Originals Lydia, frankieleon, CC BY 2.0
***
While there do appear to be some security flaws in the new Pokemon Go app — it seems right now to have full access to your Gmail account, which does seem quite the overreach — it nevertheless seems a bit hyperbolic to refer to it as a “Government Surveillance Psyop Conspiracy.”
Brought to you by Ashley Feinberg at Gawker Media’s Black Bag blog — a blog which to me seems pretty much to be the walking talking definition of Poe’s Law — this particular conspiracy theory does point out some peculiarities in the new augmented reality game’s development (or rather its developers), though it does fail to notice that no matter how much information it gathers on your location and whereabouts, giving it to the government would be pointless. The government can already get all that information from your cellphone carrier, which tracks your location in order to work.
Still, as always, we should probably beware who we give what information to.
Happy Monday, everyone.
***
Thanks for reading! I only get paid in my own (and your) enthusiasm, so please like This Week In Tomorrow on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @TWITomorrow, and tell your friends about the site!
If you like our posts and want to support our site, please share it with others, on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit — anywhere you think people might want to read what we’ve written. Thanks so much for reading, and have a great week.
***
Richard Ford Burley is a human, writer, and doctoral candidate at Boston College, as well as an editor at Ledger, the first academic journal devoted to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. In his spare time he writes about science, skepticism, feminism, and futurism here at This Week In Tomorrow.