My friend Alicia (who has a pretty interesting blog of her own, you can link to it over there on the right hand side of the page) left a comment on my facebook page today about how “disturbing” Google Earth is – complete with a whole bunch of photos from Google Earth. Then, I was working on Watson’s World News (a newspaper in easy English we put together for my students – you can find it over on the right as well) and this month we have a story about an amazing new spy device – which will make Google Earth seem benign and unobtrusive.
I think we need to face a basic truth about one way that communications technology has changed our society. Privacy is dead. This sounds like a pretty horrible thing, if you value your privacy. The way I see it, it has a good side and a bad side, but it’s inevitable. We are living in a small and crowded world. It’s not only a global village, it’s an overcrowded global village where we’re all living 12 to a room in shantytowns and the walls are made of cardboard boxes and nobody has a lock on their door.
The Spy Fly: wingspan, about 15 centimeters weight, 19 grams
About this spy device. It is modeled after a hummingbird. Two wings and a very light body, which contains a camera. It can fly into any room with an open door or window, probably be undetected because of its size, or maybe just land on the outside of a window. It is controlled remotely and can fly up, down, forwards or backwards. And it can hover.
This has been developed by the U.S. Army, but I’m guessing it will trickle down soon. It’s small, it’s light, it’s simple. The price will drop.
The police could use it to nip domestic violence in the bud and locate stolen goods but I suspect they will spend most of their time spying on stoners and hookers. Private detectives will be using it a lot to prove infidelity in divorce cases, corporations will be employing it for industrial espionage and maybe even enterprising journalists will employ it to gather information. Lord knows, they’ve already stopped using the ancient method of calling people up and asking them. Overprotective parents, voyeurs and blackmailers will also find uses for it. Like every technology since fire, it will be used both for good and evil. An end to privacy also means an end to secrecy.
You have been warned.
www.gurukalehuru.com 
That’s still pretty big, they’ll get them down to fly size or mosquito size soon. Actually if they’re making public that they’ve got one hummingbird size they probably already have one fly size. It is pretty scary though.