Even the Church is getting worried:
“All phones have a microphone, and Facebook and many other phone apps require access to the microphone and camera,” said Fr. George Hajj, parish priest at St. Anthony of Padua Maronite Church in the United States. “Therefore we don’t know what technology, and in whose interest it is in, to spy and overhear what is being said in the confessional.”
For Father Andrew Pinsent, Research Director at Oxford’s Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, surveillance through modern technology has become so thorough that it makes Orwell’s Big Brother fears look almost quaint, like “something from the dinosaur era.” It therefore demands “extra vigilance” to ensure “proper privacy in regard to the sacraments, when matters of salvation are at stake.”
Fr. Pinsent covers cameras “that can be turned on electronically” to prevent snoopers (FBI director James Comey recently advised people to do the same thing). He also has other concerns such as built-in microphones on computers as well as mobile devices (as does Mark Zuckerberg), and the general profiling that comes with browsing. He calls e-assistants like Siri and Amazon’s Echo “simply insane from a privacy perspective.”
I’d like to know why this priest is thinking this way. Assuming one is under surveillance is usually something only spies and the spied upon assume.
That said, he is undoubtedly right. The confessional is an intelligence goldmine, where you can line up an entire congregation, and acquire all of their deepest darkest sins. Surveillance, by any entity, will go where the dirt is, so if you were a target I would definitely expect them to get ears wherever you talk about your dirt. Thinking in terms of personal devices spying on you even adds another dimension.
I would love to someday do an experiment, and run TSCM sweeps on as many confessional booths as possible. It would not surprise me at all if somewhere there is a booth with the tech built right in.
It is a different world these days.
[…] Could Your Confession With A Priest Be Spied On? […]
Well, that was the secret of the Jesuits, right? Here’s the thing……there are very few true Catholics anymore, imo. As the Bible says, “there’s no fear of God before their eyes.” A democrat that isn’t virulently anti abortion is truly demonic. Clinton blithely mentions partial birth abortion…..hmmmm……We are warned about how wolves would enter in among the flock….even smiling wolves such as Kaine.
Here’s a clue…..live as if you’re constantly monitored. You see, to put it simply…..it’s all about the speed at which computers can process info. Quantum computers?
Everything electronic can be traced and monitored. That’s how the NSA and other entities operate. Now, as recent events have clearly shown, well…..are you sure your intranet at home isn’t informing on you?
Bugging confessionals is routine in police states. The STASI did it for decades.
No surprise here. Catholics have the most highly developed sixth sense regarding religious persecutions than any Christian sect has, so much so that Orthodox Jewish communities always keep an eye on the Catholics for such signs for the jump off.
This would not surprise me. One of the NW states (Washington or Oregon) in the 1990’s recorded a confession of a defendant. It was used as evidence at the trial. The priest and his bishop went to court to get it removed, but it seems that the courts which ever state it was decided that it wasn’t protected like say Doctor or Lawyer communications.* It is possible that this priest has friends in the IT world, or in the Security world. For years cell phones have been banned in Classified military spaces for just this reason.
* The Fed’s are finding ways of leaning on Lawyers to get them to violate Attorney-Client privilege, so nothing is protected from a determined surveillance state.