Barbie: From Sexualizing Children to Spy*

Hello Barbie is “the world’s first interactive Barbie doll” … and it is rather creepy. Equipped with a microphone and internet connectivity, the doll asks questions to children, records their answers and send the information back to Mattel servers where it is filed and processed by a powerful algorithm.

Hello Barbie works by recording a child’s voice with an embedded microphone that is triggered by pressing a button on the doll. As the doll “listens,” audio recordings travel over the Web to a server where the snippets of speech are recognized and processed. That information is used to help form Hello Barbie’s responses.

– Washington Post, Privacy advocates try to keep ‘creepy,’ ‘eavesdropping’ Hello Barbie from hitting shelves

At the New York toy fair, Mattel representatives demonstrated Hello Barbie’s capabilities.

At the demonstration at the New York toy fair, the Mattel representative chatting with Hello Barbie mentioned…

They thought they were untouchable because they were celebrities or MPs or ministers of government or other pillars of the establishment. And if the police got too nosey they could be shut up with threats by spooks of the Official Secrets Act – after all, a prosecution would have led to more prosecutions and the collapse of government. But despite all the attempts over three decades of cover up, the truth is finally emerging, thanks mainly to the determination of certain MPs, investigations by the media, efforts by netizens and the brave determination of survivors of the abuse. Now there is so much evidence and documents swimming around the current government has been given little choice but to move everything up a notch – hence, at least three police operations and, after two false starts, a UK-wide judge-led inquiry. In the meantime, below, is what might be the most up-to-date…