Comcast video cameras?

[cookmo]

So I work as a sales rep for a satellite company, and one of the things that we do for our jobs is to research "other" t.v. service providers. We don't do this to bash them-but to know what they are offering to be knowledgable and try to match or beayt their prices and win over customers.

So I was googling Comcast and came across this story about how Comcast wants to put video cameras in their receivers for market research. That way they can see who's watching t.v. and play adds accordingly. It all seems kind of fubared to me, craziness.

http://newteevee.com/2008/03/18/comc...-watching-you/

Written by Chris Albrecht
Posted Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 11:42 AM PT

Comcast Cameras to Start Watching You?
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.

The idea being that if you turn on your cable box, it recognizes you and pulls up shows already in your profile or makes recommendations. If parents are watching TV with their children, for example, parental controls could appear to block certain content from appearing on the screen. Kunkel also said this type of monitoring is the “holy grail” because it could help serve up specifically tailored ads. Yikes.


Kunkel said the system wouldn’t be based on facial recognition, so there wouldn’t be a picture of you on file (we hope). Instead, it would distinguish between different members of your household by recognizing body forms. He stressed that the system is still in the experimental phase, that there hasn’t been consumer testing, and that any rollout “must add value” to the viewing experience beyond serving ads.

Perhaps I’ve seen Enemy of the State too many times, or perhaps I’m just naive about the depths to which Comcast currently tracks my every move. I can’t trust Comcast with BitTorrent, so why should I trust them with my must-be-kept-secret, DVR-clogging addiction to Keeping Up with the Kardashians?

Kunkel also spoke on camera with me about fixing bad Comcast user experiences, the ongoing BitTorrent battle and VOD. But he mostly towed the corporate line on these issues (the monitoring your living room came up after my camera was put away).

[LoganSnake]

Any networked camera can be accessed by those who want to access it. If I had no choice but to get a receiver with a camera in it, I'd tape it over.

[Hain]

Two books: 1984 and Fahrenheit 451


//laughs// And for the record, tin foil is the worst thing one can wear when one is paranoid.

Why?   click to show 

View: On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets: An Empirical Study
Source: MIT
This post created with FASS

On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets: An Empirical Study
17 Feb 2005
by Ali Rahimi, Ben Recht, Jason Taylor, Noah Vawter

Abstract: "Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason."

Introduction
It has long been suspected that the government has been using satellites to read and control the minds of certain citizens. The use of aluminum helmets has been a common guerrilla tactic against the government's invasive tactics [1]. Surprisingly, these helmets can in fact help the government spy on citizens by amplifying certain key frequency ranges reserved for government use. In addition, none of the three helmets we analyzed provided significant attenuation to most frequency bands.

We describe our experimental setup, report our results, and conclude with a few design guidelines for constructing more effective helmets.

Experimental Setup

The three helmet types tested
The Classical The Fez
The Centurion

We evaluated the performance of three different helmet designs, commonly referred to as the Classical, the Fez, and the Centurion. These designs are portrayed in Figure 1. The helmets were made of Reynolds aluminium foil. As per best practices, all three designs were constructed with the double layering technique described elsewhere [2].

A radio-frequency test signal sweeping the ranges from 10 Khz to 3 Ghz was generated using an omnidirectional antenna attached to the Agilent 8714ET's signal generator.

The experimental apparatus, including a data recording laptop, a $250,000 network analyser, and antennae.

A network analyser (Agilent 8714ET) and a directional antenna measured and plotted the signals. See Figure 2.

Because of the cost of the equipment (about $250,000), and the limited time for which we had access to these devices, the subjects and experimenters performed a few dry runs before the actual experiment (see Figure 3).

Test subjects during a dry run.


The receiver antenna was placed at various places on the cranium of 4 different subjects: the frontal, occipital and parietal lobes. Once with the helmet off and once with the helmet on. The network analyzer plotted the attenuation betwen the signals in these two settings at different frequencies, from 10Khz to 3 Ghz. Figure 4 shows a typical plot of the attenuation at different frequencies.

A typical attenuation trace form the network analyser
Results
For all helmets, we noticed a 30 db amplification at 2.6 Ghz and a 20 db amplification at 1.2 Ghz, regardless of the position of the antenna on the cranium. In addition, all helmets exhibited a marked 20 db attenuation at around 1.5 Ghz, with no significant attenuation beyond 10 db anywhere else.
Conclusion
The helmets amplify frequency bands that coincide with those allocated to the US government between 1.2 Ghz and 1.4 Ghz. According to the FCC, These bands are supposedly reserved for ''radio location'' (ie, GPS), and other communications with satellites (see, for example, [3]). The 2.6 Ghz band coincides with mobile phone technology. Though not affiliated by government, these bands are at the hands of multinational corporations.

It requires no stretch of the imagination to conclude that the current helmet craze is likely to have been propagated by the Government, possibly with the involvement of the FCC. We hope this report will encourage the paranoid community to develop improved helmet designs to avoid falling prey to these shortcomings.

[ottopilot]

Originally Posted by Augi

Two books: 1984 and Fahrenheit 451


//laughs// And for the record, tin foil is the worst thing one can wear when one is paranoid.

Why?   click to show 

Did you know that a CRT based TV can receive images? Clandestin technologies have allowed motivated organizations to spy on people for some time now using their TV's as a CCTV device. Just have a van outside with the right RF DSP gear, and smile, you're on candid camera!

If you are using a "digital" cable box now, where the programing and on-demand features are manged by digital data transfer for viewing the analog source, they are perfectly able to monitor your viewing habits now. There may be some FCC issues or ethics that prevent them to legally collect and use this information. If your TV is only using the base 128-129 analog channels bypassing the box, you're "somewhat safe" from this data transfer technology.

Here's another freaky invasion/hacking phenom ... you can hack into devices with network interfaces or modem circuits using HAM radio frequencies and a DSP (digital signal processor) whether it's connected to a network or NOT! A device can be totally freestanding without external connectivity. It's a form of subversion-hack.

Don't even think about cordless phones, wireless keyboard/mouse, WiFi (anything), Bluetooth and cell phone privacy. We have no electronic privacy.