Greetings. It's cool to be the family spy! That seems to be the message that two new television commercials are sending, along with a dash of "humiliation can be fun" as well.

In a Sony camcorder commercial, a little girl is seen surreptitiously recording her older brother having an innocent romantic moment with his girlfriend. She then creates a DVD from this material and uses it to embarrass him in front of their parents.

A Cisco/Linksys commercial (promoting photo sharing) features another little girl (just what are these spots trying to tell us about American family life?) who in this case rigs a screen so that photos of her older brother with another girlfriend are shown to his current girlfriend while he's out of the room. Little sister then feigns ignorance about why the girlfriend suddenly departed. The playing of "Your Cheating Heart" in the background is presumably supposed to be the justification for sister's vigilante action.

No doubt Sony, Cisco, and the ad agencies behind these spots think these vignettes are humorous and cute. Perhaps the next phase in commercials like these will be step-by-step instructions for taking compromising photos in the bedroom and selling them on Websites around the world.

When it comes to corporate profits, it looks like turning customers into spies might be a sordid pot of gold.

--Lauren--