Pokemon, I knew it.

How many of you walked around neighbourhoods with your kids, capturing pokemons on your phone?

This phenomenon has earned its place in gaming and tech history....

....in more ways than one.

Even before release day, pokemon go's hype was enormous, with children and not a few parents awaiting it excitedly.

Then, when it came out it was, to me disturbing to watch as masses of people on the street shuffled along with their phones in front of them.

Not just eleven year olds, but businessmen, students, people on their way to yoga class. It was the combination Invasion of the Body Snatchers and that episode of Start Trek: TNG, where that gaming headseat entrances everyone.

Then it wasn't long before the news reports came in of people getting hit by cars and walking into buildings, due to being sucked into their phone screen.
W
atching all this, I'm thinking: A game that captivates every age group and social stratum: a game that is virtually free, with almost none of the marketing addons that are required to make profit from this type of software: AND a game that interfaces with the CIA-created Google Earth for its maps.

Something is not right here.

Sure enough, pokemon go is CIA funded and owned. When you agree to the ToS and install the game, every scrap of data, including contact lists, is uploaded to the CIA and maybe NSA database.

Not only that, every time you 'capture' a pokemon, you're also unknowingly taking a screen capture of an area. Why is this important? Because in the game there are special locations (in the real world map) called 'gyms' where special rewards and pokemons can be had.
If the CIA are interested, say, in getting photos of people they're monitoring at a Starbucks, for example, all they have to do is program a 'gym' to appear there, and within minutes dozens of pokemons fans will be descending on the location, snapping pictures.

All this data is cloud stored, and it's not necessary for the CIA to pour through it all. If they want a picture of interest for a certain date and location, they just bring it up.

It was on Coast to Coast tonight. The guest speaking out it isn't a new age crystal collector. He's an established IT journalist with a long pedigree in the field. Everyone should give it a listen.

I wasn't able to catch the whole interview, but there's more to this than just data acquisition, in my opinion.
There's also huge data and implications in the fields of crowd control and social conditioning, not to say cultural shock testing.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Pokemon, I knew it.