I've seen big brother... and he's Comcastic

I don't have a SpeedPass to pay my tolls. I smelled a rat at the first announcement surrounding this "convenience technology."


Imagine the hefty pat I gave myself on the back after friends and family reported massive overcharges on their credit and debit cards for the service.


And who can forget the SpeedPass speeding tickets? For a short stint, SpeedPass tracked driver time and distance between toll booths and those on the losing side of the calculation received speeding tickets. In other words, "you must have been speeding to get from Point A to Point B in X-amount of time."


Dang. Who knew Big Brother carried a radar gun??


Even with those little "bugs" worked out... Okay... more like Mexican cockroaches... I prefer to play the quarter-toss at my friendly neighborhood toll baskets.


Fast forward to 2008.  Comcast wants to install cameras in cable boxes that will scan your room, get a quick read on who's in the room, and provide programming based on the crowd. Seriously. According to Chris Albrecht, Comcast presented this idea at a Digital Living Room conference:

If you have some tinfoil handy, now might be a good time to fashion a hat. At the Digital Living Room conference today, Gerard Kunkel, Comcast’s senior VP of user experience, told me the cable company is experimenting with different camera technologies built into devices so it can know who’s in your living room.

The idea being that if you turn on your cable box, it recognizes you and pulls up shows already in your profile or makes recommendations. If parents are watching TV with their children, for example, parental controls could appear to block certain content from appearing on the screen. Kunkel also said this type of monitoring is the “holy grail” because it could help serve up specifically tailored ads. Yikes.

If you're looking for a Scout's promise to help get over that squeamish, itchy feeling of glaring eyes, let's see how this fits:

Kunkel said the system wouldn’t be based on facial recognition, so there wouldn’t be a picture of you on file (we hope). Instead, it would distinguish between different members of your household by recognizing body forms.

If you're a clean-minded nun, you probably imagine getting caught scratching your knees. If you're the average American, you probably imagine thousands of unsuspecting couples getting caught doing The Funky Pretzel on the couch.


Either way, I can't see anybody jumping at the chance to welcome voyeuristic snooping in the form of a TV that watches back to find out what "human forms" are in the room.


SpeedPass ended that love affair for drivers after snooping on folks' driving habits.


And Bush ended the snooping love affair for all Americans with his closet fetish for eavesdropping on private citizen phone calls without cause. But that's for another blog post...

Anybody else want me to post about a good price on a set of old-fashioned rabbit ear antenna? We may only get three channels, but we'll be watching them in private.

Comments

[Francis L. Holland]

Now we have to hide in our living rooms from the camera mounted on top of the television, and pay monthly for the privilege? No thanks! I'll just listen to NPR!