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Pity the surveillance team

From This Corner

I listened to a technology columnist on the radio one morning talking about how new “smart” appliances will have the capability of recording everything that goes on in your kitchen or laundry area and send that data to the “cloud.”

It seems there are concerns about this new evasion of our privacy. I don’t have any smart appliances, so I don’t really have to worry about it yet, but I do have one concern.

I feel extremely sorry for the poor sap who is assigned to monitoring all that vital data. I’m not sure what kind of subversive activities go on in the kitchens of other people, but I know what happens in mine would make for boring listening.

Of course my seven-month-old grandson playing with the magnets on the front of the refrigerator is cute as heck, but it’s not exactly something worth a cloud surveillance team’s time.

And when there are no kids around and it’s just me and the old guy sitting around the kitchen table the tape would sound something like:

“Morning.”

“Morning.”

Slurp, scritch, scritch (sound of crossword answer being erased), chew, chew.

“See ya later.”

“Bye.”

Activity in other kitchens may lead the surveillance team to thwart would-be terrorists, but they are going to bored silly by most of what a smart fridge records.