News stories that beggar belief

Stuart Corner
Monday, 04 September 2006 20:00

Opinion and Analysis

I thought for a moment yesterday that I must have slipped through a time warp to April 1: there were a couple of items in the news that I would have picked instantly as April Fool's jokes. But it's not April 1, so I can only conclude, incredulously, that the plans described are under serious consideration.

Story number one concerns Google, and comes from Technology Review. Here's what it says: "A system recently outlined by researchers at Google amounts to personalised TV without the fancy set-top equipment required by previous (and failed) attempts at interactive television. 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 listening in to everything going on in my living room! It's worse than 1984. However Technology Review assures me I need have no concerns. "The fingerprinting technology used in the Google prototype makes it impossible for the company to eavesdrop on other sounds in the room, such as personal conversations, according to the Google team. In the end, the researchers say, the only personal information revealed is TV-watching preferences."

Note that: "according to the Google team". OK so the 'fingerprinting takes place in my PC. But how would I know that Google did not have the potential to eavesdrop? And if, as the article claimed, the technology is able to produce a small 'fingerprint' identifying a particular type of content on a TV programme no doubt it could evolve to fingerprint other types of content in speech? For example if I made was wont to make derogatory remarks about the war in Iraq, the Australian Government's policy on detaining illegal immigrants, or discuss blowing up Parliament House.

Once the technology was in place, who's to say it would not be co-opted for covert surveillance on the grounds of 'national security' or 'the war on terror'.

The other story comes from New Zealand where it seems the current anti-spam legislation is considered too restrictive and a proposed amendment would permit the sending of unsolicited email without giving the recipient any facility to opt out so long as the content was of a non-commercial nature.

Great!. So my email could be deluged with messages from any organisation promoting causes worthy or unworthy: from those wanting to save endangered species to those wanting to save my soul from eternal damnation.

It seems in New Zealand my money will be safe from spammers but my beliefs will be fair game.