Who's paranoid? Personal security tech goes mainstream in surveillance era

The man selling biometric equipment at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas this week had never seen so much interest in his booth in nearly 30 years.

And he’s horrified. He always thought widespread acceptance of their fingerprint scanners would be for convenience, not surveillance, but he’s not so sure any more.

“We’ve been around since 1988, and this year we’re hot, very hot,” said Jeff Brown, the vice-president of sales at optical sensor company SecuGen. “Everything has two sides to it – a butter knife is a weapon. I don’t like seeing it as a weapon but you can make it into that. And that’s what’s happening.”