Big Brother: Making Our Lives Easy and *Fun*!

WASHINGTON (CBS DC) – Verizon has filed a patent for targeting ads that collect information from infrared cameras and microphones that can detect the amount of people and types of conversations happening in customers’ living rooms.

The set-top box technology is not the first of its kind – Comcast patented similar monitoring technology in 2008 that recommended content to users based on people it recognized in the room. Google TV also proposed a patent that would use video and audio recorders to figure out exactly how many people in a room were watching its broadcast.

This technology will never be used against us in any way and giant corporations would never unscrupulously cooperate with the state to profit from the total subjugation of a people. Having the state monitoring the movements of people in their own homes (starting with the living room but eventually in every room–for their safety, of course–will be proposed as a convenience, but eventually imposed as a civic obligation. Think of how much insurance companies need the information about the daily habits of Americans if they are to accurately project risk. And, of course, a battery of Michael Bloombergs need to watch your weight, your sex lives, and your exercise habits. And what is that you are reading? And thinking? And praying?

Best part: whereas the Soviet Union and China have needed the threat of violence to get their subjects to submit to this, Americans will vie with one another to get the latest upgrades on home spying tech.