One or the conspiracy junkies - Are there spy bugs tracking your every move when you are at a public protest?

Do spybugs perch on your window boxes, the better to see what cereal you had for breakfast? Are there little robotic insects crawling through your shop space even now, sending pictures back to the mothership, to be added to your file and used against you when they time comes?

Probably not, but we’ll get right on that.

The Washingotn post has a nifty little article about the history of insectoid surveillance devices, including some that may or may not be in use today.

Agency spokesman George Little said he could not talk about what the CIA may have done since [the Seventies]. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service also declined to discuss the topic.

The concept of an insect-sized is great but does have its pitfalls:

Even if the technical hurdles are overcome, insect-size fliers will always be risky investments.

“They can get eaten by a bird, they can get caught in a spider web,” said Fearing of Berkeley. “No matter how smart you are — you can put a Pentium in there — if a bird comes at you at 30 miles per hour there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Most intriguing is DARPA’s goal for a species of cybernetically enhanced beetles and moths - bugs whose nervous systems have entwined with a human-placed chip, or whose muscles serve as the power source for various devices.

Oh yeah, we’re totally not worried that a robot army’s going to come out of this. Oh no.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Bill Joy Might Be Right, Robot Overlords. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.