A new smartphone application for iPhone and iPad called SpyMeSat lets you know if an imaging satellite is spying on you.
Ever wondered if you are being watched? Like in the popular American crime television series by Jonathan Nolan, "Person of Interest", a machine spies on you every hour of every day. In the series, Harold Finch, a software genius, works closely with John Reese, ex-military, to secretly save lives of innocent people, whom the government considers irrelevant. But what if someone is watching your every move and you have no way of finding it out unless you yourself have an amazing software.
While the practices shown in "Person of Interest" are fictional, the recent leak of classified details of several top-secret U.S. and U.K. government mass surveillance programs by Edward Snowden has got us all worried about our privacy. Several tech giants are already raising concerns over the NSA practices and it goes without saying that people are offended. John McAfee, founder of renowned security firm McAfee, revealed his plans to build a gadget called "D-Central" that will keep the NSA or any other government agency's prying eyes off our personal data. But that is still in the works and expected to launch by March next year.
Amid all these worries, a U.S.-based software company has developed a mobile application that gives you an upper hand in combating spying attempts. The firm built an app for iPhones and iPads called SpyMeSat, which sends notifications to user's smartphone when spy satellites are zooming above your head and taking your picture.
"I actually got the idea for the app from talking to friends outside the aerospace industry who were always very interested in space and satellites and imaging from space. This app answers those questions in a fun and interactive way," said Alex Herz, president of Orbit Logic in Greenbelt, Maryland, which developed the app, according to ET.
The mobile application can tell you if imaging satellites, in low-Earth orbit at an altitude of about 800kms, are trying to take your picture. The satellites that can be traced back by the app include GeoEye, the French space agency's SPOT-5, India's CartoSat-2A, DigitalGlobe's WorldView satellites and Canada's RADARSAT-2.
The app works using the public and commercial information available about international satellites and also uses data from the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). While it provides data from several satellites listed here, SpyMeSat does not include all imaging spacecrafts due to lack of information available about the classified imaging satellites.
The app is available for download for $1.99 on iTunes and works with iOS 6.0 and higher.
