I have been spending a lot of time thinking about surveillance and all the networked devices we have reporting on us which we willingly bring into our lives. Often at a premium. I suspect I’ll have a stab at laying out a lot more of my thoughts on the subject in the near-future, but an article caught my eye recently that must be shared:
Albatrosses Outfitted With GPS Trackers Detect Illegal Fishing Vessels
tl;dr: Albatrosses are being used to patrol areas of ocean that are either too difficult or too cost-prohibitive to make doing so by conventional means easy. They are mainly searching for vessels whose radar emitters have been switched off, often to conceal illegal activity.
Look. It’s bad enough that we are installing wiretaps into our homes just so they can order fresh batteries for our vibrating buttplugs (butt-plugs?) without taking our phones out of our pockets. It’s already terrible that people are cheerfully placing networked CCTV cameras on their doorbells to spy on their neighbours and then permitting Amazon to share the footage with police agencies. But now they’ve gone and made birds into cops. BIRDCOPS™
On one hand, this is an amusing headline and a novel technological solution to the problem of illegal fishing which, according to the article, is estimated to account for one fifth of fish on the market. There is also a lot of valuable data pertinent to conservation and ecological concerns that can be gathered this way.
On the other hand: THEY. ARE. MAKING. BIRDS. INTO. COPS.
It seems a particularly bleak brand of dystopia when you can’t even count on the damn birds to keep a secret.
” To expand their coverage over oceans where albatrosses don’t normally go, the team plans to bring other large, globetrotting species into the mix. Perhaps all the world’s waters will someday be monitored—at least, from a bird’s eye view.”
OOOOOOOOH GOOD. I CAN’T WAIT TO GET A JAY-WALKING TICKET BECAUSE A SQUIRREL SAW ME.
Currently Playing: Spektrmodule Podcast – Episode 45: Coastal Keep
Currently Reading: SNAIL ON THE SLOPE, Boris & Arkady Strugatsky
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