Feeling Watched? OR: The Privacy Zone

I don’t know about you, but I am quite unnerved by all the recent reports about computer hacking and loss of privacy and so on. As if the thought of some low-life, mouth-breathing trouble-maker taking down our entire economic system isn’t chilling enough, now I see dire warnings in the news this week that so-called Smart TVs can actually watch YOU in your own home! This means that SOMEBODY – and I have no idea who this SOMEBODY is – can know exactly what you are doing when you think that you are enjoying a private moment wiping away drool from the corner of your mouth as you salivate over a chou pastry on The Great British Baking Show.

“I find this appalling!” I said to the Mister. “I don’t want anybody watching me from our television set!”

“They’re not, dear,” said the ever-patient Mister.

“How can we know that?”

“Our TV doesn’t have that technology.”

“Really? Are we sure about that?”

“Yes. It’s over six years old. It’s only the newer models that have that feature.”

“Well, o.k., but I don’t want one of those!”

“What do you think they’ll see? You falling asleep during Downton Abbey?”

“I don’t fall asleep during Downton Abbey!”

“The old Head-Bob-and-Weave? The old Neck-Snap? I’ve seen it. With you it’s practically an Olympic event.”

“Oh, maybe I nod-off a little here and there. But only during the scenes with poor wretched Edith.”

“Snoring. Whole show.”

“Never!”

So, I might drop off a little now and then, but I definitely do not snore. (Do I?)

Anyway, after I contemplated getting caught napping, my paranoia mounted. My mind reeled with the implications of it all. Could there be an agency out there assigned to spy on late-middle-agers via Dancing with the Stars? But, please, are the daily activities of the AARP set really worthy of a surveillance operation? That’s absurd! Most of us left behind our activist ways back in the 70s. What earthly point could there be to gathering thousands of video hours of us in front of the boob tube? What is the least bit incendiary about me tossing popcorn to the dog? Is there any real menace implied by watching Jon Stewart? Or trying to figure out how to DVR American Idol so we can watch it in Fast Forward to cut out all the personal biography drivel? Is it really all that provocative to see two 60-plussers at either end of a couch with a Golden Retriever curled up between them all wrapped up in their magic blankets fast asleep during yet another boring episode of House Hunters? How could anyone conclude that we are agitating rabble-rousers if they’ve been watching us have our milk and cookies every night at 9:00 and toddling off to bed at 10:30?  Honestly, we are such scamps we ought to be taken in for questioning!

Crazy! And so, I have come to the conclusion that I can relax about TV surveillance. If SOMEBODY is watching every move we make every hour that the TV is on, then I feel sorry for them. Because their life is way more boring than ours!