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Ad Measurement Is Going High-Tech
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "A media-measurement company called IMMI is giving panel participants special cellphones that can take reliable sound samples to track consumer behavior. 'Those snippets -- taken every 30 seconds and altered mathematically so any conversation is made unintelligible -- are transmitted continuously to IMMI,' the Wall Street Journal reports. 'Sounds from headphone devices such as iPods can be transmitted to the cellphones with a wireless accessory. IMMI has been building a database of sound signatures, with help from customers testing the company's services as well as with CD content it has licensed.' The idea is to use the sound signatures to test what media consumers are exposed to -- everything from radio music to movie trailers."
altered mathematically to make unintellilligible? How exactly, then, do they tell what advertising, programs, and other media you are exposed to? Something here doesn't add up. Mainly, why in the hell would people agree to be carrying around an overt bugging device with the sole stated intent of monitoring thier actions?
Sounds kinda like Relatable's TRM fingerprints, which are used by MusicBrainz and in the Neuros audio player.
IIRC, the fingerprints don't have any actual content in them, but instead describe the characteristics of the audio. So it's plausible, at least, that they can't listen in on your conversations, but could still uniquely identify what you're listening to.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
So if I have lunch at Taco Bell, and go to the restroom when I get back to work, from the sound signature they can figure out how "explosive" the newest menu item is?
"we've all seen news stories about people who've been arrested for developing pictures taken while bathing their kids."
Anyone who bathes their kids in photo chemicals deserves to be locked up, IMHO.
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
Today it's Madison Avenue, tomorrow it's DHS.
I presume most people here have read Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, right? He pointed out decades ago that a phone can still operate even if the user isn't on it -- the phone is a ubiquitous bug, if anybody in control of the technology wants it to be used that way. We already know that cell phones have been used as medium resolution GPS trackers of people. Now we know that they are capable of listening in to our private moments as well.
It wouldn't take much for the manufacturers to put in enough memory to store random or prescheduled episodes of speech from our environment, even if we thought our phones were off. These could later be transmitted in a burst to some gov't agency and we wouldn't even notice the power drain. And cell phones always remain somewhat enabled, even when the main power is off. It's possible the time could come when the gov't requires manufacturers to build in some kind of continuous monitoring capability in order to be given their licenses to use the airwaves. If they suspect you, or if they suspect they might suspect you, they can remotely enable this mode.
This all sounds insanely paranoid to me, and now we have to to line our tin-foil hat with acoustic foam? There was a time not long ago when I'd dismiss anyone thinking about such things as a lunatic. But we have enough documented cases of policy corruption to go with the amazing advances in technology capabilities to make this all practical, if not practiced.
Well, I'm not about to go live as a trapper in the woods, and the technological genie can't be forced back into the bottle. Hopefully we can return to a benign government of the people and avoid the headlong rush into a police state. Now there's a crazy idea!
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.