動物隱私權 | Animal tracking

Isn’t technology amazing? The mind boggles at what we can achieve with our inventiveness and the scientific resources we’ve developed, if we just put our minds to it.

​In this intriguing popular science piece about animal tracking, we can see how advanced our tracking and monitoring technology has gotten to the point where we can monitor every movement, and every waking (and sleeping) hour of an organism’s life. ​

It doesn’t matter how deep they dive in the ocean, or how high they fly in the sky, humans can now follow and monitor all feathered and furry friends to know exactly what they get up to. Our technological achievements seem to know no bounds! On the other hand, how do you think the animals themselves feel about this?

If this article is any indication, we are now forcing other fellow inhabitants of this earth to endure the same invasion of privacy that many of us choose to embrace on social media, but all in the name of scientific progress, and without giving animals any choice in the matter.

​What gives us, the clothes-wearing apes, the right to monitor, control, dominate and decimate all other species for our own interests?

It is one thing to respectfully observe other creatures in their natural habitats. It’s a whole other matter when we subject them to 24/7 recording of their every movement by forcibly attaching monitoring devices to them. How would you like to be tracked everywhere you go, and in everything you do?

Citizens in some countries, and also those using some social media apps already have their movements and habits recorded by the government to give them a ‘social credit’ rating, or by tech companies to collate meta-data to sell for advertising purposes.

Bad luck to the people willing to sacrifice their freedom for the sake of their governments’ control, or privacy for the sake of tech companies’ profits. Where is the privacy opt-out button for nature?

參考資料 :
Where the animals go: wildlife tracking secrets revealed