eavesdropping

I saw a commercial yesterday for this sort of portable amplifying device. I don't know technically what it is or how it works, but the product is called Listen Up. When they first introduced its purpose (your reason for buying it), a senior-age couple was lying in bed together at night. She wanted him to lower the volume of the TV so she could go to bed, and he complained he wouldn't be able to hear it if he did that. The solution? Listen Up because he can plug into the device with headphones/earphones so only he would hear it (loudly). What I still don't understand is why they did not mention that she would still be able to hear it on some level. It's not as if it would work if he put the TV on mute. She would hear it, too. Is there that much of a difference, anyway?

In order to fully convince people that they should buy this thing, the makers advertised other venues where it's useful, such as on nature walks (you can better hear the birds chirping!) or at sporting events (you can hear what the players are saying to each other--if you're close enough already, right?).

I don't take issue with these, but I do take issue with their other suggestion: listening in on other people's conversations. They even demonstrated two examples! A guy was listening in on two women standing on the other side of the gym. He was grinning as they complimented his physique. And a woman picking up her mail at the end of her driveway listened as neighbors passed her because they were talking about her, the obvious "new nice neighbor." She grinned, too, happy to hear that they like her after all.

OK. So if you didn't buy the thing for nature walks or classical concerts, if you had the ulterior motive of eavesdropping, invading other people's privacy, their private space even, then this commercial not only acknowledges that you may choose to purchase it for this Big Brother purpose, it fucking suggests and condones it! In other words, I was shocked that it outright acknowledged why you're probably more likely to use the little electronic device.

In any case, what this means is that in addition to governmental intrusions of privacy, privacy is becoming a thing of the past on even more local levels between individuals and/or strangers. I'm surprised they didn't show someone listening in on his Middle Eastern (particularly Muslim) neighbors to find out if they're with Al-Qaeda or something.

What is the world coming to?