With the number of televisions and cable boxes in people’s bedrooms, and Comcast’s absolutely bad idea of putting video cameras in set top boxes we are thinking that the company is busy bringing us closer to the Orwellian 1984 ideas of watching people in their living room.
This just raised the stakes on privacy because of the idea of people popping in via that cable web camera or camera device while you and your partner are being intimate just got one step closer.
Pardon me for not wanting to have a video camera in my cable box, nor the idea that someone with some video screen capture software like CamStudio can pretty much so splash moments when I actually have time with my sweetie.
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. Source: NewTeeVee.com
The problem is that the TV is in the bedroom, there are other things that happen in the bed room as well, not just watching TV. The first time there is a data breach, or someone finds themselves an instant porn celebrity, Comcast is done as a company. Someone is going to figure out a way to work this technology into some amateur site, and face it, some of these people are going to be less than amused at staring in a video courtesy of Comcast.
Lawsuits beckon. The video that NewTeeVee has from Blip TV is even creepier.
Keywords: Comcast, video, voyeur, camera, webcam, cable, tv, set top, box, television, spy, internet, lawsuit, oops
The newteevee.com article “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 this article, the blogger picked up on a conversation between Gerard Kunkel and another person at a recent conference. They were discussing the various 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. We’re 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.
Frank Eliason
Comcast Executive Offices
Frank, thank you for your answer here, and I am sure you are working through the newteevee PR disaster right now. The problem is that comcast in how it dealt with the P2P episode was not very forth coming with information, and what was actually happening on the comcast network with P2P.
So you will have to excuse me when I bluntly state “have to see it to believe it”. Comcast, (which we are customers of) has to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are a trust worthy company. If you read an article on ITToolbox on this one, the plausibility of hacking the system is there.
I thank you for your comments, but would love to see solid action on this one, a definitive rejection of camera technology in the set top box would go a long way to answering the initial questions around privacy, security, and usability.
It is a scary technology that is being proposed, while many will not care, if the state department can not keep employees from viewing the candidates information, what should make anyone think that comcast is any more secure and trustworthy? People are people, and if you give them access to our living room, they will abuse that kind of power, it is too tempting.
Thank you.
Admin - Techwag.