BEWARE: The Spy At The Dinner Table is Not Who You Think it is

Dining out tonight? Think twice about what you say in restaurants, because eyes and ears are everywhere. Sounds like a scary movie right? Except it’s not a movie it is reality, the wonderful tablets that are placed in different restaurants around the country, are in fact watching and listening to you and your company while you are consuming the restaurant’s food.

The obvious violation of privacy is so blatant; however, the restaurants are claiming that they are not “recording.” We will see about that:

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — You can order, pay your bill and even play games on tablets some restaurants now have at the table. But one of our viewers, Howard Fergarsky noticed a camera on a tablet and wanted to know if the restaurant is watching him.

“Is this a camera or something” our undercover producer asked a Chili’s server. “Oh no, it’s not,” she answered. Despite what the Chili’s server is telling our producer, there is a camera on the restaurant’s tablet on the table.

“I found the camera. Why is it there?” Fergarsky asked. “It doesn’t need to be there.”

He and friend, Cheryl Keith are afraid restaurants like Chili’s, Red Robin and Applebee’s which now have tablets for ordering, paying for food, even entertaining your kids with games could also be spying on us, watching and eavesdropping on our conversations or listening to what we’re saying about their servers or food.

“It concerns me that we’re not seeing the hidden risks,” said Keith.

Pam Dixon from the World Privacy Forum worries if cameras and microphones are on the tablets, there’s always a possibility they can be watching you.

“The tablet itself is not a bad thing,” she said. “It’s what they’re doing with that information…They may allow access to that information for marketing and things like that, and that’s what you don’t want to see.”

When we asked each restaurant about their tablet, each said their technology has no microphone and cameras will not be used to spy on us.