Microsoft and DHS Can See You In Your Living Room

01-31-2011 • Market-ticker.org

DHS has to be salivating over this development: At a recent presentation for investors, Microsoft said the ability to see into consumer's living rooms means advertising opportunities. Kinect's cameras can be used to identify people, or objects. Then share shopper's preferences with advertisers. Brett Gordon teaches Marketing at Columbia University. Like a bong? A gun? A person on a wanted list? My-oh-my, Microsoft, of course, says that this will not be shared without permission. Uh huh. And only the people who you give permission to will be able to see inside your living room, right? Well, not quite. See, unknown to many people is the fact that there are back doors in most central routing equipment used by Internet companies these days. These back doors allow the government to duplicate and redirect streams of data wherever they want and they generate no logs when used. How hard would it be to pick off the fact that a particular data stream was from a Kinect and, oh, "borrow" it via such a copy? Answer: It is trivial given the infrastructure that exists right now in the core of The Internet. Camera + network = potential spying device. Camera + Internet Connection + other than an explicit act by the user to turn on said camera and capture an image in each and every case? Instant and permanent destruction of any hint of privacy you think you have.