Surveillance!

July 17th, 2021| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

The other day the byline of an online news article caught my attention:

Clerks at 7-Eleven and other convenience stores are being constantly monitored by a voice of god that can intervene from thousands of miles away.”

The article proceeded to describe how, in a short CCTV video, a clerk at a small convenience store can be seen taking a bottle of coffee from a cooler and drinking it. When he returns to the cash register, an unseen person’s voice emits from a speaker on the ceiling and interrogates him about whether he scanned and paid for the item.

In another video, a cashier is standing behind the counter talking to someone just out of frame. There’s a ‘ding’ sound, and the “voice from above” questions the cashier about who the other man is—he’s there to give the cashier a ride at the end of his shift—then orders the man to stand on the other side of the counter so that he can be clearly seen on camera … to someone … somewhere!

That’s the work of Washington-based Live Eye Surveillance and its flagship product: a camera system that keeps constant watch over shops and lets a remote human operator intervene whenever they see something they deem suspicious. For enough money—around $400/month—a person in India will watch the video feed from your business 24/7.

Claims Live Eye’s website:

The monitors act as a virtual supervisor for the sites, in terms of assuring the safety of the employees located overseas and requesting them to complete assigned tasks.”

The company claims several major corporations as customers, including 7-Eleven, Shell, Dairy Queen, and Holiday Inn.

In one of the sample videos Live Eye sends potential customers, two black-clad robbers, one carrying an assault rifle, run into what appears to be a 7-Eleven store and force the clerk behind the counter. As the clerk starts to open the cash register, the Live Eye system dings and that other-worldly voice informs the robbers that the police have been called. They run out of the store.

(Of course, in real life, someone with an assault rifle in their hands may not be startled by such announcements, and might result in someone getting killed.)

The fact is, we’ve all got a surveillance system in our lives. And this Person watches, hears, knows.

At all times:

O Lord, You have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
You understand my thought from afar.
Psalm 139:1–2

All things:

You scrutinize my path and my lying down,
And are intimately acquainted with all my ways. …
Behold, O Lord, You know it all.
Psalm 139:3–4

In all places:

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
Psalm 139:7

Because he is the Creator:

For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.
My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me.
Psalm 139:13, 15–16

But this is not a heavenly policeman watching—it is a loving Father!

How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Psalm 139:17

And so …

I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.
Psalm 139:14

SOURCE:
Vice