10, Extra Credit: Microsoft Kinect Surveillance

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from week of 11/5 using the article: http://www.geekwire.com/2012/microsoft-diskinect-freeloading-tv-viewers/

Large companies seem to be now be putting out all of their surveillance technology towards monitoring the public in order to put forth advertisements catered towards the user. While this data is generally harmless to most people, as the monitoring reaches new heights a person’s freedom starts to come into question. Many users are downloading and watching movies for free illegally which can be seen as harmful to the economy and the entire social structure, I don’t this is the case any longer. As society evolves to become more open and free with these sharing technology new social norms have to be adopted. The surveillance technology released by these companies, the same that has cased an open technology revolution, is now starting to be used to watch and restrict the people. One of the main culprits recently is Microsoft and the possibility of using their kinect peripheral in order to identify media consumers. The purpose of this recognition technology is to monitor movie-viewing rights and to limit movie viewing for restricted material. The second purpose can be seen as a major plus for parents who let their children view their movies through an Xbox. The price seems to be though that Microsoft knows exactly who is viewing media at any given time through an Xbox. This is an enormous invasion of privacy. People are barely okay with companies using data about them that they input into a computer themselves. This could also evolve into someone always knowing exactly what you’re doing and where you are doing it. Companies will have a complete surveillance of your person. The government will of course want this information and suddenly the government has complete control of every person who uses any type of technology and the people have lost power. This seems like a problem that is far in the future, but why should we let anything that could so easily help achieve this vision come into existence.