Every Move You Make
Jan 16th, 2008 at 10:43 am by Susie
See, I told you Microsoft was the Evil Empire. This is very alarming and I can’t help but wonder whether this wasn’t a government request. Take a look at their newest idea:
Every aspect of computer users’ lives — from their heartbeat to a guilty smile — could be monitored and immediately analysed under the futuristic system detailed in Microsoft’s patent application.
Details of the planned “Big Brother” system are revealed in an application to the US Patent and Trademark Office, seen by The Times, over seventeen pages of text with ten diagrams.
The systems work not only through desktop or laptop computers but even through mobile phones or handheld PCs, meaning that even out of the office the employee can still be monitored. In its most advanced format, the system will monitor users’ private interests.
The system works by recording and analysing what words and numbers are used or websites visited, and by watching the user’s heart rate, breathing, body temperature, facial expressions and blood pressure. The patent application explains: “The system can also automatically detect frustrations or stress in the user via physiological and environmental sensors and then offer or provide some assistance accordingly.”
[...] The patent application says: “From this data, statistics related to performance, success rate, frequency of problem, and the like, can be provided to users or can be employed to gauge a target user’s success, performance, or efficiency with respect to other users.”
One scenario given in the patent is of Joe, who is “spending more time on an activity than was originally allotted [by the system] and as a result may not meet his deadline for the project”.
The next step is for the computer to select the most suitable employees by “comparing the performance of people working on similar activities and finding the best people for those types of activities such as for future assignment”.
But the system described does more than just measure workload. It can test for honesty of those activities “performed successfully but not in accordance with company or government policies”.
Heart rates, sweating and facial expressions are already used by law enforcement agencies to detect wrongdoing. Now an employee’s laptop will be able to identify the fraudulent expenses claim or the illegal contract offer. The patent explains: “Monitoring user activity can facilitate auditing how activities are performed to look for or isolate patterns of user problems, abuse, common errors incurred by users, or to ensure company/government policies are complied with.”
SEATTLE (AP) - Microsoft Corp. is bringing digital advertising
to the grocery cart.
The software maker spent four years working with Plano,
Texas-based MediaCart Holdings Inc. on a grocery cart-mounted
console that helps shoppers find products in the store, then scan
and pay for their items without waiting in the checkout line.
Microsoft’s acquisition of aQuantive, an online advertising
company, last year for $6 billion shored up the company’s capacity
to serve video ads onto these grocery cart screens.
Starting in the second half of 2008, the companies plan to test
MediaCart in Wakefern Food Corp.’s ShopRite supermarkets on the
East Coast. Customers with a ShopRite loyalty card will be able to
log into a Web site at home and type in their grocery lists; when
they get to the store and swipe their card on the MediaCart
console, the list will appear. As shoppers scan their items and
place them in their cart, the console gives a running price tally
and checks items off the shopping list.
The system also uses radio-frequency identification to sense
where the shopper’s cart is in the store. The RFID data can help
ShopRite and food makers understand shopping patterns, and the
technology can also be used to send certain advertisements to
people at certain points - an ad for 50 cents off Oreos, for
example, when a shopper enters the cookie aisle. Microsoft said it
is still working on how it will present commercials and coupons.
Microsoft is also working with MediaCart and ShopRite to help
advertisers reach potential consumers based on past grocery
purchases, which are logged when they swipe their loyalty cards.
“This is not all necessarily about bombarding consumers, about
targeting advertising,” said Scott Ferris, general manager of
Microsoft’s Advertiser and Publisher Solutions group. “It’s about
also making the shopping experience better for the consumer.”
Advertisers will get more feedback about which commercials or
coupon offers are effective, because customers either buy the
products or accept the offers on the spot, or they don’t. But
Ferris said neither Microsoft nor any advertisers will have access
to the personal information consumers provide when they join the
supermarket’s loyalty card program.
—
On the Net:
MediaCart Holdings Inc.: http://www.mediacart.com
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Help! I think I’ve stumbled into what Vonnegut called a chrono-synclastic infundibulum and popped out in 1984!
If I saw this anywhere but Murdoch’s Times I’d really worry — not that this isn’t unsettling enough as it is.
F*ck all that nonsense.
Just don’t carry the gear. And you think the terrrrrrrrraaaaaists don’t already know that all this stuff is tracked? Or Jimmy in the mailroom, or Fred in accounting, for that matter?
…
When I was getting the slow-motion heave-ho from the Gannett Death Star, I was pretty sure I was being monitored with keystroke logging software, as my boss was fiercely making book on me. At random times, I began to type, with no documents of files open, quite rude and graphic statements regarding my boss and her boss engaging in acts, uh, against nature and stuff. Good times.
[...] Susie. [...]