Miniature Surveillance is definitely on its way. The long-term trend is for devices to become more powerful, with longer lasting batteries, and multiple means of communicating data. The wars that will emerge are:
- Government vs citizens – where the ability for regular citizens to be able to tell if they are being monitored diminishes, and government spying increases
- Government vs criminals – secret monitoring will become illegal, but that won’t stop criminals. Just like internet criminals have become skilled at getting away with their crimes, so it will happen in the real world.
- Government vs government – it will be the Cold War all over again…
The key to all this will be a tech battle revolving around the detectability of bugs. While they might be cheap enough to deploy en masse, they will be useless unless their data can be accessed. They might be too small to see, but airwaves can be monitored.
Anyway, here are two devices that are paving the way:
A computer that measures just one (1) cubic millimeter. In that tiny space it has squeezed:
- a radio with integrated antennas
- a battery
- enough memory to run software programs as well as store data
- two processors: 1 general purpose and 1 dedicated to power management (such as effectively using solar energy)
- an imager (the equivalent of a 96 x96-pixel camera)
- a solar cell
- a temperature sensor
All the ingredients you need for spying (although you would prefer a higher-spec camera), although in this instance the device will be implanted in the eyes of glaucoma patients. More at the University of Michigan.
Mobee is a robotic insect.It weighs just 80mg, has a wingspan of 3cm, and its wings beat at 120hz.
These are the first flying devices of this size, and so far are limited by available technology:
The prototypes are still tethered by a very thin power cable because there are no off-the-shelf solutions for energy storage that are small enough to be mounted on the robot’s body. High energy-density fuel cells must be developed before the RoboBees will be able to fly with much independence.
More at Harvard, video at YouTube.
It will only be a matter of time before these little robot insects are flying under their own power, observing and communicating. Possibly swarming. In the future any open window might be a risk.
