Will Technology Keep You on the Straight and Narrow?

Interesting story out of the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday. A marketing company, The Marketing Store, was suffering nightly break-ins to its Ultimo offices in Sydney. Initially, the head honcho thought it was a staff member who was getting stuck into the company’s breakfast cereal and using the shower, and leaving the place in a mess.

It soon became apparent that it was a third party, so they set about trying to find out who it was, but to no avail. Then somebody cottoned onto the idea of putting a motion sensor camera in the box of cereal, and voila! The culprit was caught on tape.

Reminds me of a similar situation not so long ago in the Cybershack offices. I accidentally left a motion sensor camera on overnight, and came in the next day and noticed it had been activated. Curious as to what had activated it, I checked out the content only to find that our cleaner had come in and done his job – in about three minutes! That’s right, he came in, vacuumed for about 2-3 minutes and then left. It was an educational experience for us.

What this brings up though is how technology is everywhere, even when we think we’re alone, maybe we aren’t. Most modern cities have strings of security cameras, as do apartment blocks. Gone are the days you could cause mischief at one o’clock in the morning after downing a few alcoholic beverages and hope to get away with it. Whenever a crime is committed in a built-up area, one of the first things the police do is look around to see if there is any camera footage.

What do you think? Is technology becoming more and more intrusive?