Do You Owe Your Dog Privacy?

"It can paint camouflage onto their bodies with astonishing quickness: The peppered moth's wings darkened only a few decades after England's Industrial Revolution blackened urban tree trunks. Decades later, when pollution let up, their wings lightened again. But evolution has not moved quickly enough to conceal animals from human-surveillance technologies, which are undergoing their own Cambrian explosion. Cameras and microphones are shrinking. They're spreading all over the globe."

"Humans are closing in on a real-time god's-eye view of this planet. Some subsurface places remain unmonitored. The sun's light penetrates only a thousand yards down into the ocean. But on the planet's surface, humanity's sensors are everywhere. Even animals in the Himalayas can be seen by the satellites that fly overhead, snapping color pictures. They can spot the hot breath of a single whale geysering out of its blowhole."

"Deep in the wilderness, way off the hiking trails, scientists have laid out grids of camera traps. Automated environmental-DNA stations census animals in these places by gathering fragments of their genetic material straight from the air, or from veins in the watershed, be they trickles of snowmelt or full streams. The closer a landscape is to civilization, the more intrusively its animals are watched. Those that live in rural barns, feed lots, or aquaculture ponds are monitored by cameras."

Human surveillance technologies have proliferated globally, shrinking and spreading cameras and microphones that can detect animals in cities, wilderness, and remote regions. Satellites and aerial sensors can image high mountains and detect whale exhalations at sea. Deep-ocean 'midnight zone' remains largely unmonitored, but surface environments are saturated with sensors. Field researchers deploy grids of camera traps and automated environmental-DNA stations that sample genetic fragments from air and waterways. Animals near farms, aquaculture ponds, barns, and feedlots are monitored continuously; predators along fence lines are recorded. Free-ranging herds may be microchipped and tracked by drones, diminishing animals' ability to remain concealed.

Read at The Atlantic