In Soviet US, Comcast Watches YOU

cayenne8 sends us to Newteevee.com for a blog posting reporting from the Digital Living Room conference earlier this week. Gerard Kunkel, Comcast's senior VP of user experience, stated that the cable company is experimenting with different camera technologies built into its devices so it can know who's in your living room. Cameras in the set-top boxes, while apparently not using facial recognition software, can still somehow figure out who is in the room, and customize user preferences for cable (favorite channels, etc.). While this sounds 'handy,' it also sounds a bit like the TV sets in 1984. I am sure, of course, that Comcast wouldn't tap into this for any reason, nor let the authorities tap into this to watch inside your home in real time without a warrant or anything."

Ah well ...

This is one privacy issue that a little electrical tape can cure easily.

Re:Ah well ...

not really. If you cover up the lens, the cable box goes "Your papers, please." Then you'll have to type your SSN or passport number in with the remote before you can watch TV.

Re:They knew who I was.

Heh. It's hard to believe someone thought this was a good idea. After the recent warrentless wiretap fiasco, it's brutally obvious that this would be abused by some government agency somewhere. Fascists exist in every society.

Re:Ah well ...

This is one privacy issue that a little electrical tape can cure easily.

Using the electrical tape will be classed as theft, as you are preventing the business from optimizing, and thus maximizing the revenue derived from, the advertising. Puts me, albeit tenuously, in mind of a quote I saw recently-

In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy.

Re:Ah well ...

I predict if this comes to pass, child pornography will be brought up in defensed of warrantlessly spying on people using this technology.

MORE electrical tape

After all don't we all have tape over the flashing 88:88's already?

Re:Ah well ...

No, they can't make that illegal because they've already told to lay in plenty of duct tape in case of a chemical attack.

Re:Ah well ...

they can't make that illegal because they've already told to lay in plenty of duct tape in case of a chemical attack.

"Make the most of Indian hemp seed and sow it everywhere!" - George Washington

Re:Ah well ...

I guess then you stick a picture of an empty room in front of it.

Naaah...goatse.

Ceiling Comcast watches you masturbate

Note to self: no more sex in the living room.

Opportunity to screw with their minds

No, no, no! Keep on spanking the monkey, but for the sake of the camera do it while surrounded by:

Roll 1d8:

1) Stuffed animals
2) Feminine hygiene products
3) Jars of Bovril
4) Jars of Marmite
5) Old computer hardware
6) Cassette tapes of ABBA albums
7) Duct tape
8) Any two of the above

With any luck, the Demographic Analysis software will either give up or -- unless 1960s SF shows have taught me wrong -- spew reams of paper tape, shout "DOES NOT COMPUTE!" in a tinny voice, and catch on fire.

1984

A 'bit' like 1984? Who in the hell would go for this? Americans seem to have managed to convince their politicians and corporations that they have no interest in freedom at all.

Re:1984

Politicians and corporations seem to have managed to convince Americans that they have no interest in freedom at all

fixed it for ya

Re:1984

A 'bit' like 1984?

Actually this more reminds of Max Headroom.

Who in the hell would go for this?

The vast majority of people.

Americans seem to have managed to convince their politicians and corporations that they have no interest in freedom at all

Because a majority Americans apparently don't.

Oh and this is perfectly okay since it's a corporation and not a government because companies are beholden to a small number of hyper wealthy share holders as opposed to the populous. And companies never do anything wrong! Why would they? I mean look at the housing market. Rolling along! Look at the energy markets where it was finally let loose of the yoke of government regulation! Enron! Worldcom! Bear Stearns! These are pillars of industry. Truly, we should simply have more faith in the wisdom of our betters.

Interesting

This would be useful for determining who's on the end of the cable line, using bittorrent. The FBI can then go ahead and break their doors in, during an early-morning no-knock raid.

They can then go ahead and develop technology to determine who's watching the commercials and who isn't... and then apply a flat per-minute fee for not watching advertisements.

Alternatively, they can charge a per-viewer fee for pay-per-view events. After all, if you crap 20 people around your HDTV to watch a $40 boxing event, isn't it logical that you should pay extra for every extra person who's watching it?

Heck, there's all kinds of useful things a company could do with this information.

At last, per-person DRM

The RIAA and the MPAA will love this. At last, content can be licensed to the individual, not the device. "Pay per viewer", at last.

And you can't cover the camera; if it can't see you to identify your biometrics, your licenses won't validate.

Picture this

The ultimate reality show: watching yourself watch yourself.

It's the Santa Box

It sees you when you're sleeping, it knows when you're awake, it knows if you've been bad or good, so be good or get blackmailed.

Does anything sound like a bad idea to these idiots? I can just see the board room discussion...

CEO: I'm thinking anal probes.
CLO: I don't think we're quite there yet, remember you have to work up to this stuff gradually.
CTO: We already know everything about their web surfing, let's expand on that.
CEO: What do you mean?
CTO: Let's build cameras into the converter boxes, this way we can watch them.

Reply from Comcast

For those that didn't RTFA ike I did, AND scan down throught the comments section, Gerard Kunkel, the Comcast rep interviewed in the article, actually posted a reply to the article in the comments section of the website. Here are his comments:

Chris,

Your article on "Comcast Cameras to Start Watching You" portrayed some assumptions that require correction and clarification. I want to be clear that in no way are we exploring any camera devices that would monitor customer behavior.

To gather information for your article on Comcast's exploration of cameras you picked up on my conversation with another conference attendee. The other attendee and I were deep in a conversation discussing a variety of input devices offered by a variety of vendors that Comcast is reviewing.

The camera-based gesture recognition device is in no way designed to - or capable of - monitoring your living room. These technologies are designed to allow simple navigation on a television set just as the Wii remote uses a camera to manage its much heralded gesture-based interactivity.

We are constantly exploring new technologies that better serve our customers. The goal is simple - a better user experience that allows the consumer to get ever increasing value out of their Comcast products.

As with any new technology, we carefully consider the consumer benefits. In fact, we do an enormous amount of consumer testing in advance of making a product decision such as this. I'm confident that a new technology like gesture-based navigation will be fully explored with consumers to understand the product's feature benefits - and of course, the value to the consumer.

Sincerely,
Gerard Kunkel

Hopefully that clarifies things a bit.

I'm still glad I have TW cable in my area.

Already there?

What makes you think the camera is not already there? Have you disassembled your cable box?

Food for thought. Your cable box could have a camera already. If you have cable internet you know it has enough bandwidth for monitoring you.

Re:Already there?

They're over there right next to your couch. You really do need to clean up that mess in the hall, and you probably want to ask your wife why the UPS guy's clipboard is on the counter. They made so much noise it was hard for me to listen in on the neighbor's phone conversations.

Re:It will get forced on us

Well.... that is until someone's underage teenage son and his underage girlfriend decide to shed all their clothes and have brazen sex in front of the cable box... The legal details of that scenario would be very interesting...
-What does legally happen when some adult's Comacast 1984-style bidirectional TV box "inadvertently" observes illegal underage nudity and sex. I am sure if this data was in any way streamed over their network there would be numerous state and federal laws violated (or if it were retained in any way), not to mention grounds for a very hefty lawsuit.
It would make for some interesting legal reading in any case.

Re:It will get forced on us

I wonder how the box itself would respond to observing sex. Would it find them some pr0n, advertise condoms and morning-after pills, or perhaps turn the volume way up? Could one program it to switch to an abstinence-preaching Christian network to get them to stop?

Re:It will get forced on us

Won't *someone* think of the cable box?!!

Re:So that's what

My box has a firewire port on the back. I plugged it into my laptop once and it was detected as a video for windows device. After digging around for some drivers i was actually able to watch the video coming off the box directly on the laptop. In doing some research for this it looks like all set top boxes made after a specific date are required to have this built in by the FCC.

It would have been even better though if it acted as a tv tuner card that you could use to change channels on the box from the computer.