The Return Of Cable Boxes That Spy On You
from the wave-to-the-camera dept
Remember the outcry last year when a Comcast exec mentioned in passing the idea of a set-top box that would have a built in camera to monitor who and how many people were actually watching the TV? The outcry over that forced Comcast to say that it wasn't really going to do that, but Broadband Reports points out that the technology behind such a plan is still moving forward -- and apparently cable companies are, indeed, interested in it. The idea is that it can show personalized ads and better target content. It's worth noting that the company behind the system, Prime Sense, seems to be trying to position it for less "scary" apps, such as being able to do "virtual touch" interfaces, so users could interact with menus on the screen without a remote (features found in some video games these days). Still, unless the end user is given total control over what info is recorded and where it's being sent, this technology seems like a non-starter.
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Filed Under: cable boxes, privacy, surveillance, user interface
Companies: comcast, prime sense
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I have a great piece of technology for you
A good alternative would be to set up something in line that sends 24 hour streaming hardcore fetish videos to the cable company instead. Maybe alternate that with 15 minute slide shows of goatse/tubgirl/whatever horrible things you can find. This technology would become worthless pretty quickly after that.
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Re: I have a great piece of technology for you
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Re: Re: I have a great piece of technology for you
And prevent the CONTENT from displaying?
Besides, I own the patent. Pay me, plus licensing rights, and it's all yours.
;)
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Re: I have a great piece of technology for you
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Re: I have a great piece of technology for you
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One Possible Use?
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If these companies start invading people's privacy and get sued for millions of dollars FOR EACH OFFENSE, they'll go out of business.
That'll open the door again to the competition, thereby eliminating many of the monopolic (is that a word? It is now) strangleholds that cable companies have.
Hooray for back-door capitalism!! (pun intended)
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You know what? Do it.
So my advice? Go ahead and watch. Putting a camera in my home does nothing other than challenge me to come up with new and inventive ways to gross out the illegal immigrants you're going to be paying below min wages to watch me in all my glory.
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Re: You know what? Do it.
But, I wonder when the company will figure a way to disable the cable boxes when no image is being recorded by the camera? So, to watch, you gotta be watched.
Oh, new revenue stream: the cable companies can have a channel that randomly displays what's being captured by some other cable box camera. It would be a whole new entertainment idea: streamed casual voyuerism.
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Re: Re: You know what? Do it.
The reason that ideas like this are stupid is because for every forlorn sheeple out there that will nod their head, assume that big business and big government have their best interests at heart, and go along with an idiotic idea like a PRIVATE GODDAM COMPANY POINTING AN EFFING CAAAAAMMMMMEEEERRRRAAAAAA INTO YOUR LIVINGROOM.....pant pant pant....sory, anyway, for all of those people there is someone like me that's going to use your assanine little scheme to make you and your workers very, very uncomfortable.
If that means having my girlfriend playing ring toss with a set of jelly donuts and my erect wang while I watch Sunday NFL Football, so be it.
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Wow, I didn't even think of that. I might as well have said Bismarks.
I prostrate myself before your culinary prowess.
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Girlfriend playing with my boner: check.
Jelly Donuts: check.
Sunday NFL: check.
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Hmmm .....
Also alternates to duct tape
1- Mirror
2- Fat senior lesbian porn
3- Barney Videos
4- ....
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Re: Hmmm .....
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I disagree.
I have taken infrared photos using a 35mm camera body, glass lense, and an infrared filter which was probably some sort of plastic.
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"In fact, the thermal imaging doesn’t even see through glass because the glass has its own thermal profile."
http://www.prtech-thermalimaging.com/products/infrared_in_action/fact_fiction.htm
Fo r thermal imaging one can use a negative film being that negative film. Negative film will transmit infrared (the infrared used for thermal imaging) but it will not transmit visible light very well (as you can see by looking at them, they are opaque).
Here, this helps explain the physics.
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy00/phy00890.htm
(I don't really want to get too technical unless you request that I do).
In fact, if you take the glass lens off of your camera and replace it with a negative film it may capture more infrared (depending on the antenna) than before (though it will block most visible light but when translated on the screen the camera may render the image as infrared). However, the antenna of a consumer grade camera is not well suited for capturing infrared, unlike a thermal imaging camera, so it probably won't be well suited for thermal imaging.
Try this, get a remote control and face it towards your camera or camera phone and press the button. You will see a red light, that's infrared (though you can't see it with your eyes). Yes, it penetrated the glass but that's because the wavelength is closer to the visible spectrum.
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Actually, I take this back, it may depend on the film used and the specific wavelengths in question. But in general negative film is better at allowing infrared to pass through than glass is.
To get more technical whenever radiation is transmitted you have a distribution curve. Humans emit infrared due to body temperature but we also emit visible light, microwaves, ultraviolet light, etc... However, we emit these with less intensity than infrared. There is a distribution curve, certain frequencies are emitted with the highest intensity and as you deviate away from those frequencies the intensity will tend to get lower. This is generally true for all things that emit radiation. When you put glass in the way it changes the distribution curve and decreases the amount of infrared being transmitted through. However, glass blocks the most radiation at certain frequencies and as you deviate away from those frequencies the amount of radiation it blocks decreases. It doesn't block visible light very well but as you move away from visible light and move within the infrared spectrum towards the frequency that it blocks most effectively more and more radiation will be blocked. This is true for anything that blocks radiation. High energy radiation like X - Rays or gamma rays may require thick layers of heavy metals like lead to block them. But if you use duct tape and glass you will pretty much block a substantial majority of both infrared and visible light (I'm not sure how well duct tape blocks infrared on its own so that's why I threw in the glass since I can see that duct tape blocks visible light pretty well).
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I do not know what particular frequency range the STB sensor is sensitive to. Clearly, glass and plastic do not block the entire range of infrared. As you pointed out, an opaque material may not block well either. Possibly there will be a market for infrared blockers.
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I mean, think about that for a second...
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Unfortunately for some of us, this wouldn't exactly do much to counteract the bill...
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the ones from the south of the border??
or the Hulu ones??
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Dumb
When I worked at a local cable station this same scenario was the butt of all our jokes...I cant believe they are doing this!
It's bad enough with Tivo tracking every little nuance about you....
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Simple Solution
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This goes forward I will be doing one of the following:
- Discontinue TV service completely, Direct TV here I come.
- Discontinue all digital services. Don't need cablebox, can we say TIVO or record via Multimedia server. Only the very basic service.
Also, I will be putting a photo up a directly in front of the camera of a guy and Rosie five brothers.
Seriously, invasion of privacy.
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1) "Discontinue TV service completely, Direct TV here I come." Direct TV is still TV so that argument makes no sense whatsoever.
2) "Don't need cablebox, can we say TIVO...."
You still need a box for TIVO so that argument makes no sense whatsoever.
3)"Rosie five brothers" WTF???????
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Brother to Rosie Palm.
I'm with him on this one. If they did this, I would be thinking of the worst thing I could put in front of the camera. Or something funny as hell so the person watching it spits out their coffee all over the equipment and breaks it.
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Therefore placing duct tape over the camera constitutes circumvention of an access control device, a clear violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
You'll be hearing from our lawyers.
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Only a matter of time...
We, as lazy sheep-like Americans, have watched from the sidelines while the government is paid by big business to strip us of our rights. It's done because of the terrorists, to save the children or any number of equally emotionally charged but completely irrelevant reasons and we sit back and and take it.
We have Stockholm syndrome. We have empathized and sympathized with the governemnt as they have led us into bondage and captivity.
We are now prisoners of this system.
And we either walked willingly or ignorantly into the prison, or we say idly by while the prison was built around us.
It will get MUCH, MUCH worse before it ever gets better - IF it gets better.
Like a beaten and abused wife, the more we allow ourselves to get used to the abuse, the less we think of it. Like an abused woman who says of her abuser: "That's just him." We now walk around saying "That's just the government." or "That's just the way it is."
We are lost, pathetic, scared little sheep who blindly follow the shepherd... even to the slaughter.
Don't whine and complain... get off butt any do something. Even if it's just joining eff.org and sending out emails to your representaives, do SOMETHING! ANYTHING!
Shake off your lethargy and take some action!
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Re: Only a matter of time...
Emails get read, categorized, and if they have an especially good soundbite they are forwarded on to the rep. A letter...an actual physical letter...is almost always read.
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Guess I'll stick with analog
I haven't seen the need to get a thousand more digital channels that I'll never watch, for more cost and more hassle.
Although with as little TV as I watch anyway, I'm quickly converging on the point where even analog cable is just not worth the cost.
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no way this will happen
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Make a video of your own. Say, a video of you making some impromptu gibbering noises. Something distinctive enough for you to claim copyright over it. Put that on a screen in front of their camera, so that they make a copy of your copyrighted work. Then sue them for 20k. But be nice, and offer to settle for 10k.
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excellent idea.
(sarcasm)
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shame on you
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I guess I'm technically challenged
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digital penetration
First there was Stuxnet, then there was FLAME, the latest weapons grade malware is badBIOS accidentially discovered by Dragos Ruiu 3 years ago. More on the discovery in section 2
http://learning.criticalwatch.com/badbios/
##
remotely monitoring and altering brain waves
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPT O%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=16&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=3,951,134&OS=3,951, 134&RS=3,951,134
United States Patent 3,951,134
Abstract
Apparatus for and method of sensing brain waves at a position remote from a subject whereby electromagnetic signals of different frequencies are simultaneously transmitted to the brain of the subject in which the signals interfere with one another to yield a waveform which is modulated by the subject's brain waves. The interference waveform which is representative of the brain wave activity is re-transmitted by the brain to a receiver where it is demodulated and amplified. The demodulated waveform is then displayed for visual viewing and routed to a computer for further processing and analysis. The demodulated waveform also can be used to produce a compensating signal which is transmitted back to the brain to effect a desired change in electrical activity therein.
###
"The monster is out of the bottle."
The monster was never in the bottle, but above, below, and around us. Do you think this is really just a struggle between human beings? There is much more at work here.
Outcome #3: Your friends are here.
Aaron Cross: Yeah. Don't you think that strange? Wolves, they don't do that. They don't track people.
Outcome #3: Yeah, maybe they don't think you're human.
- Bourne Legacy
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"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."
- Ephesians 6:12, The Bible
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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."
- William Casey, CIA Director (from first staff meeting, 1981)
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