Defence specialist Raytheon has an automated data harvesting process which can track you with pin-point accuracy and even predict where you’re going. Until two days ago it was top secret — but now a leaked video shows exactly what it can do.
The technology created by Raytheon, and revealed in a video found by the Guardian, is called RIOT (Rapid Information Overlay Technology). It uses location tags, EXIF data, social network postings and more to build up a complete snapshot of a person’s life.
It’s not doing anything particularly unusual when you consider each part in isolation, but when assembled to create a full picture of a person’s life it appears rather threatening. Using Foursquare check-in data it can predict where someone may be at a particular time, also pulling out personal photos of friends and generally building up a portfolio of mined data, letting you know where someone may be, what they look like and who they’re likely to see there.
Raytheon says it hasn’t sold this auto-stalking tech to any customers yet, although it admits to sharing some of this tech with the US government in 2010. Great! [Guardian]