Big Brother ‘eye’ for keeping tabs on all the family

IT would be some people’s idea of a nightmare – a camera in the corner of the sitting-room, monitoring their family’s every movement.

But experts at the Ideal Home Show predict this is the way many of us will live in future. Their vision of the ‘ideal smart home’ includes a small camera, housed in a pale wooden casing that would not look out of place on a mantelpiece.

The £169.95 gadget can be used to film family life and stream HD footage to users’ tablet devices or mobile phones, even when they are away from home.

Withings, the company which makes the ‘home camera’, boasts that its wide-angle lens means ‘no corner will go unseen’, even at night. When the sun sets, the camera automatically goes into Night Vision mode, ‘using an infrared mechanical filter to see through the darkness’.

It will also record sound, monitor air quality and send users alerts when it detects sound or movement.

According to Withings, this constant monitoring device will ‘facilitate family interactions’, by capturing moments together that some family members would not normally see.

But privacy campaigners drew comparisons with Big Brother – the authoritarian state which watches people’s every move in 1984, the dystopian novel by George Orwell. Controlling partners could constantly use it to monitor family members.

Renate Samson, of campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: ‘This is keeping an eye on people, not interacting with them. There is no privacy in your own home, from your own family.’