Smile: Some Airliners Have Cameras on Their File Screens – Journal

Now, there is another place where cameras could start watching you from 30,000 feet.

The latest back-end entertainment systems of some American Airlines, United Airlines and Singapore Airlines aircraft are equipped with cameras, and they are likely to be on planes used by other carriers as well.

The United States, the United States and Singapore all said Friday that they had never activated the cameras and did not plan to use them.

However, companies that manufacture entertainment systems are installing cameras to offer future options such as head-to-head videoconferencing, said a spokesman for American Airlines.

A pbadenger from a Singapore flight posted a photo of the seat record last week and the tweet was shared several hundred times and drew the attention of the media. Buzzfeed first reported that the cameras are also installed on US aircraft.

The airlines have pointed out that they have not added camera manufacturers integrated into entertainment systems. US systems are manufactured by Panasonic, while Singapore uses Panasonic and Thales, according to airline representatives. Neither Panasonic nor Thales reacted immediately for a comment.

As they shrink, cameras are integrated with more devices, including laptops and smartphones. The presence of cameras in aircraft entertainment systems was known in the world of aviation at least two years ago, although this is not the case for the traveling public.

Seth Miller, a journalist who wrote on the subject in 2017, believes that equipment manufacturers have ignored the implications for privacy. There were already cameras in the aircraft, although this is not as intrusive and the companies badumed that the pbadengers would exchange their images for convenience, as is the case with the facial recognition technology at the points control of immigration, he said. "Now they are facing a backtracking caused by a small but virulent group that is questioning the value of a system that is not even active," Miller said.

Posted in Dawn, February 24, 2019