Safety tool or pervert’s dream? The Mll Flashcam

The Mll Flashcam is one product getting press coverage at the Consumer Electronics Show currently being held in Las Vegas. The Flashcam looks like a standard flashlight but comes with night vision and a video camera. According to the product’s Web site “With the touch of a button, you can switch the Mll to the covert Night Vision Mode. Covertly document nighttime investigations… Record up to 60 minutes of crystal clear covert night vision surveillance (video and audio).”

The MII Flashcam also won the innovation award in the surveillance category from the Cygnus Public Safety Group for its ability to allow officers to see and record video in total darkness and to gather evidence or establish probable cause without being seen.

So why am I covering this product, and what does the Flashcam have to do with safety?

As with so many great tools designed for law enforcement, this has an equally great downside. If this were a product sold strictly to law enforcement agencies, I’d be much less concerned, but anyone can buy it. The Web site promotional material continues: “Download the video to your … computer in seconds to store recorded events even more permanently.”

This means that anyone can take an hour of high quality video and audio of you – even in the dark – without your knowing. This would be a useful tool for criminals including peeping toms, home break-in specialists, stalkers, and sexual predators.

In a time when our privacy and safety are under siege, this one ranks up there with the technologies that came out a few years ago that created camera lenses that let you see through people’s clothes and the Peeping Tom software for mobile phone cameras allowing cell phone users to denude their targets.

Think twice about the next flashlight or cell phone pointed your way...

Linda