Copier Surveillance
I love technology, at least most of the time. In fact, I suspect that maintaining a blog tends to exclude one from Luddite membership. I'm not overly concerned about how often I'm recorded, photographed, etc. I've come to accept that we in western society pretty much live in a high-tech fish bowl.
That fact was brought home to me a few years ago when I stopped at a hospital security desk to ask for directions. The guard told me which hallways to travel and where to turn. My trusty sense of direction being what it is, I promptly got lost. After wandering around a bit, another security guard found me in the hallway and pointed me in the right direction. Only later did I realize that he'd known just where I was heading. Obviously my wanderings had been viewed on security cameras and my destination radioed ahead. In that case monitoring proved helpful, if a bit embarrassing.
Recently however, I became aware of another common form of monitoring that could have unexpected and long-term effects.
Do you handle highly sensitive and confidential paperwork at your job? Do you make photocopies of it from time to time? Did you make a photocopy of your last tax return?
Did you know that the image of your confidential document is likely stored on a hard-drive in the copier? And do you know what will happen to those images when the machine is sold or returned to the leasing company?
Very scary. Forewarned is forearmed as they say...
References:
Yahoo Tech
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/22352;_ylt=Alkp8a2e.NgiuGFXAis62ZQrLpA5
Computerworld
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9013104
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