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Startup Wants To Peek Through Your Home's Wired Cameras
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."
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?
And ponies, too. Good luck with that...
Free Martian Whores!
I'd trade pictures of myself in my underwear for a "free" console. For an added fee, I'll even put clothes on.
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.
Let a company spy on me constantly so it can make a profit by selling information about me? That sounds like a great deal for me. Where do I sign up?
No company or "customer" could possibly be this stupid.
They're only conspiracy nutjobs till proven right. Then they are wise.
Fuck you. No.
Pardon me for being crude but - what are these nutjobs thinking? All it takes is someone in the household going "Sure, we'll do that!" and then little 15 year old Suzie walks by the camera on the way from her bathroom to her bedroom and *boom!* the company behind this has just analyzed child porn. Congrats!
I cover up or disconnect all cameras in my home that might be turned on remotely for one simple reason -- it is my private home. Period. The end.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
Ponies and wireless cams?
You pervert.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Sounds like we should give them the same image as one reproduces by sitting on the copy machine, sans trou.
Sounds like a great deal, actually. I get free off-site storage and all I have to do it put little post-it notes over the webcams on my computers. I'd change the color each day, just to give their consumer data algorithm something different to look at. Only draw-back is the resulting spam email with offers for pills that will turn my penis yellow or electric blue.
So, if I got this then I could guarantee that all of my spam would be about weight loss, masturbation aids, and (naughty) maid services? I don't see the difference from my current crop of spam.
My botnet already does this. Except I don't sell marketing data to advertisers. Visit RealAmatuerTube.ru. /TongueInCheek
Silence is a state of mime.
We very well may be heading toward an Orwellian future. Sadly we seem to be selling ourselves while making it happen more so than it being thrust upon us. I'm still dumbfounded by shows like the Jersey Shore, Kardasians, etc. These people are rich because they act like (or are) complete morons and do so in front of a camera. Then the masses happily do the same on Youtube for free. And now this. Lets' not forget the domestic drones and other cameras that have been slowly invading our privacy for years.
I remember as a small child being creeped out thinking that the people on the television could see me the same as I could see them. It seems this could very well become reality soon.
Weren't we supposed to have flying cars, no poverty, and shiny cities under glass domes on the moon to go along with the computers, "eyes in the sky", the police state, and video phones? Someone really screwed this up.
If you want to sell some porn, hire some actors you cheapskates.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
I don't think these guys are going to get what they are looking for.
Or maybe they are - if they are going to sell the data to Durex and Trojan...
We are timing the product to launch at the same time these cameras become available. We are making it easier than ever to block intrusive cameras in your home.
Look for our product out soon.
Electrical Tape.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
For now, his company makes money by charging manufacturers for offering its services with their products, or from users that upgrade to extra storage. Currently most such cameras are USB-driven, but a new wave of cheap Wi-Fi models are on the way, and manufacturers like Samsung and Panasonic are putting them into TVs and other devices, mainly for motion control and video conferencing.
"USB is a sunset industry" for cameras, Arora said. He showed off a tiny wireless camera from partner Trek 2000 International, about the size of a roll of film. It sells online for about US$65, and other manufacturers will soon launch for less than $50. Unlike USB models, Wi-Fi cameras don't need to be plugged into a computer or network, and usually just require a power source, which makes them ideal for security and monitoring.
As the prices of such devices fall, manufacturers will be squeezed, and GotoCamera proposes to provide a portion of the online fees it receives back to them, a rare ongoing revenue stream he compares to disposable blades for shaving razors, that must be continually purchased.
"What we say to them is, 'Please accept that you're a commodity, and let us bring the Gillette model to you,'" Arora said.
Their primary audience seems to be camera manufacturers, not users. The indirect offer to consumers seems to be, "buy this camera at a discount and in exchange we get access to its video feed."
Which is not enough to make me buy one, but hey, maybe it's enough for others. Or it'll just be in the fine print and people won't know about it.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
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.
So you've purchased a cellphone with microphone, video camera and GPS capability. And you've also purchased an extremely high-powered computing device to play games on that, coincidentally, has high-powered voice-processing and surveillance capabilities (e.g. Xbox360 w/kinect). On neither of these devices do you have admin/root privileges. And both of them have been shown to connect to their "home" manufacturers/owners and send back data periodically.
So... suppose law enforcement decides to publish their Top 10 Wanted to both of these manufacturers with the understanding that all capable devices will periodically scan for known voice patterns and/or facial patterns and report back findings. Nothing technically impossible about this.
So... once it becomes ridiculously cheap to store this data... why not scan continuously under the guise of "homeland security"? Characteristics can include people with long beards, dark skin, particular languages, what-have-you.
But you may be thinking... "I have nothing to hide. If a company is willing to buy me a camera/game/etc they can watch me all they want." Recall... there's a difference between having nothing to hide and having nothing to show.