really goes away.
The best way to make sure that stuff doesn’t get out there is to not let it exist in the first place. Yes, this is pretty paranoid. But these are crazy times, and you probably aren’t paranoid enough.