Mythopoeika
I am a meat popsicle
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2001
- Messages
- 53,264
- Location
- Inside a starship, watching puny humans from afar
Always turn off your phone.I recently had an experience that left me with no doubt that our mobile phones are listening to us. I’ll have to be quite vague in what I post about it though, for reasons that should be obvious.
I was recently cited for jury service at a Sheriff Court. In Scotland at the moment jury trials are being held with only the Sheriff, the lawyers, the witnesses and the accused person present in the courtroom; the jury sits socially distanced at a ‘remote jury centre’ in an Odeon cinema screen in a different town which is linked to the court by a live video stream. I was unlucky enough to be selected to actually serve on a jury so sat through a trial where the name of the accused woman was mentioned many times over the course of the four days. I was never in the same room - or even the same town - as the accused woman and until the first day I had never seen or heard of her before (obviously, or I wouldn’t have been allowed to be on the jury). Her address was given as a town in another county which I haven’t visited for several years.
My phone was switched on and in my pocket throughout the trial but, due to dire warnings and watchful security, I didn’t use it or even look at it at all when I was in the jury centre. We were also warned many times over the course of the trial not to attempt to look up anyone connected with the case on social media under threat of jail for contempt of court
I have a Facebook account which I use only for Groups related to my hobby. I don’t have many friends on there and haven’t added a new friend in probably the last three or four years. I went on Facebook the day the trial finished and guess who was number one in the ‘people you may know’ box? It was, of course, the accused woman. Ever since then she pops up there every time I go on Facebook.
Now I’m shitting bricks in case somehow the court finds out about it and I am up before the Sheriff myself thanks to Android always listening and Facebook’s inscrutable algorithm.
Delete Facebook.