Buried in a Wall Street Journal article about shopping is a section on surveillance equipment for sale that can be used to invade the privacy of friends or enemies.

I for one would like to believe that the president’s stimulus plan is already working, and that this will be reflected not only in the volume of gifts sold, but in the types of gifts sold. For example, I can think of one shovel-ready industry that might already be helping to lift this economy out of the mire. Surveillance. After all, that’s what the $99.99 Swann PenCam DVR Mini Video Camera is for; why else would it have a pinhole video camera hidden away in the tip of a ball-point pen?

And the “prestige” edition of “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,” the hot new Xbox 360 game from Activision, actually comes equipped with night vision goggles, another superb surveillance device. To their numbers can be added the Bushnell Image View 8X30 2.1MP LCD Digital Camera Binocular (Amazon: $138.99), which allows you to film whatever you happen to be watching at the time, be it bald eagles mating or a coup d’état aborning in your neighbor’s basement. Even more exciting is the Behome24/.Com Do-It-Yourself Residential Security Kit ($789.89), which enables you to view live video on your iPhone, Blackberry or Palm Pilot whenever somebody breaks into your home. This means that even while you are traveling you can keep tabs—in real time!—on the conscienceless individuals who are stealing your property.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 and is filed under Anonymity, Cameras, Identification, Security, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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