I was browsing videos on Google Video and came across this one. I hope it provides a good laugh.

Google has developed a prototype of a system that can use your computer’s microphone to eavesdrop on you. The eavesdropping system would listen for sounds that it could then process in order to target advertising to you based on what TV program you are watching. Of course, an eavesdropping system could be expanded for other uses also. TechnologyReview.com has an article on the Google eavesdropping software:

“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.”

Google claims that they are not gathering enough information to really spy on people:

“When word of the research first appeared in the media, some bloggers and other technology watchers reacted with horror; many assumed that the background conversation picked up by the microphone in Google’s system would be uploaded to Google. But the technology makes it impractical; at four bytes, the fingerprints don’t contain enough information to reconstruct the original sounds in a room. “Some people did get the impression that we had an open microphone that was going to listen in on them,” says Norvig.”

But — consider how fast technology is progressing. I remember when 1Mb 3.5 inch floppy disks were high tech. With the gear I have in my laptop bag at this moment I now have the equivelent storage space of 180,512 3.5 inch floppy disks. Bandwidth and memory are going to be even cheaper in the near future. A computer eavesdropping system, like the one that Google is developing, will not have limitations on how much information it can collect and store.

The privacy implications are terrible.

A video that will leave you speechless:

“A partial transcript:

Are there computer programs that can be used to secretly fix elections?

Yes.

How do you know that to be the case?

Because in October of 2000, I wrote a prototype for Congressman Tom Feeney [R-FL]…

It would rig an election?

It would flip the vote, 51-49. Whoever you wanted it to go to and whichever race you wanted to win.

And would that program that you designed, be something that elections officials… could detect?

They’d never see it.”

See the video of testimonial here.

Read the shocking affidavit [PDF].

Read an interview with Clinton Curtis.

Read the article on Wired.

Read a shocking article about the issue on 43rdstateblues.com (also has more external links about it).

Read coverage of the Clint Curtis issues at bradblog.com, including the original breaking story.