The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

So the Tech Boyz have developed a spiffy little software that can identify people by the way they walk — Gait Recognition. Great news if you’re a cop or a spy, not so much if you’re a criminal or maybe just an ordinary mind-yer-own-business citizen. Apparently we all have very unique signature walks, ones not disguisable by pretending to limp, gimp or amble like a drunk chimp.

I know these folks have taken the bounce out of MY step, not that it will keep them and their ubiquitous surveillance cameras from spotting me in a crowd. Admittedly I’m rarely in a crowd, but with facial recognition, Gait I.D., voice recognition and soon-to-be-developed Hat Recognition, I might just as well tattoo a name tag on my forehead. Or just a barcode.

Nice to know our individual uniquenesses can be used against us. Or … if you’re a Law & Order type with nothing to hide, to use against the miscreants. Not YOU, of course. Just that neighbor you never really liked or trusted. Probably me.

Lately I’ve been stumbling across surveillance cameras strapped to trees here on the crowdless South End, camouflaged units with solar cells, probably for tracking deer or the Barefoot Bandit, I figured. Until I found one pointing at me in my little park. I ambled up to it with my one-of-a-kind hop jump one step forward half a step back gait, waved, said hello and now, no doubt, I’m in some data bank where my walk is being analyzed and stored. Half my neighbors have CostCo security systems, half a dozen cameras that can be monitored from their damn cellphones. I’m sure they sleep better these days, secure in their sleep-number slumber beds.

At least until they learn what the response time is for the Island Sheriff’s Department to answer a distress call.

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