Hey Star Wars Fans, Hack This Robot #ForTheSakeOfLiberty

What a way to kick off the new year but with a Star Wars-like data collection robot scouring the streets of Silicon Valley.

This is the most Orwellian piece of technology I have seen, first hand, in my entire life. I had a chance to meet one of their engineers and ask a few questions about the technology when they deployed one near my office.

This K5 robot will roll down the streets and sweep up EVERY SINGLE piece of digital data available, including, but not limited to, cell phone signals and their mac addresses, any wifi signals, infrared scanning of the streets with heat signals, and possibly biometrics included. It is likely to have facial recognition and license plate scanning technology. All of this data will be uploaded to a centralized server where analysts will comb the data for patterns. This data will be held and shared with local police departments, as well as DHS Fusion Centers, which probably means, the NSA will have the data in their Utah center as well.

This robot and its data collection activities are absolutely an invasion of privacy and a Big Brother favorite.

My suggestion is file lawsuits on the grounds that they do not have a warrant to invade your personal space, or hacking the robot and broadcast a pirate signal via live stream on YouTube to laugh in the face of the maker, or, if you have the capabilities, use a drone to taser the damn thing until its completely fried.

See my first hand encounter here: