{"id":37479,"date":"2018-06-30T06:52:43","date_gmt":"2018-06-30T13:52:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/?p=37479"},"modified":"2018-06-30T06:55:48","modified_gmt":"2018-06-30T13:55:48","slug":"if-you-thought-mere-anti-gun-witch-hunts-were-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/30\/if-you-thought-mere-anti-gun-witch-hunts-were-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"If you thought mere anti-gun witch hunts were bad …"},"content":{"rendered":"

… wait ’til you see SWORD, the weapon-detecting smartphone case<\/a>, currently available in vaporware.<\/p>\n

According to its maker’s claims (and we can assume “claims” is the operative word, thank heaven), the SWORD allows its holder to scan a person from up to 40 meters away to detect the presence of a hidden weapon. Not only that, it recognizes faces and compares them against a “watch list.”<\/p>\n

Apparently if it detects both weapon and facial threat it alerts a “security officer.”<\/p>\n

No word on whether a mere weapon or mere facial threat alone is sufficient to bring chaos down upon the eeeeevil individual.<\/p>\n

Oh man, can you just see the innocent people getting SWATted, busted, and\/or killed with this gadget?<\/p>\n

Can you see the innocent pocket knives, cigarette lighters, or pepper-spray guns triggering alerts?<\/p>\n

Can you picture the lawsuits???<\/p>\n

OTOH, can you see the bad guys who get completely missed by this fanciful gadget?<\/p>\n

Fortunately, this particular piece of public spyware sounds like a non-starter. At $950 per case plus a $30 monthly subscription only rich idiots, corporate securitists, or cops are likely to give it a try. We can also assume that it won’t work anywhere near as creepily well as its PR says it does. Most likely it will never actually make from its current pre-order stage to market.<\/p>\n

Still. As a harbinger of tech-to-come, this is an ill omen. Are we really headed for a day when we’re so fractured as a society and so suspicious of every passing stranger that we’ll walk the streets assuming that everyone we encounter is a mass murderer waiting to strike — and possess the tech to accuse them on the spot?<\/p>\n

It’s almost funny, though, that the very device that’s helping to render us so oblivious to our surroundings, our omnipresent cellphone, will now pretend to grant us observational superpowers.<\/p>\n

(H\/T Shel)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… wait ’til you see SWORD, the weapon-detecting smartphone case, currently available in vaporware. According to its maker’s claims (and we can assume “claims” is the operative word, thank heaven), the SWORD allows its holder to scan a person from up to 40 meters away to detect the presence of a hidden weapon. Not only that, it recognizes faces and compares them against a “watch list.” Apparently if it detects both weapon and facial threat it alerts a “security officer.” No word on whether a mere weapon or mere facial threat alone is sufficient to bring chaos down upon the…<\/p>\n

Continue readingIf you thought mere anti-gun witch hunts were bad …<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guns-and-gun-rights","category-privacy-and-self-ownership","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37479"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37485,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37479\/revisions\/37485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}