Ya gotta love the Internet….link from here to there to someplace else, and finally end up with THIS! Actually, I started at SlashDot to The Register and then to MIT’s Technology Review.
While I haven’t made it a practice to zero in on technology even though my company pays me to work with computers all day long, this article did catch my eye:
Google probably already knows what search terms you use, what Web pages you’re viewing, and what you write about in your e-mail — after all, that’s how it serves up the text ads targeted to the Web content on your screen.
Pretty soon, Google may also know what TV programs you watch — and could use that information to send you more advertising, leavened with information pertinent to a show.
People complain that they don’t want government to watch over us as much as they do, nor peek into our lifestyle’s. I have often said "big deal, the private sector does it far more than the Feds, and often, we let them do it willingly!".
A system recently outlined by researchers at Google amounts to personalized TV without the fancy set-top equipment required by previous (and failed) attempts at interactive television. Their prototype software, detailed in a conference presentation in Europe last June, uses a computer’s built-in microphone to listen to the sounds in a room. It then filters each five-second snippet of sound to pick out audio from a TV, reduces the snippet to a digital "fingerprint," searches an Internet server for a matching fingerprint from a pre-recorded show, and, if it finds a match, displays ads, chat rooms, or other information related to that snippet on the user’s computer.
Letting Google listen in on your living-room activities may sound like a privacy nightmare. Given the recent firestorm over AOL’s accidental releasing of search records for 685,000 members, consumers are more sensitive than ever to how search companies might misuse personal information, deliberately or not.
But the fingerprinting technology used in the Google prototype makes it impossible for the company to eavesdrop on other sounds in the room, such as personal conversations, according to the Google team. In the end, the researchers say, the only personal information revealed is TV-watching preferences.
There was a brouhaha a while ago when it came out that hackers could start using your computer mics (think laptops, generally) without you knowing about it (hmm, I should see if my anti-virus stuff blocks that…never did get around to do that….)
In this case, it seems that the technology snapshots the current sounds in 1 second takes, applies some AI type of heuristics to it, and pops out a small message (4 bytes) back to Google about what it hears
In this way, one second of audio can be reduced to four bytes of information — meaning the fingerprints for an entire year of television programming would add up to no more than a few gigabytes
This is then compared to a database of prerecorded sounds (probably from TV shows) to "see" what’s on, and then serve up ads for that show on your computer (and yes, I am one of those that surf and boob tube at the same time).
This all said, it does bring up some interesting questions about this new technology (and no, I don’t think it has been rolled out yet):
- Is Google’s software something that will be placed on my system without my consent (->is Google going to go "malware"?)?
- Google watches me surf all the time unless I proactively junk my cookies and turn it off.
- Can I turn off my mic with respect to Google listening, or am I going to have to disable it (either in software or sticking a wad of used gum into it)?
- Is Google going to do a pop up asking if I give them permission to listen, or do I have to go to a Google site and play there for a while?
- Google says its technology can’t snoop conversations. Er, that’s THIS technology – who knows where they’d take it with all the brainiacs they’ve hired…..
- How long will it be before the EFF or ACLU file suit?
Don’t get me wrong – isn’t Google corporate motto "Do no evil"? HAH, then there should no problem, should there?
Oh wait, remember that they block certain search terms and sites in Communist Chinse and other nations, and give up search terms and users(landing those folks in jail).
Hey, TMEW, can I have a stick of gum?
