“Wired tells the story of two artists, Kyle McDonald and Brian House, who wanted to experiment with surveillance. The pair installed simple Wi-Fi-enabled recording devices in lamps at McDonalds, a library, a bedroom, a bank, and in New York’s Washington Square Park. The recordings are sent to Mechanical Turk workers, who have been transcribing and posting them to Twitter for almost seven months.

Most of the captured conversations are mundane: thoughts like “Socks, I need socks,” and “How’s the weather looking for today? Hopefully good after the last week of this.” But occasionally the conversations sound like something you might be sensitive about if it were you. “I’m going insane being so cautious with money.” “She sounds like a keeper, honestly. You just have to let her know you want it to be serious.” “For the tenth time, it’s because my boss doesn’t like me, I’ve told you this already!””* The Young Turks hosts Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian break it down.

*Read more here from Adrianne Jeffries / The Verge:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/23/5643396/conversnitch-spying-lamp-tweeting-new-yorkers-conversations