Some airliners have cameras on the record screens

Now, there is another place where the cameras could start looking at you – from 30,000 feet.

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

The American and Singapore both said Friday that they had never activated the cameras and had not intended 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 passenger 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 pointed out that they had not added the cameras, but that the manufacturers had incorporated them into the 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 it was not so intrusive – and the companies assumed that passengers would exchange their images for convenience, as is the case with facial recognition technology at 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.

American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein said the cameras were occupying "premium economy" seats on 82 Boeing 777s and Airbus A330-200s. American has nearly 1,000 aircraft.

"Cameras are a standard feature of many in-flight entertainment systems used by several airlines," he said.

Singapore's spokesman, James Boyd, said the cameras board 84 Airbus A350s, Airbus A380s, and Boeing 777s and 787s. The carrier has 117 planes.

While airlines say they do not intend to use the cameras, Vitaly Kamluk, a Twitter user, who took the photo of the camera on his flight to Singapore, said suggested that, just to be sure, carriers should stick stickers on the lenses.

"The cameras are probably not used now," he tweeted. "But if they're wired, operational, delivered with a microphone, it's smart hack to use them on more than 84 planes and spy on passengers."