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Startup Wants To Peek Through Your Home's Wired Cameras

Posted by Soulskill on from the nope-nope-nope dept.

alphadogg writes "The little cameras in your home are multiplying. There are the ones you bought, perhaps your SLR or digital camera, but also those that just kind of show up in your current phone, your old phone, your laptop, your game console, and soon your TV and set-top box. Varun Arora, founder of startup GotoCamera in Singapore, wants you to turn them all on and let his company's algorithms analyze what they show, then sell the results as marketing data, in a sort of visual version of what Google and other firms do with search results and free email services."

5 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. Jennicam 2.0? by dtmos · · Score: 5, Informative

    Startup wants to peek through the wired cameras in your home, sell the data

    Wait, wait. Could we go back and cover the part about why I would want them to do this, again?

    1. Re:Jennicam 2.0? by amiga3D · · Score: 2, Informative

      The way gas prices are headed that could add up to real money.

    2. Re:Jennicam 2.0? by Barbara,+not+Barbie · · Score: 3, Informative

      You missed a step. First they need to come up with some incentive, let's call it a Judas goat, to sign on and let their programs sift through our pictures.

      They already have - they've ripped off the government excuse - security. "Turn all your cameras on and be able to monitor everything." And if you do, they "give" you 1 gig of storage. (which they would need anyway to do any video datamining).

      And he wants the camera companies in on it - selling the cameras below cost in return for getting a kickback on the revenue stream.

      Can someone please take this retarded idea out behind the barn and shoot it?

      --
      Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
  2. The offering to the user... by Neil_Brown · · Score: 5, Informative

    a startup that provides online storage and software for web and Wi-Fi cams

    Sadly omitted from the summary (albeit in the article) — the user gets "free" storage in exchange for the analytics.

    Far too little to convince me to share such data, though.

  3. "Please accept that you're a commodity..." by idontgno · · Score: 4, Informative

    Did he really just say that?

    Did he just call me a fungible mass material, like pork bellies and orange juice? Am I going to be traded as futures at the Chicago Board of Trade?

    My God. He just called us sheep. No, not even sheep. Less than sheep. Meat. Raw materials. Resources, in the most over-the-top insulting reading of "Human Resources" possible.

    Wow. I guess some people have no subtlety. And no shame. And scum like this wants to turn the world into the largest episode of The Prisoner ever.

    Let me reiterate. I am not a number. I am a free man.

    I must respectfully decline your intriguing offer. I will not be subscribing to your newsletter.

    --
    Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.