Singapore Airlines is facing several questions from consumers following a discovery that the in-flight entertainment system may be watching its users back.
Twitter user @vkamluk noticed the camera embedded into the bottom of the screen on their in-flight entertainment system and immediately snapped pics to put the announcement on blast.
People were furious.
How dare Singapore Airlines invade their privacy like that?
Singapore Air was quick to reply.
It seems as though the "camera embedded in the hardware" is the result of poor buying practices.
And Singapore Airlines aren't the only offenders.
Passenger Sri Ray had a similar experience with an American Airlines flight to Japan.
"I am what one would call security paranoid," Ray, formerly a site reliability engineer at BuzzFeed, told Buzzfeed News.
"I observe tech in day-to-day life and wonder how a malicious person can use it in bad ways. When I looked at the shiny new screens in the new premium economy cabin of AA, I noticed a small circle at the bottom. Upon closer inspection, it was definitely a camera."
You can see those cameras in this video:
American Airlines Premium Economy - Selecting the Best Seatswww.youtube.com
The biggest concern is that these systems could somehow be hacked and used to steal the viewer's identity.
While Singapore claims these cameras are "unhackable," some passengers had already proven that wrong...with very questionable motives.
Gross.
And in a world that is gaining more and more sentient and idle technology, the potential for hacking has grown.
Most people own a home device such as an Alexa, a Google Home or a Siri. Lately, people have been realizing that their devices are always listening to them, as often, ads about things they have only said out loud will show up on their social media.
It just really seems like we may not be safe or unobserved anywhere.
Now, we can add "On flights" to that list.
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@sadcommunistdog; @froglok/Bluesky