Big Brother starts new job at Comcast

It seems that there is always someone out there trying to prove just how prophetic George Orwell was.  This week's recipient of the Big Brother Award is Comcast Corporation, aka Network 23, in honor of their new idea to improve customer experience by adding cameras to set top boxes (http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-news/?p=2124).  Yes, they assure us that this will not be used to watch us, it will just allow the box to know who is in the room so that it can adjust the program selections to suit the viewer.  And no, it won't use facial recognition, the idea is apparently to "distinguish between different members of your household by recognizing body forms."  Gee, that makes me feel much better.

It is amusing to speculate on just who came up with the idea of adding this technology to a set top box.  Personally, I favor the idea of a group of NeoCons sitting around with some buddies from the NSA at a watering hole in DC near closing time.  They are well juiced, and trying to one up each other with the best way to bring about the final collapse of any form of privacy in the US.  One of the group is so impressed with their comedic abilities that he writes down the most absurd idea of all, a technically feasible way to implement exactly...and let me emphasize, we are talking direct from the novel to your living room, rec room and bedroom, or wherever else you might put a cable TV controller...what Mr. Orwell described as the method by which the mythical Big Brother instilled fear of even thinking in private into the populace.  Exactly how that note got forwarded on to Comcast as a product idea is, of course, food for further amusing speculation.  

Perhaps Comcast is jealous of the Telcos for getting their own special Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card from the Bush administration, and wants to join the club of big-time privacy violators.  This would certainly put them in line to give George Bush, the NSA, and Dick Cheney a direct view into your home.  I can just see Dick (scratch that...I can just imagine him, because he doesn't have one of these boxes yet) sitting in front of a wall of monitors at the Vice Presidential mansion, taking notes on who's been naughty, and adding them to the special rendition schedule for next week.  They will need more contractors for this operation!

I knew there was a reason I canceled cable TV.  Now I need to make sure I've dug up that cable all the way out to the property line.