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Chris Wysocki
Caldwell, NJ
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Thursday, 20 February 2014
All your LED light bulbs are belong to Big Brother
Yesterday's conspiracy theory is today's Homeland Security reality.
The LED light bulbs in Terminal B at Newark Liberty International Airport are spying on you. Yes, the light bulbs.
Whether or not you pay any attention to the lighting overhead, the lighting may be paying close attention to you.
There are cases when a LED light can spy by covertly listening and then send that audio over 300 meters away to the eavesdropper. But this time, it is the LED fixtures that are the "backbone" of a new surveillance system scrutinizing and recording us. The New York Times reported that 171 LED fixtures inside Terminal B at Newark Liberty International Airport are "watching" us.
Using an array of sensors and eight video cameras around the terminal, the light fixtures are part of a new wireless network that collects and feeds data into software that can spot long lines, recognize license plates and even identify suspicious activity, sending alerts to the appropriate staff.
It's not the "green" side of saving energy by automatically turning the lights off and on that has the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey excited and "already talking about expanding it to other terminals and buildings." Instead, the excitement comes from the mountains of data captured by sensors and analyzed by software about "the habits of ordinary citizens."
As LED lighting becomes more ubiquitous, so does the government's capability for surveillance. And because they're programmable, the spy technology is built-in to every Philips Hue bulb ever manufactured.
This is why we can't have incandescent light bulbs. "Saving energy" is just a distraction. The capability to spy on us and mine all that data is the Real Prize.
Let's get real. The light fixtures and LEDs at Newark Airport are not about saving energy … it's about watching us, analyzing data about us and storing it for who knows how long. As Justin Brookman from the Center for Democracy and Technology told the Times, "There are some people in the commercial space who say, 'Oh, big data — well, let's collect everything, keep it around forever, we'll pay for somebody to think about security later.'"
The irony is they're doing this at an aiport named "Liberty."
The danger is that pretty soon they'll be doing it in your living room.
And before you call me crazy, it isn't paranoia when
the government really is out to get you.
Posted at 11:22 by Chris Wysocki
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